The Big Book on Borderline Personality Disorder (Bpd Wellness) - Softcover

Rooney, Shehrina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936268612 ISBN 13: 9781936268610

Publisher: Unhooked Books, 2019

Synopsis

Contrary to popular belief, borderline personality disorder is NOT a life sentence!

If you live with borderline personality disorder (BPD), you already know how painful it can be. But take heart – recovery is possible! The Big Book on Borderline Personality Disorder offers advice from someone who’s been there and speaks from inside BPD, with empathy, care and insight.

Author Shehrina Rooney shrugs off the stigma, busts myths, and translates the diagnostic criteria into everyday language. She explains the brain science of emotion dysregulation and shares her favorite strategies and skills for weathering the storm.

The Big Book on Borderline Personality Disorder includes special chapters for family and loved ones, men with BPD, and anyone newly diagnosed. The author gives readers strategies for coping with BPD in the workplace and as a parent. In short, this book covers everything you (or your parents or therapist) could possibly want to know about BPD.

This book gives you the information and tools to reclaim your life. With warmth and humor, Shehrina Rooney shows you how you can find contentment, stability, and the freedom to enjoy each day as it comes.

About this title

About the Author:

Shehrina Rooney founded the YouTube channel Recovery Mum, with more than 10,000 subscribers, in 2015 and co-founded The BPDTribe.com website in 2017. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) at age 21, after struggling for more than half her life with fear of abandonment, self-hatred, anger, and eventually addiction. Although dialectical behavior therapy helped, her “dark years” continued into motherhood and through a divorce. Attending 12-step meetings, she realized peer support could work for BPD, too. Today, she dedicates her life to encouraging others who face the same struggles. She is grateful to have the skills to calm her emotions and be a wonderful mum.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chances are, you bought this book for one of the following reasons:

A. You have borderline personality disorder, think you may have BPD, or believe that you have some of the BPD traits but not enough for a diagnosis.

B. You have a loved one or know someone who suffers with BPD.

C. You are a medical professional or student in the field of mental health.

If you are in category A, I hope that while reading this you have plenty of aha moments. I want you to:

· Gain a better understanding of yourself

· Become more self-aware and learn to recognize the BPD symptoms in day-to-day life

· Know that it is not your fault

· Finally start to see some light at the end of the tunnel

· Learn some helpful skills that you can put in to practice today

· Start to take back control of your life

If you are in category B, I hope you will:

· Gain a better understanding of your loved one

· Understand that it is neither their fault nor yours

· Understand how to cope in times of crisis

· Learn some skills that can help you

If you are in category C, I want to:

· Give you an insight in to someone living with BPD rather than just a textbook version

· Help you to understand that people with BPD can be very different from one another

· Present you with living proof that this disorder can be managed with the right treatment

If you happen to be someone who doesn’t fall into any of the categories above, I thank you for buying this book simply to educate yourself about something that is greatly misunderstood by the masses. It is with enormous thanks to people like yourself that, together, we can help smash the stigma.

So who am I and why did I write this book?

My story begins on a cold and miserable day in November 2015. As I sit in front of my laptop, I contemplate abandoning my idea all together. Am I really willing to disclose my deepest, darkest secrets to the world? What will people say? What will people think? As far back as I can remember, I have concealed my true self with a mask that I unconsciously wear. Am I truly prepared to drop the facade and reveal the real me? The good, the bad, and the downright ugly? There is a lot of ugly.

I sit staring at the screen in front of me, my heart pounding, my stomach in my throat, conjuring every excuse I can imagine to justify discarding my plan. This could benefit so many people...or it might go so terribly wrong. Am I being brave? Or am I being incredibly stupid? Only time will tell. I take a deep breath in, breathe out slowly, and, with my hand trembling, I hit the button. My video goes public.

For those of you who know me, I want to thank you for buying my book. For those of you who don’t know me, I thank you also――and may I introduce myself to you?

My name is Shehrina and my YouTube channel is Recovery Mum. I consider it important to inform you that I am not a qualified or trained medical professional in the field of mental health. I do believe, however, that I am more than qualified to write this book for you, for I am experienced up to the eyeballs―and then some.

