recommend a nonfiction book about narcissism/borderline personality disorder

[Anonymous]

Trying to figure out how best to deal with my sister, who I suspect may have narcissistic personality disorder/BPD. Anybody have a book to recommend?

[Anonymous]

"Stop Walking on Eggshells" helped with regards to dealing, and estranging myself from my brother.

http://www.amazon.com/Stop-Walking-Eggshells-Borderline-Personality/dp/1572246901/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1442320053&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=waking+on+eggshells

Explains so much of the traits - the anger, the manipulation, the "splitting," the convincing (of others), the often associated addictions.

[Anonymous]

Just an article about borderline personality disorder in Washington post today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just an article about borderline personality disorder in Washington post today.

can you post a link, please?

[Anonymous]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/her-brain-tormented-her-and-doctors-could-not-understand-why/2015/09/14/d9d0b788-36c5-11e5-b673-1df005a0fb28_story.html

The resource center the parents started (mentioned in the article) is here -- http://www.bpdresourcecenter.org/

Also NIMH and NAMI are probably good sources for Borderline Personality Disorder info. - http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/borderline-personality-disorder/index.shtml

http://www2.nami.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Inform_Yourself/About_Mental_Illness/By_Illness/Borderline_Personality_Disorder.htm

If you want to read up more, one interesting thing to keep in mind is that in the psychiatric field there has been some discussion over the last 10-15 years about the validity of Borderline as an independent diagnosis. Some health workers argued that Borderline was just a name the profession was giving to the "tough" cases which had either difficult personal interactions or didn't seem to respond to drugs. The idea was rather than admit the person was sick and the health worker couldn't "cure" or "help" them (or maybe were even misdiagnosing or treating incorrectly), professionals were just sticking this stigmatic label "borderline" which was perceived to be untreatable. Some of this came from professionals who studied and treated bipolar, as a way of asking are we really being fair to these Borderline patients -- are they really bipolar patients we are failing or are they really something else? The WaPo article seems to indicate that the debate and research are progressing in the direction of validating that there is a separate (from bipolar or major depression) underlying biological basis for Borderline. If you want to read a bit more about this, google borderline and Ghaemi. Nassir Ghaemi has written/studied this issue.

I think it's worth mentioning this because my own personal family experience is that bipolar is often ill treated and misdiagnosed.

Also, I highly recommend taking the NAMI Family to Family course == 12 weeks covers the major mental illnesses (symptoms and treatment), how family members can be supportive, legal issues (committment, power of attorney, health privacy waivers, etc.)

Two other books I generally recommend are "Burden of Sympathy" by David Karp about families figuring out where exactly to draw the line of support and how to weigh their own health and well-being while helping another with mental illness. I also recommend "I'm not Sick, I don't need Help" by Xavier Amador. He makes some excellent points about how to talk to someone with mental illness who is refusing treatment. I think it's generally applicable, although his examples really use people who are psychotic (whether in mania or schizophrenia) and who have pretty severe anosognosia (inability to recognize self-illness).