Stop walking on eggshells -Book Review

This is a great book for teaching to defuse anger, giving BPD-Specific communication skills, tips on asserting your needs with confidence and clarity and resolving special issues. I highly recommend that you read with a pencil (I hate pen in books), a highlighter and post it tabs so you can easily reference as you grow on your path to a better life!

One of the many tips brought me back to this classic book; The Four Agreements; a Toltic wisdom book. Each of the four agreements are powerful and wonderful to live by. The second agreement reads: Don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering. The BP’s behavior is no more personal than the burden of caring for a terminally ill family member is a personal attack.

It is important to take care of yourself; to detach from the BP with love when appropriate. I like that once again I came across comparing the treatment of the BP as a person suffering from alcoholism. In Al-Anon, a support group for the non-alcoholic family members, a number of important skills are taught to help prevent you from enabling the inappropriate behavior, while giving you coping skills. You learn not only that you are not responsible for the BP’s illness, but you are not responsible for the recovery of it.

This book gives you many suggestions on how to make the necessary changes within yourself. A point I believe that is especially important to understand is that avoidance is an action taken. Here is an excerpt (bolding is mine):

“Every day, we teach people how to treat us by showing them what we will and won’t accept, what we refuse to confront, and what we let slide. We may believe that we can make another person’s troublesome behavior disappear if we don’t make a fuss. But the message we send is “It worked. Do it again.””

The book talks about the way scientists have trained rats to push a lever for food. When they give the food intermittently, that is not the same number of pushes each time, they will push it as many times as needed until the food comes.
Remember, when you occasionally cave in your boundaries, you are teaching the BP to continue to push your buttons until they hit the one that makes you cave. The first time could be button number the three and the next one could be button 99.

Setting limits with the BP is crucial not just for your own mental health but when you don’t, you are making every situation worse. When you accept responsibility for the BP’s feeling or behavior’s, or practice avoidance, then they don’t have to be accountable. If a BP is not accountable for their feelings and behaviors, they will never have the chance to learn how it affects others. In essence they are robbed of the chance to choose to change and get better.