The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders

by Joseph Santoro

Book Overview

The emotional turmoil and impulsive behavior that characterize borderline personality disorder are so often accompanied by alcoholism or drug abuse that some estimates suggest that as many as half of the millions of people with substance abuse problems may have a masked borderline personality disorder. If you have problems with addictive behavior, this self-help guide offers a range of exercises and step-by-step techniques to help you come to terms...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1572240806
• ISBN13: 9781572240803
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Self-Help Does Not Get Better Than This

This is one of the best self-help books I have read. It is an intelligent, thorough, clear introduction of borderline personality disorders. It is designed to assist the reader in progressing through the illness at the same time they increase their understanding of the illness. The journal exercises are clear and very helpful. The writing is professional and well documented. This is very, very well designed and well written book. Worth every penny I paid for it and the two weeks I spent reading it very carefully.

Excellent self-study for borderlines

Some persons with BPD really cannot use therapy very well, and in many parts of the country--outside the NYC and San Francisco and a couple of other major urban centers--it is hard to find therapists who really know how to work with borderlines. Indeed, many therapists don't even recognize BPD when it's right in front of them, especially if the borderline is talented (as so many are) at knowing what the therapist wants to see in order to think well of him or her. Especially when a very smart BPD, having spent a lifetime at pleasing authority figures and cajoling them into the role of caretaker, encounters a rather less smart therapist, the stage is set for a folie a deux, with the therapist ratifying the patient's pathology and falling into something like the role of worshipful caretaker.Thus, self-study is sometimes the best route for the BPD who is serious about getting better.Self-study is always helpful for the BPD, even the BPD who has a savvy therapist--that is, a therapist who does not want to be a hero or the sole source of help. (If your therapist doesn't like the idea of your doing self-guided study, run.) For that purpose, too, this book is excellent.The authors have constructed some absolutely brilliant exercises, and they guide you through the kind of structured work that BPD's need in order to acquire inner order in place of their terrified chaos.If you're a therapist who works with BPD's, look at this book as something you might want to suggest that your patients buy and use in conjunction with therapy. If you are, or have reason to suspect, you suffer BPD, have a look--especially if therapy hasn't worked so well for you.In my experience as a therapist, I found that patients with BPD are often the most intelligent, gifted, and tragically damaged of patients--but that precisely because their inner lives are so chaotic, they are better able to acquire good structure than "more functional" patients who had well-developed maladaptive structures already in place. Taking apart a long-reinforced structure is very hard, while building from chaos is, in a sense, free of that task. This book can help with finding authentic structure, in an autonomous process that minimizes some of the dangers of BPD-in-therapy.I have come to believe that two things, not taught in textbooks, indicate whether a BPD can get well: courage and a good heart. If you have those things, you should never let anyone, therapist or otherwise, discourage you from the path to a whole, integrated life. If you have those, buy this book at help yourself toward a life free of the horrors of your early days.

Full of Useful Informaion

I am amazed at the amount of information this book provides. Unlike other books on borderline personality disorder, this book has treatment aspect of the disorder. I think other books on the same subject had more descriptions of how bad the disorder is and don't even mention any treatment.

This book has changed my life.

After reading only the first chapter I knew it was for me. I could feel the feelings of Samuel like it was me he was writing about. I always knew I was diagnosised borderline but never knew what it meant, except for seeing things black and white. I never knew where the feelings came from. This book as helped me to understand myself and where my feelings came from. NOW I can truely begin to work on my recovery.

Not just information; a solution

For years now, I have been told that I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I was never told what I could do to heal myself though. Thank God I found this book because not only is it informative but it gave me solutions, specific activities that I could do to realize where my problems came from and how to overcome them. I recommend this book to anyone who is tired of suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.