Short description
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 with a parent with Borderline Personality Disorder. Provides life-affirming signposts to the road back to emotional health.
Long description
Although relatively common, Borderline Personality Disorder, or 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-harm. Parents with BPD are often unable to provide for the basic physical and emotional needs of their children. In an ironic role reversal, BPD parents can actually raise children to be their caretakers. They burden even very young children with adult responsibilities, demanding emotional and material support from those least able to provide it. Plagued by irrational fears and anxieties, BPD parents transfer feelings of self-hatred onto their children. Those raised by a BPD parent endured a volatile and painful childhood. 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. Readers discover specific coping strategies for dealing with issues common to children of borderline parents: low self-esteem, lack of trust, guilt, and hypersensitivity.