Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship
Written by Christine Ann Lawson
Narrated by Heather Auden
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Four character profiles describe different symptom clusters that include the waif mother, the hermit mother, the queen mother, and the witch. Children of borderlines are at risk for developing this complex and devastating personality disorder themselves. Dr. Lawson's recommendations for prevention include empathic understanding of the borderline mother and early intervention with her children to ground them in reality.
Addressing the adult children of borderlines and the therapists who work with them, Dr. Lawson shows how to care for the waif without rescuing her, to attend to the hermit without feeding her fear, to love the queen without becoming her subject, and to live with the witch without becoming her victim.
Related to Understanding the Borderline Mother
Related audiobooks
Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in their Struggle for Self Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recovering from Narcissistic Mothers: A Daughter's Guide Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Toxic Parents Survival Guide: Recognizing, Understanding, and Freeing Yourself from These Difficult Relationships Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond Borderline: True Stories of Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Emotionally Absent Mother: A Guide to Self-Healing and Getting the Love You Missed Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Dad Hurts Mom: Helping Your Children Heal the Wounds of Witnessing Abuse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don't Get Along Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Living With Someone Who's Living With Bipolar Disorder: A Practical Guide for Family, Friends, and Coworkers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Will the Drama Ever End?: Untangling and Healing from the Harmful Effects of Parental Narcissism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Psychology For You
It Starts with Self-Compassion: A Practical Road Map Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 48 Laws of Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You’re Not the Only One F*cking Up: Breaking the Endless Cycle of Dating Mistakes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sociopath: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How To Win Friends And Influence People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Seduction: An Indispensible Primer on the Ultimate Form of Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Banish Your Inner Critic: Silence the Voice of Self-Doubt to Unleash Your Creativity and Do Your Best Work Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5ADHD: A Hunter in a Farmer's World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed For You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Win Friends and Influence People: Updated For the Next Generation of Leaders Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5ADHD is Awesome: A Guide to (Mostly) Thriving with ADHD Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Create: Tools from Seriously Talented People to Unleash Your Creative Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Understanding the Borderline Mother
76 ratings13 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title incredibly healing, life-saving, and eye-opening. It provides great information and captures the confusing parts and stories of dealing with borderline personality disorder. The audiobook delivery is compelling, and it resonates deeply with readers. It is a gift that is highly recommended and cherished for its clarity and understanding.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely fantastic and from personal experience (with someone else's mother, not mine) this is completely on target. For anyone that has a borderline parent, this is a must-read.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If you are on fence whether to read it or not, just start reading it. I could not stop listening because it resonated with me deeply and it moved something deep inside me. It captured all the confusing parts and stories and put it all together so clearly that it feels like a relief that someone finally understands. It’s a gift that I will cherish for the rest of my life
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great information, and the reader of the audiobook does all sorts of great voices… I felt compelled to keep listening because her delivery was great!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Life saving book, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is considering reading it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is fantastically written and eye opening. I highly recommend it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I learned so much about myself as a mother, as well as my mother as a mother to me ... both waffes
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Incredibly healing! I felt seen, heard, validated, and understood for the first time, in a long time. My relationships with my borderline mom, and borderline sister are full of tumult. This book is like a lifesaver in the seas of confusion and fear; self-doubt and anxiety.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I wouldn't have picked up this book without being told "Holy crap, this is your mom." Who already has an idea of what borderline personality disorder is and how that can manifest in its various forms and then present in our mothers? Not me.
I've always known in some way that my mom is a basket of dysfunctions, a walking trail of tears, an emotional vampire, a bulldozer, a blackhole for attention, unstable, and a child but it's all lost in a nebulous abyss of "something is wrong with her. Why can't she just be a, b, and c and do x, y, and z for me? You know. Be normal." And the crux being, others DON'T see her extremely dysfunctional behavior because the borderline presents different faces to different people.
So, for anyone that feels somehow diminished, the parent, or more like crap in the presence of their mother or meets other people's mothers and finds themselves in shock because those ladies might as well be an alien race from another planet, this book is a must read.
