| View Larger Image | Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder | Paperbackby Rachel Reiland (Author)
| List Price: | $13.95 | | Price: | $10.04 | | You Save: | $3.91 (28%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Hazelden | | Edition: | 1st Edition | | Page Count: | 350 Pages | | Publication Date: | September 01, 2004 | | Sales Rank: | 6,268th |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9781592850990
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Borderline Personality Disorder. "What the hell was that?" raged Rachel Reiland when she read the diagnosis written in her medical chart. As the 29-year old accountant, wife, and mother of young children would soon discover, it was the diagnosis that finally explained her explosive anger, manipulative behaviors, and self-destructive episodes- including bouts of anorexia, substance abuse, and sexual promiscuity. With astonishing honesty, Reiland's memoir reveals what mental illness feels like and looks like from the inside, and how healing from such a devastating disease is possible through intensive therapy and the support of loved ones. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 71 reviews)
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Amazing. I was able to relate to her. by K. Vanburen (USA)  5 Stars
October 27, 2009
This book is one of my favorite books that I have ever read. I was able to connect and relate to her in several ways. She described what borderline is so well and all. I loved this book.
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The power of unconditional love by Gaby 5 Stars
October 17, 2009
I highly recommend this book, it is a great story and her will power to recover is very touching. I had to cry at least a couple of times while reading it. There are some psychology intellectual concepts which can be understood on the practical level with this book, as the concepts are explained within the lines of the story being told.
The woman in the story was very wounded for sure, but she didn't necessarily had an actual borderline personality disorder per se. Some of us are more wounded than others, but we can still relate to each other for the suffering and struggle that our wounds bring us. I think this book is very helpful for people in general and not necessarily for people who are exclusively labeled with a particular personality disorder.
The process of being loved unconditionally for who Rachel is, is amazingly portrayed in this book. It is like a process of re-parenting which finally allows her to heal. The therapist is also firm when he calls out Rachel's negative behavior. After all, it is still a re-parenting healing process.
I loved the book, it is definitely one of my favorites.
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A story of "fear of nothingness," "nameless dread," "black hole" and "borderline rage" by J. Al-hashimi 5 Stars
August 30, 2009
I was always confused as to what a "fear of nothingness," "black hole," "nameless dread of nothingness," and other descriptions of borderline's fear of having no identity. It made no sense to me as to what that was and why it happened. Reading how the author's thinking works throughout that process and how her life developed in childhood and how she worked through it what all this is about finally became obvious to me. There were a couple of things which became obvious as I read this:
1st: there is the developmental issue. Without full attention to the id phase of life, that phase where a sense of self is developed what would be considered selfishness in later phases of development is required. So, if a child is subjected to neglectful or abusive parenting the id doesn't get formed and then the next phase of ego and then superego don't have a base of "self" to build on. I remember when my son worked on my messed up computer he said that metaphorically, if my computer was a building all the support beams were bombed out so he had to reformat the whole thing from scratch. It still operated, but weirdly and too often "the blue screen of death" came up which shut the whole thing down. Always on the alert for a new metaphor :).. But that's kind of the deal here with BPD. Without "good enough" parenting,coupled with depreciation (verbal or physical), self development is missing and essential psyche structures never develop adequately. What the therapy finally did was provide that sustenance for her damaged psyche to build a new id and then a whole structure. An extremely competent therapist was able to tolerate her wild mood swings and be a blank slate for her projections. He was able to guide her through build trust to reveal all of her thinking and receive guidence and feedback on self management. One can imagine the intellectual curiosity and commitment of this professional to have the four year follow-through of three times a week for years and then two times a week 50 minute sessions and three hospitalizations and uncountable phone calls to essentially allow this psyche to have what it needed to both start over and repair. That's why it is unlikely that without the full attention of a patient-therapist relationship, the only adult relationship in which one person is the total center of attention (the patient) and the other is just there to project upon, offer advice and observations won't heal. For healing to take place the therapist must quietly immerse himself/herself in the life of the patient during their therapy time and via phone calls, gently calming them, being there for them so that they can gain emotional strength and can quit using up their life's energy oscillating between being at war with themselves and others and falling into suicidal depression, finding a new way to think and react.
