The_Empress

           The following quote is from the epilogue of the book and it speaks about it in general terms.

            "Tempting as it may be to draw one conclusion or another from my story and universalize it to apply to another's experience, it is not my intention for my book to be seen as some sort of cookie-cutter approach and explanation of mental illness, It is not ab advocacy of any particular form of therapy over another. Nor is it meant to take sides in the legitimate and necessary debate within the mental health profession if which treatments are most effective for this or any other mental illness.
           What it is, I hope, is a way for readers to get a true feel for what it's like to be in the grips of mental illness and what it's like to strive for recovery."

           How I reacted to the book: I laughed out loud and cried a lot, often on the same page.

           What this books is about: It's a personal journey. This is THE most honest books I've ever read. The authors reveals her inner life, thoughts and feelings to us COMPLETELY. Some people would prefer to get naked before share the things she did.

           In the beginning of the book, she tells about the turmoil she experiences not knowing she has a mental problem. She reveals the childish and ugly side of her. While for me it is very easy to understand why she reacts the way she does and what she actually feels, I wonder if people that are not familiar with mental health issues can understand this part of the book, or they would just think: "Why is she acting like that? She doesn't have an excuse!"

           The only part that was TOO much for me was at the end, her endless expression of love and gratitude toward her Therapist.

           I recently watched a BRILLIANT documentary on BPD on Youtube, and in this video clip they said:

           "Manipulation is when you consciously try to get someone to do something for you, without them knowing that you actually got them to do it. These individuals very rarely have the end of personal skills to figure out how to get you to do things in an non-obtrusive way."

           I think BPD people are highly misunderstood, because of their emotional underdevelopment.

           This is an experiment how abused children bond with their parents more. It's from this book:

"Some scientists were conducting an experiment, he said, trying to gauge the impact of abuse on children. Ducks, like people, develop bonds between mother and young. They call it imprinting. So the scientists set out to test how that imprint bond would be affected by abuse.

The control group was a real mother duck and her ducklings. For the experimental group, the scientist used a mechanical duck they had created - feathers, sound, and all - which would, at timed intervals, peck the ducklings with its mechanical beak. A painful peck, one a real duck would not give.

They varied these groups. Each group was pecked with a different level of frequency. And then they watched the ducklings grow and imprint bond with their mother.

Over time, he went on, the ducklings in the control group would waddle along behind their mother. But as they grew, there would be more distance between them. They'd wander and explore.

The ducklings with the pecking mechanical mother, though, followed much more closely. Even the scientists were stunned to discover that the group that bonded and followed most closely was the one that had been pecked repeatedly with the greatest frequency. The more the ducklings were pecked and abused, the more closely they followed. The scientist repeated the experiment and got the same results."