The book doesn't set out to cast BPD mothers as villains but more as a validation of the child's experience who lived with such a mother.
The author, Lawson, breaks down borderline personality disorder into layman's speech in easily digestible parts and, though a highly educational and not necessarily a fun read, I wasn't overwhelmed.
The book starts off defining BPD and then we learn the why behind it...which I would think for any child of a BPD mother isn't a mystery at all, at least not for me.
The author then breaks the BPD mother down into four archetypes: The Hermit, The Waif, The Queen, and The Witch.
I'd say this is the part in the book where the rubber meets the road and the epiphanies are firing off with nearly every word because the examples are so crystal clear and line up with the behaviors of our moms. Seriously, I nearly ran out of ink highlighting the passages.
Each mom usually presents more strongly with one archetype and then also has a secondary. Along with their primary and secondary archetypes, characteristics from all four can be in play at different times while some never arise at all. She explains how Princess Di is as an example of "The Waif" on one end of the spectrum with Susan Smith and Joan Crawford as "The Witch" on the other.
Lawson also goes into the types of men these women marry, also archetypes, and how all of the parental archetypes in this BPD world impact their children, us. And, for the love of Pete, she mentions ways we can be aware so we don't pass BPD down to our own kids.
She ends the book with tips on how to have your mother in your life in a healthier way in present day. To be clear, this isn't a "fix your mom" book. This is a book about validating your experience, offering the child of a BPD ways of changing their OWN behavior to protect themselves when with their mothers...and that may even mean not having your mother in your life at all.
It may sound confusing but really the book offered me a deep understanding of the hows and whys of my own mother and gave me a way to talk about her and my experience. It's really an invaluable tool and one I'll continually refer to when I need it.4 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5MY DH came home to find me on the couch with two highlighters in my hand, one pink, one yellow and this book. He asked me what I was doing."Everything in yellow is my Mother, everything in pink is me. I'm terrified."This book explained alot to me, and allowed me to accept my mother for who she is and what she can never be.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If you work in the mental health field, have family members who struggle with mental illness, or just an interest in the damaged mind, this is a fascinating read. I found I could not put this book down and read it in a couple of days. I found it helped me in dealing with borderline personalities and placing boundaries, with time limits. This may be the much needed step, for children dealing with a very difficult parent. A very good understanding of how really difficult this disorder is to treat and to live with.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5"Understanding the Borderline Mother" by Christine Ann Lawson is an interesting book, but I felt that it focused far too much on the negative aspects (yes there are many) of the Borderline Personality. If you pick up this book, but didn't know anything about Borderline Personality Disorder you would probably think that people with the disorder are pure awful with no redeeming qualities. The book does have some good aspects and is compelling to read, but it seems too one-sided and lacks any understanding of any of the pain and suffering that might motivate the behavior of a person with this disorder. Borderlines are often difficult patients and difficult people to understand, but many times it seems they are completely misunderstood in therapeutic situations. This book does not really attempt to "understand" the Borderline, but does describe some of the behaviors that are often times seen.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely fantastic and from personal experience (with someone else's mother, not mine) this is completely on target. For anyone that has a borderline parent, this is a must-read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"Understanding the Borderline Mother" is a highly informative book for the outsider, and is helpful in understanding not only the borderline parent, but in understanding and helping her children as well. This book was very well organized, and very well researched.My personal experience with the book, however, was a sense I was the fly on the wall at my family reunion. I often found myself saying, "Oh, there's Grandma..." and "That explains my mother a lot." But the biggest surprise for me was the realization that my dad, not so much my mom, was a borderline... a big A-HA! for me. This should tell you that the book is a very accurate portrayal.I would reccommend this book for anyone who works with, psychologists, social workers, etc, or is an adult child of a borderline parent. For me, this book is a bit late, as my father passed away in 2004, but I found much of what the author reccommends the adult child do, I did long before he passed. But I did learn a lot about myself as well, including why I picked my name, "The Kool-Aid Mom", and why that has been a wonderfully helpful name for me, too!