Chickenwing, I found this book very judgemental and by about half way through I also felt certain my future was either to die by suicide or be locked up for life. Luckily mine was a second hand copy (not on an ipad!!) so I threw it away! 'I hate you don't leave me' (or at least my copy of it) was written in the 1980s when people still believed that BPD was effectively a death sentence for which there was no effective treatment. I found the Rachel Reiland book very real and it resonated deeply, but it was hard going and quite triggering. I think she was also treated at a time when professionals had no hope for BPD.

There are two newer books that I like- Lost in the Mirror, and The Borderline Personality Survival Guide- which both describe psychological treatment options like Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Schema Therapy and Transference Focused Psychotherapy. Both are written by professionals but are sympathetic. I also like the way Marsha Linehan (the therapist who developed DBT) talks about BPD. She was really the first person to stand against the idea that BPD patients are 'master manipulators'. She argues this implies patients are highly skilled at getting what they want, when actually it is a desperate lack of skill which leads them to resort to destructive behaviours. She also talks about people with BPD having a 'thin emotional skin' and having 'third degree emotional burns'.

I find that I am very affected indeed by how people talk about 'us'. I recently started reading a book on Compassion Focused Therapy, which I thought would be useful for combatting the toxic shame I feel. All was going well until about page 5, when the author (and developer of the therapy) started talking about clients 'threatening' suicide (ugh) and then said 'some are also demanding'... Doesn't sound very compassionate to me!!