I have spent many harrowing years of my life wanting to die. I refer to this time as the Dark Years. Unfortunately, the Dark Years spanned more than half my lifetime―an awfully long time for someone to wish they were dead. Those who knew me as a child would have considered me to be happy and confident, while inside I was anything but. From an incredibly early age, I struggled with anxiety and a compelling fear that those I loved most would abandon me. When my teenage years hit, I transformed from a seemingly cheerful but cheeky child into an intolerable and angry monster, regularly throwing tantrums that would put any two-year-old to shame.

I was not your typical grumpy teenager merely overloaded with hormones, but one with an intense self-hate and a penetrating anger toward those closest to me. That deep-seated anger soon turned inward, and I began self-harming. My insecurities continued to grow, and by age sixteen I was caught in the grips of an eating disorder and regularly turning to alcohol to help solve my problems. When the alcohol stopped doing the trick, I turned to drugs. By the time I was twenty, I was both a drug addict and an alcoholic, and my mental health was deteriorating at a rapid speed.

I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression and subscribed pills, none of which helped. Eventually I hit my first rock bottom, no longer wanting to go on living this painful life. I attempted suicide, the first of many attempts, some of which were very nearly successful. At twenty-one I went to live as an inpatient on a mental health ward. I can’t even express how utterly terrified I was, but by spending time on the ward and being observed, I was finally given the diagnosis of BPD. This was my first milestone on the road to recovery, although it would be many years before I would be anywhere near recovered.

I was twenty-five when I had the opportunity to start a dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) course. DBT helped me in so many ways, and I saw some major improvements in my life. But the drug and alcohol abuse, bulimia, and self-harming continued.

Pregnant with my first child in 2008, I was taken off a lot of my medications. I quickly fell into a deep depression―one that sunk even deeper after the birth.

Two years later and with my second child only a couple of months old, I discovered that the person I had trusted most in the world―my husband―had betrayed my trust. For people with BPD, this is one of our biggest fears. When it happened to me, I felt my world had ended. I turned to drink and drugs to numb my pain. The following two years are a blur―they were spent in a drug-induced haze and alcoholic stupor, crying uncontrollably daily.

I had two beautiful children and my wonderful stepson who lived with us, yet I still attempted suicide in order to shut down my uncontrollable emotions. These were the most painful years of my life, the Dark-Dark Years. I look back in amazement and wonder how I got through them in one piece. Someone once said to me that their biggest success had been that their suicide attempt was unsuccessful. This echoes exactly how I feel today.

It was these Dark-Dark Years that led me to begin a stint in rehab that lasted seven long months. Relapse unfortunately followed, as well as a divorce, relocation, a pregnancy that involved social services, my children coming back to live with me, and learning to become a mum all over again, only this time to three children. Emotionally I was in tatters, yet for the first time in my life I could see some light at the end of the tunnel. I was attending 12-step meetings for my addiction and was back under a superb mental health team.

By attending 12-step meetings and watching the power of one addict helping another, a seed was sown. What if I could achieve the same result within the world of BPD?

Which brings me to that day in 2015 when I first posted a video on YouTube. I could never ever have anticipated the overwhelming response that I received. I never envisaged that I would have my eyes so widely opened to this disorder. For many years I had felt so different and so alone―I had no idea that there is a whole world of people out there just like myself. It has taken me more than thirty years to find my tribe, but we have found each other and for that I am forever thankful.

Since that first video went public I have had my fourth (and final) child, and I’ve continued posting videos weekly. Today, I am happy and free from the shackles of my emotions. Today, I can be a wonderful mum, daughter, sister, partner, and friend.

So why did little old me decide to put pen to paper? As I have just mentioned, the response I have had on YouTube has been amazing, and yet there is a bitter-sweetness to it. I am overjoyed that I have managed to reach and engage so many people all over the world, and yet I feel a deep sadness that I can no longer reply to everyone’s messages. And then I had an epiphany. I could answer everyone’s questions―within a book. I know the burning questions that you have, because they’ve already been asked. I know what interests you, because they’ve already been shared with me. Communication between myself and my wonderful and loyal subscribers has led me to feel confident that I can write a book that contains everything you need and want to know about BPD, no matter who you are or what your circumstances.

Now, my lovelies, let us begin our journey of acceptance, understanding, and hope, for with these three things you are equipped with the primary tools to get you on the road toward the light at the end of the tunnel―where knowledge, healing, and freedom await you in abundance.

With all my love,

Shehrina
AKA Recovery Mum

About this edition

• Publisher: Unhooked Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1936268612
• ISBN 13: 9781936268610
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 389