Życie warte przeżycia

by Marsha M. Linehan

Autobiograficzna opowieść o zmaganiu się z depresją i o terapii dialektyczno-behawioralnej.
Autorka zaczyna swoją fascynującą opowieść od swojej młodości. Od momentu, kiedy w wieku osiemnastu lat zaczęła się zmieniać z żywej, cieszącej się popularnością osoby w dziewczynę ze skłonnościami samobójczymi. W szpitalu psychiatrycznym spędziłą ponad dwa lata. Wtedy przysięgła sobie, że jeśli uda jej się wydostać z tego piekła, to zrobi wszystko, by pomóc w tym innym. Chciała sprawić, by i ich udziałem stało się życie, które warto przeżyć. W latach osiemdziesiątych udało jej się opracować terapię dialektyczno-behawioralną, która jednocześnie obejmowała akceptację siebie i potrzebę zmian. Jej kluczowymi elementami stały się też uważność, a także różne życiowe umiejętności.
Mottem Linehan stało się powiedzenie: „Nie można poprzez myślenie nauczyć się nowych zachowań – to poprzez nowe zachowania można nauczyć się nowego myślenia”.
Autorka zachowała swoją niezwykłą duchowość. Jej historia spisana w książce „Życie warte przeżycia” jest również opowieścią o rozwoju wiary i wytrwaniu w wierze.

Genres: Psychology, Memoir, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Self Help, Biography, Audiobook

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 2020

About the author

Marsha Linehan, PhD, ABPP, is a Professor of Psychology and adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle and is Director of the Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics, a research consortium that develops and evaluates treatments for multi-diagnostic, severely disordered, and suicidal populations. Her primary research is in the application of behavioral models to suicidal behaviors, drug abuse, and borderline personality disorder. She is also working to develop effective models for transferring science-based treatments to the clinical community.
She is the developer of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), a treatment originally developed for the treatment of suicidal behaviors and since expanded to treatment of borderline personality disorder and other severe and complex mental disorders involving serious emotion dysregulation. In comparison to all other clinical interventions for suicidal behaviors, DBT is the only treatment that has been shown effective in multiple trials across numerous independent research studies. DBT is effective at reducing suicidal behavior and is cost-effective in comparison to both standard treatment and community treatments delivered by expert therapists. It is currently the gold-standard treatment for borderline personality disorder and has demonstrated utility in the treatment of high substance abuse and eating disorders.
Linehan has authored multiple books, including three treatment manuals: Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder, DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.), and Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. She serves on a number of editorial boards and has published extensively in scientific journals.
Linehan is the founder of The Linehan Institute, a non-profit organization which helps advance mental health through support for education, research, and compassionate, scientifically-based treatments. Linehan is also the founder of Behavioral Tech LLC, a DBT training and consulting organization, and founder of Behavioral Tech Research, Inc., a company that develops innovative online and mobile technologies to disseminate science-based behavioral treatments for mental disorders.
Linehan was trained in spiritual directions under Gerald May and Tilden Edwards and is a Zen master (Roshi) in both the Sanbo-Kyodan-School under Willigis Jaeger Roshi (Germany) as well as in the Diamond Sangha (USA). She teaches mindfulness via workshops and retreats for health care providers.
She has dedicated her life and research to working with people whose lives are at-risk due to crippling and incapacitating psychological problems.

Reviews

[Jaidee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 "liberating, contextual, only partially illuminating" stars !!

Most(est) Disappointing Read of 2021 Award

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Random House for an ecopy. I am providing an honest review.
This was released in January 2020.

I want to start off by not talking about the book. I want to acknowledge Dr. Linehan and her treatment methods.

