Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder: Coping When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder (Paperback)

If you have never lived with someone who has BPD characteristics I can imagine it would be impossible to understand just what it's like. They're brilliant, funny, warm and engaging one moment - and then without warning irrational, blisteringly angry, abusive and manipulative. The rage and abuse can last for several hours, sometimes days, and often through the night until morning. After a while the partner without BPD, or the non-BP as it is termed in this book, begins to question their own sense of perception and what is acceptable and normal. This book provides a lightpost back to reality.

One previous review seems to consider this book as some sort of manual for leaving the relationship and providing convenient labels for justifying this action. I am convinced this reviewer must have read a different book. This book is emphatically not about providing labels but about understanding - understanding that the actions of the person with BP are driven by fear and pain, understanding that in order to be able to provide the framework where a healthy mutually supportive relationship can exist BOTH partners have to be healthy with healthy boundaries. This book is about helping the non-BP have the tools to maintain his or her own personhood and thereby ultimately benefit the relationship.

A BP demands so much of their partner's time, resources and emotional energy. The awful aching emptiness within them, this need for reassurance, this desperate attempt for anything to fill this void and ease the pain and terror. It is easy to be sucked into this needy-child world and willingly give of yourself to the point of exhaustion and then after giving so much be utterly bewildered when this person you love suddenly, and for no apparent rational reason, spends the next 7 hours yelling at you with the most appalling verbal abuse, and when you try to (verbally) defend yourself against the onslaught you get punched, kicked, scratched and have objects wildly thrown at you.

Sounds bizarre, but this happened to me at the mere suggestion I made that I was a little tired. I wish I had had this book on this and the countless other occasions where my remarks (innocent and otherwise) have sparked the fury. Reading this book you will be able understand why you have given and given and yet are still treated in the most appalling and abusive way and it also gives you much-needed advice on ways to avoid or reduce these irrational conflicts.

Of course BPD is an extremely serious condition and the sufferers, if they admit it at all, need very intensive therapy and/or medication. This book is not some sort of self-help treatment guide. It is not our job to cure our loved ones of this awful condition. It is also not anyone's job to be perfect and, as this book emphasises, in any relationship we are 100% responsible for our own 50%. This book gives the non-BP back some self-respect and centre. It explains the difference between triggers and causes, so that whilst something you did or said may have triggered a rage it doesn't mean that you have caused it or that it excuses the consequent verbal or physical abuse.

This book, by giving the non-BP some tools to maintain his or her sanity in the face of sometimes overwhelming opposition, may just be the very thing that keeps a relationship alive. These poor damaged souls are so needy, so empty, so vulnerable and so precious yet are also capable of the most aggressive, nasty, irrational and unloving behaviour - paradoxically the very sort of behaviour that drives away the love they most need. This book will help you understand the reasons for this and to maintain your own dignity in the face of the onslaught. There is some real hope contained in these pages.

This book explains what BPD is, what the mechanics of the disorder are, and how to live with people with this disorder. There is also a web site, BPD central, and a e-mail support list for partners of people BPD.

I cannot thank Randi enough for writing this book. I cried while reading, because finally someone could put a name to this thing that was running my life, someone could tell me what was going on, and how to deal with it. The advice in the book is invaluable.