Book Review: Coping with BPD: DBT & CBT Skills

People with borderline personality disorder, as psychologist Marsha M. Linehan puts it, “are like people with third degree burns over 90 percent of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.” Indeed, this extreme sensitivity, coupled with feelings of deep emptiness and emotional lability, wreaks havoc on those dealing with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and those who love them. Up to fifteen million Americans struggle with BPD. Interactions that others might brush off and forget about can leave someone with the disorder feeling raw and exposed. In their new book, Coping with BPD: DBT and CBT Skills to Soothe the Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder, Blaise Aguirre and Gillian Galen offer guidance. The book is divided into fifty-three different scenarios, grouped together into fourteen chapters, each covering different manifestations of the disorder. Aguirre and Galen break each situation down into what they call “The Problem,” “What it Looks Like,” “The Practice,” and “Checklist.” For instance, Aguirre and Galen describe a young woman who, fearing her boyfriend is cheating on her, makes the emotion-laden decision to dump him, but at the same time cannot imagine life without him. “Swinging between desperately trying to cling to a relationship and impulsively threatening to break up can put even further strain on the relationship,” they write. This gives them the opportunity to introdu...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Book Reviews Borderline Personality General Psychology Psychotherapy Blaise Aguirre books on borderline personality disorder coping with bpd Gillian Galen Marsha M. Linehan therapy for borderline personality therapy for bpd Source Type: news