Yeah, I think that a lot of the literature that is geared towards family members and the like seems to be geared towards validating their frustration and the like.

There is still quite a lot of judgemental literature out there unfortunately.

This is one book that I haven't read. I have read 'I hate you don't leave me' and I resonated with some of it, but felt a bit hurt by some of the other aspects of it. I thought it was a hurt arising from unnecessary judgement / misunderstanding more than a 'home truth' kind of thing as well... I really liked Linehan's stuff but it is much harder going.

Linehan's therapy has indeed been empirically validated as a pretty successful treatment for BPD. Mentalization based therapies are doing pretty well now too (more psychodynamic/analytically focused). Bascially the notion is that treatment does take a while. But then treatment for neurotic depression / anxiety is supposed to take a while too...

So it ain't that bad :-)

(Even though it can feel like hell at times)

I think there is a gradual progression out with episodes becoming further apart and less intense. Apparantly I'm all cured of BPD symptoms (with respect to meeting criteria) at the age of 28. Still have a lot of borderline traits of course but don't meet criteria anymore. And didn't meet criteria... After a year of DBT...