Five Stars
....to Marsha herself for performing opposite action and battling unjustified shame and coming clean with her own experiences of living with Borderline Personality Disorder (even though this book is highly guarded and only partially complete)
....to Marsha for being a truly excellent teacher and therapist ( I have witnessed her in action doing both)
....for providing therapists an anchor to deal with an extremely challenging and suffering population namely those with Borderline Personality, chronic suicidality and self-harm behaviors
....for being an excellent Stage 1 treament for clients with Historical Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Now to the book:

As interesting as I found this book I did not find it well written. I found that much of it was repetitive and her constant pushing of DBT principles distances the reader of who she is as a person rather than her roles as researcher, therapist or Zen master. I also found (quite) surprising the high number of psychological blind spots that she still carries. There is also lots of humblebragging and false modesty here. I also found that she censored a great deal with regards to emotions experienced and relationship issues (were not explored to any great depth.) The book appears hurried and only partially revealing and truthful.

Dr. Linehan's life experiences, research achievements and spiritual development are extraordinary.
The book itself was not.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I consider this memoir such a courageous accomplishment from a well-known clinician scientist in the field of Psychology. For those unfamiliar, Marsha Linehan pioneered Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a treatment designed to help those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) as well as suicidality, which has been applied to various other mental illnesses like substance use and disordered eating. In Building a Life Worth Living, she shares about her own experience with BPD and suicidality and thus fights the stigma that runs rampant in academic psychology against those with mental health issues. I felt so moved by her spiritual healing process and her dedication to helping others suffering from severe mental illness. I also appreciated her honesty about her academic experiences, such as the bias she faced from psychoanalytic folks as well as the sexism she fought during her journey to develop DBT.

Part of me wanted her to take a bit of a stronger anti-stigma stance, though perhaps she already did her part by sharing her experience. I intend the commentary in this paragraph less as a critique of this memoir than as a general statement: you shouldn’t have to be a tenured professor at the end of your career (not to mention that she’s white) to be able to be open about your experiences with mental illness. As someone who’s faced mental health issues and is a scientist and a clinician, I’m thankful to Marsha for her sharing, because she shows that struggling with mental health doesn’t make you unfit for research or practice – rather, it can enhance your empathy and your understanding of what you study, especially if you’re self-aware and work through your issues. I hope that the field practices enhanced compassion and eliminates stigma for those who faced or face mental illness, and not just for successful white scholars either.

Back to the memoir, I noticed a strong single-mindedness in relation to DBT which I think may help explain some other reviewers’ more lukewarm feelings. I personally did not mind how much Marsha tied everything back to DBT because I love DBT and find it so helpful both for myself and my clinical work. However, I think other aspects of this memoir could have benefitted from even a bit more development, instead of focusing on DBT so intensely. For example, when she writes about some of her stressors in early childhood, I recognized several gendered components such as desiring thinness and pressure to have a male romantic partner, yet these sociocultural factors did not receive much additional thought or attention. Another example includes when Marsha tells one of her students to not mention their experience with mental illness in an application, which unfortunately makes sense within the stigma-ridden academic system we exist in. However, I wish she had taken a step back and commented on this interaction further. From a behavioral perspective I can see why Marsha dedicates so much to DBT given the immense positive reinforcement she’s received from its development overall, and at the same time I wanted a bit more development from other areas (e.g., social justice issues) as well.

Recommended for those who are interested in mental health, emotion regulation/dysregulation, and/or clinical science! For those who are looking for more of a traditional memoir, just come in ready to learn a lot about DBT itself.

[Delany · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a fine autobiography of and by Marsha Linehan, one of my personal heroes in the field of psychology/psychotherapy. I’m a psychologist who once worked with patients diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (and I grew up with a mother with BPD), so I have much experience with the suffering that these individuals live with and, often, inflict on others.

Marsha survived the kind of descent into hell that is characteristic of these patients, but/and she found her way out and vowed to use her life to help bring others out of that same hell. And she fulfilled her vow with the development of the first truly effective therapeutic method for these patients. The components of the interventions she uses are designed to allow the patients to build for themselves, with the help of a well-trained therapist, a life worth living. Research clearly indicates that her method works.

The only “downer” in this story is something Marsha did not directly address, which is the fact that traditional PhD and MD training is not adequate to produce psychotherapists who are competent to use this type of therapy (the same is true for master’s level therapists). There is a HUGE disconnect in our nation between the enormous need for competent psychotherapists, and the institutions that actually provide the training and do the licensing. The truth is that most psychotherapists of all disciplines graduate and get licensed without ever having received the kind of training and supervision that is required to produce a competent therapist. And few people talk about it; personally, I did my best to address this while I was teaching at a small university with a master’s degree program in counseling; my efforts were not welcomed with open arms. The prevailing view in those institutions is that the old form of training was good enough.

