Charles H. Elliott - Borderline Personality Disorder For Dummies 2nd Edition

Borderline Personality Disorder For Dummies, 2nd Edition

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Copyright 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020945967

ISBN 978-1-119-71430-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-71433-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-71435-4 (ebk)

1. Chapter 7
2. Chapter 12
3. Chapter 15
4. Chapter 16
5. Chapter 18
6. Chapter 19
7. Chapter 24

In the ten years since we wrote the first edition of this book, borderline personality disorder (BPD) treatment has expanded and improved. Increasingly, studies have managed to demonstrate that such treatment works and that people with BPD can expect to get better with treatment. This second edition describes these new strategies and reflects current thinking that justifies a more optimistic tone.

We intend this edition of Borderline Personality Disorder For Dummies to provide a comprehensive overview of this complex emotional and behavioral problem. Most readers without BPD will find that this information helps them to better understand the problem and to know how to relate to people with BPD better than they did before. People in close relationships with those who have BPD may find that a therapist can provide additional support.

If you have BPD, this book will help you better understand yourself and the people you care about. However, we strongly recommend that you also enlist the help of a mental health professional who is trained in treating BPD. BPD is one problem you dont want to deal with on your own. If youre using this book in collaboration with a therapist, we suggest that you take notes and write out your responses to the exercises we provide whether on your computer, tablet, smartphone, or in an old-fashioned notebook. You probably also want to password-protect or guard your material because, after all, your notes are for you (and your therapist) and no one else.

If youre a therapist, this book can help you spot people with BPD more quickly and set better boundaries when youre treating them. However, if youre new to the treatment of BPD, youll definitely want additional training and education about this disorder.

If you or someone you care about suffers from BPD, we appreciate the challenges and painful obstacles you face. The purpose of this book is to provide a comprehensive look at the symptoms, causes, and treatment of BPD. We strive to help people who have BPD and the people who care about them gain understanding about this complicated mental illness. Because treating BPD requires professional intervention, this book isnt designed as a standalone self-help program. However, you can certainly use it as an adjunct to psychotherapy. We share the belief with other professionals that clients benefit from being informed about their disorders, the suspected causes, and treatments that work.

We believe that stories and examples provide the best way to convey many ideas. Therefore, we use a lot of examples to illustrate our points throughout. The stories and cases we describe here represent composites of people with BPD whom weve known in our personal lives as well as in our practices. However, none of these stories depicts a true, recognizable portrayal of a specific person. Any resemblance to a specific person, alive or deceased, is completely coincidental.

Borderline personality disorder is a bit of a mouthful, so we shorten the term to BPD throughout this book. In addition, we often use phrases like most people with BPD or people with BPD generally do this or that. We absolutely realize that BPD plays out differently in each person. In some ways, theres no such thing as typical or most in the BPD world. However, wed need another thousand pages to thoroughly discuss each variant and permutation involved in BPD. (See for a discussion of the many symptom constellations of BPD.) So, just to be clear, we dont mean everyone who has BPD every time we say most.

Were going to take a wild guess here and assume that most people who read this book are interested in BPD. That interest may stem from your own emotional issues, or you may have concerns for someone you care about who has BPD-like symptoms.