The Angry Heart : Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders
image by Joseph Santoro, PhD. & Ronald Cohen, PhD.
£

A self-help guide combining professional expertise with the words and experiences of Samuel, a young man struggling to stay on his own healing path. Offers poignant, often painful insights, emotional support, exercises and skills to help you change.

Review by Margo McPhillips of MentalHelp.net:
"This book contains a great deal of useful ideas and information. Based on the author's BPD treatment approach, called "Mentorship Self-Help Therapy", the book was written to identify and teach ways and means of regaining or maintaining control over significant aspects of a borderline-diagnosed person's life through identifying psychotraumatic events in the person's childhood that have "conditioned" the person to manage their emotions or behave in borderline fashion. According to this author, once the roots of the behaviors are identified, the person with BPD can be taught skills to better manage stressful events.

The first thing I liked was the quick introduction of journaling and the many reminders throughout the book to "Remember to write in your Recovery Journal today." There is lots to "see" and do in this book, many exercises that reinforce what is read about or suggestions of ways to practice. Early on the reader is told they don't have to do the exercises, they only have to do what they want to do. There is some good effort on the authors' part ot connect with teen or young adult BPD sufferers but it is a relatively small-print, 250-page, dense book and I wondered, given the characteristics that make up BPD and the likely age of most readers, how well someone with "unstable, intense moods or emotions that can be triggered by events and may last hours or days" or someone with "chronic feelings of emptiness, boredom, or loneliness" would be able to do, working with the book by themselves."


Add to Basket  


See more titles on coping with Anger, Fear & Depression