Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #362814 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 253 pages

Synopsis
Directed at people with problems of borderline personality disorder - characterized by unstable relationships, emotional turmoil, and impulsive, self-destructive behaviour - and people struggling with addiction, this self-help guide aims to help them come to terms with their destructive lifestyle and to break out of its dysfunctional cycle of thinking and behaviour. The authors combine clinical exspertise with the stories of people who have struggled to overcome the problems associated with a borderline personality disorder.

From the Author
Healing psychological trauma is the key to recovery.
The Angry Heart was written to help heal people with addictions, childhood trauma and personality disorder. It is easy to read and it can help you begin to heal yourself. It is based on the treatment approach we use at my residential and outpatient treatment centers.Dr. Joe Santoro

Customer Reviews

Healing Buried Pain : "The Angry Heart" by Joseph Santoro
As someone who works professionally, as a psychotherapist, with clients suffering from borderline and addictive disorders I have found "The Angry Heart" an extremely useful resource. It has helped me in refining techniques to practically help my clients and enable them to start putting their lives back together. As a psychotherapist trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing: see www.emdr.com) and open to different approaches, I was already using some of the book's practical suggestions with my clients, encouraging them to keep a journal, challenging negative thinking with affirmations, etc, but this book has moved my thinking on in very helpful ways. I have only just got hold of it, so it is not 'road tested' yet, but I have already recommended it to one client and will be sharing it with another when I start work again after the Xmas break.

What makes this book accessible and therefore especially useful is that it is solidly based in real clinical work. The book is effectively co written with one of Joseph Santoro's clients, his story is interwoven in with the theoretical and practical aspects of the book. This makes for a poignant and powerful core to the book.

A section I particularly liked was one in which Santoro gives advice on how to interview a prospective therapist. If only more people would ask these questions before entering into a relationship with immense power to heal, but also, with an unsympathetic or rigid therapist, with the dangerous potential to get you even more lost.

I'd recommend this book for any therapist for its wisdom and practical suggestions. "The Angry Heart" is described as an “interactive self-help guide” for overcoming borderline and addictive disorders, but I think it would be useful for anyone unhappy with their life as it is and seeking change, as it sets out very clearly how our past can affect us and then offers practical tools for ensuring we can break free and become the selves we have always had it within us to become. Anyone suffering from depression would also I would think find it very valuable. I buy a lot of psychology books, skim through them and leave them on the shelf. This one is different.

Good companion books would be John Lee's "Facing the Fire" and by the same author, "Growing Yourself Back Up"

Michael Green B.ED (Hons) Cantab, APMSAP, MACP, BCP Reg
London

very realistic for the idealistic.
not yet finished this book..only on chapter 5. but at this point i wwould like to write that this book is very powerful/good. i have never yet been moved to review an amazon purchase or suchlike on the web. i think i am a borderline and things are often very bad.
i have approached this book from a very hopeless place, but i think i am ready and this book was a real find for me.
not sure if this review will help anyone else because i have considered myself almost as helpless as a 'free' human being can be, but well i hope so. (see, 'hope' already).
it is only a book but if you are a sufferer and you are ready then read and understand and it could help you.
the exercises are a bit too serious/structured for me at the moment, but they could be useful.

Superb resource for understanding and healing borderline traits
As a qualified counsellor working in the addiction field, I think this book is an excellent resource. It is also very straightforward and positive in terms of achieving a healing outcome. It is the book I would give anyone who was in denial about whether or not they might have borderline traits or the full blown diagnosis of BPD to help them understand themselves better and why they feel as they do. Like all personality disorders BPD is on a continuum - a majority of addicts will display borderline traits for example! The book clearly explains the connection between childhood early abuse and neglect and the development of the following borderline issues - stress and emotional hypersensitivity, instability, over control, rage, abandonment fears, poor impulse control (ie addictive drives), lack of trust issues, feelings of emptiness, self punishing (because one was made to feel bad as a child so continues this by hurting oneself in various ways as an adult - ie addiction). There are reflective exercises to do at the end of each chapter to deepen awareness. Interspersed with the story of Simon which give a useful backdrop to the ideas covered. One criticism it completely omits the clarifying ideas of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) and Masha Linehans work which are a real cognitive insight into the behaviour patterns which manifest with this disorder. Check out her books on Amazon too! Highly recommended