Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change

Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change

by Valerie Porr, M.A.
Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change

Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change

by Valerie Porr, M.A.

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Overview

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by unstable moods, negative self-image, dangerous impulsivity, and tumultuous relationships. Many people with BPD excel in academics and careers while revealing erratic, self-destructive, and sometimes violent behavior only to those with whom they are intimate. Others have trouble simply holding down a job or staying in school.

Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder is a compassionate and informative guide to understanding this profoundly unsettling—and widely misunderstood—mental illness, believed to affect approximately 6% of the general population. Rather than viewing people with BPD as manipulative opponents in a bitter struggle, or pitying them as emotional invalids, Valerie Porr cites cutting-edge science to show that BPD is a true neurobiological disorder and not, as many come to believe, a character flaw or the result of bad parenting. Porr then clearly and accessibly explains what BPD is, which therapies have proven effective, and how to rise above the weighty stigma associated with the disorder. Offering families and loved ones supportive guidance that both acknowledges the difficulties they face and shows how they can be overcome, Porr teaches empirically-supported and effective coping behaviors and interpersonal skills, such as new ways of talking about emotions, how to be aware of nonverbal communication, and validating difficult experiences. These skills are derived from Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Mentalization-based Therapy, two evidence-based treatments that have proven highly successful in reducing family conflict while increasing trust. Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder is an empowering and hopeful resource for those who wish to gain better understanding of the BPD experience—and to make use of these insights in day-to-day family interactions.

Winner of the ABCT Self Help Book Seal of Merit Award 2011

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780195379587
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 08/12/2010
Pages: 424
Sales rank: 604,079
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Valerie Porr, M.A., is a mental health educator and advocate trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and the founder and president of the Treatment and Research Advancements National Association for Personality Disorder (TARA NAPD). She conducts psycho-educational training seminars for family members of those with BPD in New York and elsewhere.

Table of Contents

1 Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder: The Family Experience 3

2 The Science of Borderline Personality Disorder 37

3 The Principles of Behavior Change 77

4 Understanding Dialectical Behavior Therapy 105

5 Understanding and Applying Validation 129

6 Mindfulness 189

7 Grieving and Radical Acceptance 215

8 Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills for Behavior Change: Interpersonal Relationships, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance 245

9 Mentalization: Understanding Misunderstandings 287

10 Putting It All Together: Integrating Skills for Acceptance and Change 329

Afterword: For Clinicians 347

Resources 351

Bibliography 353

Index 375

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