[Ruth Gibian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marsha Linehan single-handedly changed how psychotherapy approached people with traits known as "borderline," a group of people considered not likely to benefit from therapy. In the 1990s she brought in an approach that combined cognitive-behavioral therapy, feminism, and mindfulness practice. I got trained in this approach and loved it - I loved how usable the skills were, how it broke down the separation between "us" and "them" (as many of "us" therapists began integrating these skills into our lives as well), and I loved how many clients were benefitting. So of course I wanted to love Linehan's memoir, in which she was to talk about her own experience with "emotional hell," institutionalization, and therapies that did not work. Unfortunately, the book does not deliver. I abandoned the book fifty pages in, because already by then, it was repetitive, poorly written, not at all engaging nor gripping, and more or less an infomercial for Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, the quite wonderful therapy she created. Leave the book but learn about the therapy; that's my takeaway.

[Paige Pagnotta · Rating 1 out of 5]

I rarely leave such negative reviews but after finishing this book and seeing everyone raving about it, I feel like expressing my opinion on Marsha’s “memoir” (if you can call it that...).

I’m very familiar with dbt- I’ve been through multiple dbt focused programs myself & have found it relatively helpful, and have also taught dbt skills to clients at work. So I was excited to read this and learn more about its creator! Wow, was I disappointed... I found this book to be extremely poorly executed. It was disorganized and felt very detached and cold. Her story did not feel cohesive at all and the constant jumping around between several decades gave me whiplash. The majority of her anecdotes appeared to have zero point to them or did not relate to the rest of the chapter. I was also shocked at how poor the writing itself was. I read through to the end because I held out hope that it would get better, but it never did. I’m really surprised and curious about all of the high ratings....did we even read the same book??

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have tremendous respect for Dr. Linehan and for her contributions to psychiatry and the treatment of BPD, but this book is kind of terrible. Linehan may be brilliant, but she isn't a writer. This "memoir" is, unfortunately, a bit of a hot mess. Random anecdotes often end up straightforward, textbook-explanations of key DBT concepts...like a copy-paste from the DBT skills training manual. I don't know what I was expecting here...it is what it is, I guess. I did walk away with a little more understanding of the therapist's perspective and approach to DBT treatment...but this isn't a book I will be recommending to, well, anyone.

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m grateful to Marsha for giving us DBT and proud of what she overcame to deliver it.

So I was excited to read her memoir but this book was quite disappointing.

She’s a really poor writer. This memoir felt very disjointed and fragmented. She often ended sections without elaborating on the experience or the words she was quoting. Then jumped to a new topic. Large sections of her chapters were just verbatim quotes from people in her life whom she would quote in full but not elaborate on afterwards. Other chapters had large sections of very technical descriptions about the research process without including any of her own personal or emotional reactions.

She also spoke of other types of therapy disparagingly (e.g. saying that psychodynamic therapy doesn’t change anything) but humble brags about her own methods.

What was most frustrating was that it seemed like all of her greatest turning points or breakthroughs in her life were some sort of random mystical or religious experience that had nothing to do with therapy. For example, she suddenly one day just decided to make a vow to God to help others out of hell, and that was what made her snap out of her suicidality. Or one day she just randomly shouted to herself that she loved herself for no reason. She would describe them without anything leading up to these events and no explanation as to why they happened. As someone living with BPD, these experiences are highly unrelatable and also make me wonder whether recovery simply comes down to random mystical experiences.

Tl;dr: As someone living with BPD, I did not find it helpful or inspiring at all to read Marsha’s story. Her breakthrough moments were all random mystical/religious experiences that had nothing to do with DBT.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a psychologist and DBT practitioner, but also a great memoir fan, I give this book a resounding 5++ stars! Marsha’s story in beyond inspirational and I am floored at how she was able to integrate her meaningful life experiences into a scientifically effective treatment. Her story gives me hope and will help me to instill hope in the clients I treat. No one else could’ve created this therapy. We are lucky to have Marsha.

