The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders: An Interactive Self-Help Guide

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Summary: This book has changed my life.
Review: After reading only the first chapter I knew it was for me. I could feel the feelings of Samuel like it was me he was writing about. I always knew I was diagnosised borderline but never knew what it meant, except for seeing things black and white. I never knew where the feelings came from. This book as helped me to understand myself and where my feelings came from. NOW I can truely begin to work on my recovery.

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Summary: I Use This Book In My Professional Practice
Review: As a mental health therapist, I use this book for one of my groups for Borderline Personality Disorder. The exercises in the book are excellent, and the Group members are able to relate to the book and each other. Excellent book!

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Summary: Highly informative, well-strucutured, therapeutically useful
Review: As a PhD student in Counseling Psychology and as a training clinician, I found this book to be highly informative regarding the symptomatology and intrapsychic conflicts of borderline clients. The book provided both DSM-IV criteria for borderline clients as well as therapeutic exercises, which makes it helpful for both clinicians and clients. The exercises are excellent tools and guides for therapeutic interventions with a population of clients for which there is a scarcity of methods available. More importantly, the autobiographical narratives of Samuel were emotionally touching and would certainly captivate a borderline audience. Since one optimal method of learning is to make the material personally meaningful, this book will certainly help the borderline population learn about themselves. Excellent job Dr. Santoro and Samuel!!!!!!

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Summary: I got my life back
Review: At first when i bought the book i new that wasn't for me... I kept it in on the shelf for 6 months. Then i got curious and start reading it. How the story is written you don't have to reflect the things that happen on yourself, but when you have Borderline you automatically project the life of the main character on yourself. For me that automatically gave me a solution of finally doing something with my life, in stead of mokking and becoming a grumpy person. I can truly say: This book saved my life. :)

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Summary: Not just information; a solution
Review: For years now, I have been told that I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I was never told what I could do to heal myself though. Thank God I found this book because not only is it informative but it gave me solutions, specific activities that I could do to realize where my problems came from and how to overcome them. I recommend this book to anyone who is tired of suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.

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Summary: Full of Useful Informaion
Review: I am amazed at the amount of information this book provides. Unlike other books on borderline personality disorder, this book has treatment aspect of the disorder. I think other books on the same subject had more descriptions of how bad the disorder is and don't even mention any treatment.

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Summary: Recommended Understanding that the BPD is a Medical Disorder
Review: I am the webowner of BPD Today. Very good information on working through issues. I recommend asking your therapist before reading this book as one must be ready. The author makes many good points and it appears that past trauma/abuse is related to the BPD.
Please understand however that this book does not address the need for medication in getting into recovery from the BPD. It is primarily a medical disorder. Otherwise it is loaded with assistance. 

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Summary: Extremely Hard
Review: I found the book very informative and has lots of great ideas but would be a better tool with the help of a counselor, I have BPD and couldn't begin to finish the book

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Summary: Moving, accurate, attention getting
Review: I have not read this book - I got it for my husband. He was waffling back and forth between thinking he may have BPD and not (I wasn't waffling - it was pretty obvious to me). The night he picked up this book, he read for hours (rather unusual), stopping only to point out certain sentences to me and then CRY because they were so accurate to his current state and his past - some things he really didn't think about before (like blocking out most of his childhood experiences). He told me after just a few chapters that I should have gotten him this book years ago. I sat down to read the "Stop Walking on Eggshells" book for non-BPDs at the same time and I finally feel like we are heading in the right direction. It seems this is a great book for shedding a first light on the obvious as well as subconscious areas of this troubling disorder, without making it out to be an "excuse" for the behavior or treating sufferers like all they "are" is the disorder. Finally we've found some hope for a less emotionally chaotic future!!!!

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Summary: Too Complicated
Review: I know Santoro had his heart, angry or not, in the right place when he wrote this guide. However, as a person who suffers from BPD, I found it to be extremely complicated. I also found parts of it to be very similar to Marsha Linehan's DBT workbook. Santoro's book would be best utilized in a group setting. Using it on your own, I'm afraid, could be discouraging to a tender psyche.