Customer Reviews

Sometimes I Act Crazy: Living with Borderline Personality Disorder

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For months, my wife was searching frantically for a book that explains what BPD is and what the treatment options are. She found exactly what she was looking for in Sometimes I Act Crazy.

She actually bought a few other books first, but they were just too dry. What sets this one apart is that it contains accounts of real people that let you experience what it's like to have BPD. She was able to identify with these people, and it helped her so much to know that she's not alone. The book also explains the causes and the reasons for the various symptoms, so you can really understand what's behind them.

Once she got started, she couldn't put it down, and then made it required reading for me. I also identified with people in the case studies, the husbands and wives, and friends, moms, and dads, of borderlines, who are also suffering. I know now that I'm not alone and this has made it easier for me.

Most important, the book gives valuable practical advice on how to cope with this excruciating mental illness and how to go about seeking help step-by-step. We probably saved ten times the cost of the book just by reading the chapter on what to look for in a therapist! We had no idea this kind of help is available.

The reader gets to experience the patient's stories just like a psychologist would, with patient stories in bite-sized portions. The explanations are unusually good. The index at the back of the book is more thorough than the first book; I looked to see if Woody Allen's movie "Zelig" was listed in this index, since it was mentioned in both books, and there it was! The book was reader friendly. It was also thoughtfully written, so that a person with a short attention span and unlikely to read the whole text would be able to get the important message that there is a "cure." I was surprized at the sexuality in some of the stories, but I was grateful for these examples because they were necessary to understand the thinking of the BPD patients. The authors presented astonishing evidence of successful treatment methods. The book mentioned many of the illnesses that are similar to BPD and what exactly the defining symptoms were. What BPD was, how to identify it, and how to respond when a person with this disease exhibits its symptoms, is the focus of the book - A new hope for a future without BPD! It may take ten years, but for the ones suffering, it is something ï¿ Satisfying to read.

Easily the best book out there on BPD. All the new medication regimes and treatment regimes that weren't around when he wrote his first book on the subject 30 yrs ago. Hopefully this book will reach the same heights as his first book as the BPD Primer. Extremely concise, easy to read. I love this book. Read it.

I never give books five stars no matter what, so the 4-star rating doesn't necessarily mean it is not an excellent book.

That said, in my very unprofessional opinion (I am neither a mental health professional nor a writer, simply a non-college educated 20-year-old BPD patient who thinks she knows how to read and write) Kreisman and Straus have done about as well as they can in describing this incredibly complicated affliction to the lay public.

I got on the waiting list for this book ASAP because a)I'm a dork and think it's interesting that Dr.Kreisman is/was based in the city where I was raised and still live and b)on a more serious note, after ten years I finally got the proper diagnosis and want to learn as much as I can without a higher education.

I agree with one noted reviewer that the prose is a little uncomfortable; I find it much more authentic and genuine to read one's personal story as if they were talking to you, not as if they're a character in a fictional novel. However, more important than the delivery of the information is the information itself. Within the first few chapters I could relate to the behaviors and thoughts and feelings described. However, I can almost guarantee that not every patient will relate to this book as there are so many manifestations and intensity levels of BPD. For example, I'm a high-functioning BPD who is a self-proclaimed attention whore. But we won't go into that.

In short, I enjoyed the book and think it's worth the money. Dr. Kreisman, if you're reading this, I hope you feel some pride in the book, and I'd love to meet you at a book signing but have no idea when you're in St.Louis. Anyone know where I can find that information??

I love the book as for every chapter, author told readers about a client (it was like a story telling or a case that you were going through with the Dr.) And then Dr. pointed out the classical symptoms of BPD and I found it very informative. (Jerold Kreisman, M.D. really knows alot!!) At the end, it also shared with readers about some of the recent remedies or medication used to help BPD. I found this book very easy to read and when I started reading it for the first chapter, I just couldn't put it down. I highly recommend this book to someone WHO WAS DIAGNOSED with BPD; for those who LIVE WITH a BPD or whoever HAS INTEREST TO FIND OUT MORE about BPD. Very good book after all!