[Suz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review contains themes of suicide and suicidal ideation. The treatment designed by the author was created to keep people alive. She succeeded.

Marsha (yes, I think everyone calls her by her first name) is such a unique lady. I even know the sound of her voice, and what she looks like. She has fabulous YouTube clips, some small, some large, and I also have seen her in action lecturing and speaking with academics and students online, because, lucky for me, I work in an academic library.

She is a great therapist, listener, mentor, researcher, academic, Ph.D. recipient, and she has lived experience. She is funny, self-deprecating. Even irreverent at times. She vowed to learn about her condition as a teen, and fight to make sure others would not go through her version of ‘hell’. She was institutionalised before her twenties; doctors did not know what to do with her. She was branded as the most untreatable, misunderstood patient ever to be admitted to the Institute of Living, with the hospitalisation not benefiting her at all. Sitting in seclusion at very long stretches, knowing she was not mad.

She has brushes with death and reached the annals of despair countless times.

Her journey in this book is covered quite thoroughly and her story delivered in conversational tone. It was easy reading, which was helpful given some tough content. Often, she would refer to others experiences to tell parts of the process, such as ‘I will let him explain’, so then, her opinion from others was also there for us to see. Often quirky folk can’t describe themselves, but by the end I got to know her very well.

Marcia lived with Borderline Personality disorder, and at the end of her career she addressed an audience of friends, relative, peers and students of her life’s journey and work. She was often advised not to speak of her incarceration, but to come full circle, she attended the institution where she started off her descent into hell to deliver her speech, entitled ‘The personal story of the development of DBT’. This was a culmination of a lifetime of such hard work, knockbacks (so many in the field of psychiatry thought she had nothing to offer in terms of her treatment methods), trial and error and countless clinical trials and studies. She was a visionary and could prove her methods in trials and in face to face settings, having rapid fire and easy answers when questioned on the spot. She would hound academics, heads of department, publications to publish her work. She had to be tireless in this as she was a breakthrough at a time where treatment for these individuals was completely lacking.

She also goes into great depth of her Zen story, where she learns one of the most important aspects of her life’s work – Dialectical Behaviour Therapy – which is that of mindfulness. This, she knew, would be questioned by many, and I also had trouble with this as I am not spiritual, but it is proven to work as an important aspect of the therapy. This is the sort of thinking, as said by Nhất Hạnh Thích -
To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.

It is used worldwide. I loved that her famous DBT workbook was published the day before her 50th birthday, just as she dreamed.

If you’re a tulip, don’t try to be a rose. Go find a tulip garden.

..my clients are tulips, and they’re trying to be roses, it doesn’t work. They drive themselves to crazy tyring, I recognize that some people don’t have the skills to plant the garden they need. But everybody can learn how to garden.

I don’t know of any other treatment that is so aligned with the person who developed it as DBT is with me.

One of the confronting criteria is that of self-harm and suicide/suicidal ideation in Borderline individuals, and so many people suffer are severely this way inclined. Marsha also lived through this. She not only got through it but learned how to help people in person and over the phone that are in this crisis. She would sit down and listen and remind those most troubled in the world that their life is most certainly, A life worth living.

This book is not for everyone. It is an interesting condition and one that clinicians and health care workers certainly struggle to deal with, especially at the human level. There were times she mentioned it best not to disclose that you are a borderline individual (she was given that advice and has given that advice). Marsha advises that DBT practitioners often burn out after a couple of years and will not conduct the therapy for longer than this.

The writing at times is meandering, but I liked this, and I knew it suited Marsha down to the ground. How can I even say this? It is because she tells her truth and I understand.

[Carrie Poppy · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone interested in the history of clinical psychology and especially DBT, this is a very interesting read. I would also think it would be a useful read to people with suicidal depression and/or BPD (the author recovered from both and developed the most evidence based treatments). The writing is a bit clunky at times, but it is astonishingly earnest. Relies a bit on religious concepts, but you can ignore that and still get much out of it.

