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Surviving a Borderline Parent

Surviving a Borderline Parent

How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

by Kimberlee Roth

Foreword by Randi Kreger

Published by: New Harbinger Publications

Imprint: New Harbinger Publications

208 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in

Paperback
9781572243286
Published: January 2004

$18.95

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eBook (PDF)
9781572247901
Published: January 2004

~~$15.15~~ $10.99

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Description
Authors
Praise

Surviving a Borderline Parent is the first step-by-step guide for adult children of parents with borderline personality disorder.

Between 6 and 10 million people in the US suffer from borderline personality disorder. This book teaches adult children how to overcome the devastating effects of growing up with a parent who suffers from BPD.

Although relatively common, borderline personality disorder (BPD) is often overlooked or misdiagnosed by therapists and clinicians and denied by those who suffer from it.

Symptoms of this problem include unpredictability, violence and uncontrollable anger, deep depression and self-abuse. Parents with BPD are often unable to provide for the basic physical and emotional needs of their children. In an ironic and painful role reversal, BPD parents can actually raise children to be their caretakers. They may burden even very young children with adult responsibilities.

If you were raised by a BPD parent, your childhood was a volatile and painful time. This book, the first written specifically for children of borderline parents, offers step-by-step guidance to understanding and overcoming the lasting effects of being raised by a person suffering from this disorder. Discover specific coping strategies for dealing with issues common to children of borderline parents: low self-esteem, lack of trust, guilt, and hypersensitivity. Make the major decision whether to confront your parent about his or her condition.

Kimberlee Roth is a health writer and journalist. She has written about Borderline Personality Disorder and topics related to physical and emotional well being for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune.

Freda Friedman, Ph.D., LCSW, is in private practice and a member of the Phoenix Institute in Chicago, Illinois. For the past twenty years, her primary clinical focus has been with Borderline Personality Disorder, providing treatment, education, support and consultation to people suffering from the disorder, their families and health care professionals working with them. She is on the board of several professional health care organizations and has developed BPD programs in New York and Chicago.

“If Stop Walking on Eggshells has become the bible for people with a borderline family member, I predict that Surviving a Borderline Parent will become the ‘must have’ book for people who have a parent with borderline traits. Authors Kimberlee Roth and Freda Friedman have done a stunning job of validating the isolating experience of these ‘adult children,’ and more importnantly, shown them how to overcome the constant feelings of guilt, abnormality, and self-doubt. This book belongs on the shelf of every clinician and adult child with a borderline parent.”

—Randi Kreger, author of Stop Walking on Eggshells

“Kimberlee Roth and Freda Friedman provide comprehensive guidelines for adult children with borderline parents that help create balance and boundaries in these tumultuous relationships. The authors point to the need to break the ‘silent treatment’ around Borderline Personality Disorder and encourage clinicians to educate patients and family members about this diagnosis. This book is well worth the investment for any adult child with a borderline parent.”

—Christine A. Lawson, Ph.D., author of Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Life with a ‘normal’ parent can be hard enough. All of us have stories about low points in growing up. But ultimately we can look back on childhood with a warm feeling about our parents and feel that we were loved and nurtured. Not so for children of a parent with Borderline Personality Disorder. These adult kids may need to do years of work to recover from the narcissism of their caregivers. Surviving a Borderline Parent provides life-affirming signposts to the road back to emotional health.”

—Ross Werland, health editor for the Chicago Tribune