You are strong! No matter what anyone says, you can heal the symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD). In this unique guide, influential BPD advocate and blogger Debbie Corso offers an easy-to-use primer on dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), as well as powerful peer-to-peer support for managing your worst BPD symptoms.
If you have BPD, you may experience extreme emotional ups and downs. These intense feelings can make navigating everyday life that much more difficult, and as a result, you may have trouble maintaining relationships, seeing yourself clearly, or reaching career goals. You should know that you are not alone, and that BPD isn’t your fault. Most importantly, you need to know that you are strong. With the right tools, you can overcome the symptoms of your BPD—this book will show you how.
Written by a BPD survivor and advocate, Stronger Than BPD offers practical, evidence-based dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills to help you manage the intense emotions and negative self-image that can occur with BPD. This easy-to-use guide helps you apply the fundamental components of DBT—such as mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness—to everyday situations that can trigger your symptoms. And through personal examples and real-life stories, you’ll see how others have put these skills to work in their own lives to get relief. You’ll even learn how social media can help you heal!
BPD is a part of your life, but it doesn’t have to define you. If you are ready to take control of your symptoms using powerful, evidence-based DBT skills, this friendly guide will light the way.
This book has been selected as an Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Book Recommendation—an honor bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.
Debbie Corso is a mental health blogging pioneer, courageously chronicling her journey while lighting a torch to provide hope to a severely emotionally wounded community. She has a BS from New York Institute of Technology in Interdisciplinary Studies in English, Communications, and Behavioral Science, as well as a certificate in Early Childhood Development. She is in recovery from borderline personality disorder (BPD). Through hard, consistent work with dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), she no longer meets the criteria to be considered "Borderline." Her work as an Intake Coordinator and Case Manager at a non-profit organization, working closely with children at risk for abuse and neglect, was the catalyst that propelled her to document and share her powerful journey through her blog and hopeful, encouraging books on overcoming the oppressive symptoms of BPD. She currently co-facilitates online, worldwide psychoeducational DBT skills classes at emotionallysensitive.com. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Foreword writer Gillian Galen, PsyD, is instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. She is program director and assistant director of training forMcLean 3East Intensive Residential Program at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital--a unique residential dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) program for young women exhibiting self-endangering behaviors and borderline personality disorder (BPD) traits. She specializes in adolescent psychotherapy, including DBT. She has a particular interest in using mindfulness and yoga in the treatment of BPD and other psychiatric illnesses. Galen has been a registered yoga instructor since 2008. She is coauthor of Mindfulness for Borderline Personality Disorder.