I strongly recommend this book for anyone seeking to find help with frequent feelings of loneliness or emptiness, mood disorders, any type of addiction, identity issues, self-esteem issues, reoccurring unresolved anger, troubling relationship, boundary and trust issues.

Excellent compliments to this book are: The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders by Joseph Santoro and Ronald Cohen; Emotional Blackmail: When People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation and Guilt to Manipulate You by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier; Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism by Sandy Hotchkiss and James Masterson; The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert Pressman; Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable and Volatile Relationship by Christine Ann Lawson; Living with the Passive-Aggressive Man by Scott Wetzler; Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited by Sam Vaknin and Lidija Rangelovska (Editor); Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents by Nina Brown; Treating Attachment Disorders: From Theory to Therapy by Karl Heinz Brisch and Kenneth Kronenberg; Secrets, Lies, Betrayals: The Body/Mind Connection by Maggie Scarf; Toxic Coworkers: How to Deal with Dysfunctional People on the Job by Alan Cavaiola and Neil Lavender; Bully in Sight: How to Predict, Resist, Challenge and Combat Workplace Bullies by Tim Field.

And if you want to pursue the subject even further, you may be interested in reading The Narcissistic / Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective On Marital Treatment; Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood by Julie Gregory and Marc Feldman; Charred Souls: A Story of Recreational Child Abuse by Trena Cole; Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility by Jim Fay and Foster Cline.

I am a psychologist who was looking for a book that I could recommend to clients and their support networks. I could not find one chapter in this book I would have them read. The authors obviously have a medicalized model of this disorder and all of the sterotypes that go along with it. It is superficial and colored with ridiculous examples of supposed BPD behavior with only a poor attempt to explain what is going on inside the individual or how to help. I can imagine people reading this occasionally saying "wow - I do that!" in the same way as someone might read a monthly horroscope and feel that it was written just for them (b/c they are so general and vague - similar to this book) but that is about as far as this book will take them. I should have known just from the title, but the few positive reviews led me to pick this up. Do not make the mistake that I made.

I picked up this book at the store, intenting to purchase it and began to flip through it as I waited for my boyfriend. When I hit the section that described how BPD is underdiagnosed and went on to give a list of 'signs' for the reader that indicate you could have BPD, I put the book back on the shelf and decided not to waste my money.
The authors seem to have the idea that anyone who was abused as a child, the victim of any type of violence, or been in a bad relationship needs to make an appointment with a psychiatrist because they suffer from BPD and are going to either kill themselves or end up in a long term hospital if they don't get treatment for their 'personality disorder' right away. Its books like this one that are the reason that anyone who has their own, non-mainstream, opinions are told they are mentally ill and verbally and psychologically abused by mental health professionals until they conform to what the mental illness gurus define as normal.
As far as BPD being underdiagnosed, Kreisman and Straus are horribly mistaken. BPD is one of the most prevalent labels around and normally given to any woman/girl who has the courage to disagree with a psychiatrist or therapist's opinion or has any views they don't agree with. When suffering depression as a young teenager (13-15) I was told I had BPD. The fact that I was an honor roll student in school, described as easy to get along with, polite, and very mature by my classmates and teachers and flirted with alchohal and weed no more than any of my peers didn't matter. All that was needed was one thing - the fact that I self injured. The second that label was on me no mental health professional would ever take a word I said at face value again; everything I said would be twisted and distorted to fit the DSM criteria for BPD. I came to know many, many other teenaged girls and young women who were subjected to this same treatment.
BPD is nothing more than words, a label created to ensure doctors get paid and can maintain the upper hand over the people they treat by reminding them of their 'disorder'. To anyone who reads this after being told you have BPD by a doctor or therapist, I have some advice for you. First, don't buy this book it will only make you feel less than human. Secondly, find a therapist who doesn't take stock in all the lovely little labels psychiatry has cooked up over the years and will see you as a person. That is how you will truely feel better, not by taking medications or going to DBT groups to learn how to handle what they've decided are inappropriate emotions.