2nd: "Borderline rage" has never been clear to me either. I've witnessed it and it looks like mental illness. It looks like an internal switch is thrown and rage takes over the person. When that rage is taken away (probably over a period of years of medication and therapy) people with BPD often get depressed and lost feeling, purposeless, structureless and energyless. Now, the author didn't say this, but as I read her experience, it seemed obvious to me. Being without a developed and sturdy egoic structure people with BPD need energy to sustain themselves as they are essentially lost-in-space, ergo, the descriptions of "fear of nothingness" which actually means: fear that I do not exist. And, in a sense they are right. A normal psychic structure does not exist (hence, the "black hole" where there should be "self"). I suspect that nihilism and violence are primitive impulses so they emerge more strongly when psychic structures including self preservation are lacking, especially likely if an imprint of self hate is created by an attacking authority figure before the self has a chance to develop.
3rd: I never read a good explanation for why 3/4 borderlines are female- I think it is assumed that it is a hormonal or genetic predisposition, but I suspect is is environmental, because misogyny -hatred/mean-spiritedness of the feminine - was so prevelent, even the highest saints of the Catholic Church wrote horrible things about women; St Augustine: "Woman, thy name is devil." In most major religions there were an stated superiority of males. This is not an innocuous thing. When you look at what happened in Germany in the early 1900s, there was harsh childrearing tactic that were accepted. So people grew up with a lot of childhood rage and it was considered normal to pass it onto their children. When it became culturally acceptable to hate the Jewish people, the gypsies, and so on, it is likely that this free-floating rage was redirected by cultural approaval to a terrible end. So, identifying a target and making it culturally acceptable to hate that target creates a serious situation. Both of her parents had no respect for women, femininity, which made it difficult for her not to hate herself to the point of self destruction. She struggles with anorexia as well, self hate of her body, trying to disappear to under 100 pounds, to be perfect, like a model. These are still environmental/cultural issues of our times, reactions of self hate overwhelmingly a "female" problem.
4th: Apparently without a sturdy psychic structure in place people with BPD lack an emotional regulator which makes sense. Rage and perfection are difficult extremes typically creating problems for persons living with BPD. The lack of structure and sturdiness also creates a situation where thoughts are perceived of as the same as actions, typical in very young children and people who have trouble with reality. This, I think, points to how dense the problem is.
I'm glad the author wrote this book. It occurred to me that BPD is actually logical, almost mathematical, in its impact and cure. It makes sense how a child could underdevelop and also develop psychological problems due to parent's gross incompetence and also how, as an adult, it could get fixed by a combination of drugs and work with a competent therapist over a long period of time. I thought that therapeutic bonding was one of the main points of the book; this therapist was impressive, reminding me of the HBO series "In Therapy." His competence gives structure and direction to the recovery. The husband was another heroic figure, also way past "good enough."
PS: As I read through the other reviews a couple things came to mind. First off, some people are trying to do a value judgment thing... whether the author is a good person or not. I think this speaks to a misunderstanding of what it means to get better from a mental illness. If she recovered from lung cancer and journaled a story out of it, it is less likely that people would speculate whether the recovered person was "good." The point was that there was a young woman with a mental illness who was at risk to herself and others in a number of ways, unable to cope with life and unable to handle marriage and two small children who were already part of her life. So recovery to the point of managing these things and not being destructive to herself and her children was priority one and "good enough" recovery. Secondly, it was speculated by some as to whether she was "recovered." Well, it looks like she recovered a lot and that was the point. Granted, at the end of the book she still talks about having anorexia issues and, even though she is off-therapy and off-meds, whether to tell the people of the new suburb she moved into whether she was a borderline, which smacked of her still wanting the special attention and outside gifts of assistance to her family to continue. But, she wasn't wandering bad neighborhoods in the middle of the night, no longer was intermittently hospitalized in a psych ward and was off her meds, and was at least an adequate parent, so yeah... she experienced a "good enough" recovery. I was amused at the complaints that this book was boring... but the point wasn't to entertain. It is 440 pages of recovery journeling from mental illness. I thought it was better than good enough :)
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educational by Cynthia R. Wilson (Massachusetts) 5 Stars
July 08, 2009
This book was very well written and accurate about an individual diagnosed borderline personality disorder. It was really nice knowing someone else has gone through what I have gone through and that it was a real person. I look forward to reading more books dealing with real people who are diagnosed with a mental illness
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Positively astounding! by Judy Lanoux 5 Stars
May 24, 2009
A of mine relative has bpd. The book has given me a much better understanding of this illness. It is unfortunate that this information hasn't come to the forefront sooner. Some earlier generations swept mental disorders under the rug. I praise the author for sharing her experiences with us. I give the book a ten star rating.
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