[Imogen]

I stan Marsha

[Suad Alhalwachi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is amazing, albeit long and a bit distracting as well as being a mixup between a memoir and a scientific discovery, at times I was thinking that the writer could have written two books, I mean one on each. The memoir would have let us pour our tears out and the other would let us understand fully the DBT. At the end though I realized what she was doing by mixing the two. It showed everyone that one can be depressed and suicidal and can snap out of it and become a legend. Hooray to that.

Excerpts:

“Believe, whether you believe or not. I tell them that it may be difficult to believe, but believe you must. You can do it.”

“Kafkaesque nightmare”

“Mother Teresa had a beautiful phrase that captures some of this: “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

“If you’re a tulip, don’t try to be a rose. Go find a tulip garden.”

“And, for once, I was going to fit in. Little fish in a big pond”

“DEAR MAN stands for “describe, express, assert, reinforce, (stay) mindful, appear confident, negotiate.”

“It is also the equivalent of Aristotle’s notion that acting virtuous will make you virtuous.”

“learning how to tolerate and accept distress is part of that general change toward self-improvement.”

“They are: temperature manipulation, intense exercise, paced breathing, and paired muscle relaxation. (Okay, so there are two P skills, which doesn’t quite fit the acronym.) The goal of TIP skills is to change body chemistry”

“The first time you practice contemplation, you’ll only experience a darkness, like a cloud of unknowing,” writes the anonymous author of the book by that name, The Cloud of Unknowing”

“You could say it is throwing yourself into the will of God, or into acceptance of the causal factors of the universe. It is giving up tantrums. “Willingness,” says Gerald May, “is saying yes to the mystery of being alive in each moment.”

“At home, I put on “I Am Woman,” by Helen Reddy, a favorite call to arms:

You can bend but never break me
Cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
Cause you’ve deepened the conviction in my soul.”

“These are the STOP skills:
Stop the urge to act immediately.
Take a step back and detach from the situation.”
Observe, so you can gather information on what is happening.
Proceed mindfully, by evaluating the most effective option to take, given the goals, and finally following that option.”

“CLIENT: My life is so horrible. I am so miserable. I just want to be dead, to escape all this pain!
THERAPIST: You know, there is absolutely no evidence that you will feel better when you are dead. Why take the risk?”

“In the dialectical worldview, because everything is connected, blame is taken out of the picture. Because everything is connected, everything is caused. From the non-dialectical point of view, A is blamed on B—a one-way street. In the transactional dialectical world, A influences B and B influences A, back and forth, back and forth. (Transaction was a new idea in psychology when I developed DBT.)”

“It’s knowing that maybe I will have depression or sadness, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t pleasurable things in my life, or that it won’t end. “This too shall pass”: that was a very important lesson that DBT taught me.”

“The many things are numberless, I vow to save them.”

“Greed, hatred, and ignorance rise endlessly,
I vow to abandon them.
The gates of learning are countless,
I vow to wake to them.
The pathless path is unsurpassed,
I vow to embody it fully.

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.”

“Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness….Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.”


I must read for all. From suicide to post doctorate and an author.

[Melike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marsha Linehan is the developer of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) which is a highly effective theraputic treatment for borderline personality disorder as well as other disorders like eating and substance abuse. When I found out recently that Linehan herself was highly suicidal when she was a teenager and was hospitalized in a psychiatric institution, I was intrigued and knew that I wanted to know more about her life. Reading her memoir I discovered that she made a promise to herself and God that she would help others stuck in hell when she got out of that awful hospital. That is precisely what she ends up doing. She lays out her journey to achieve that in her memoir. While at times the writing was disjointed, I didn't mind to so much. I was able to understand a lot about her. Her faith journey was also fascinating to me. She was raised Roman Catholic and she had a strong relationship with God. Through Catholic mysticism she eventually discovered mindfulness and studied under a Catholic priest who was also a Zen master. She incorporated mindfulness into DBT at a time when mindfulness was seen as a new age teaching and wasn't taken seriously. As such she was well ahead of her time. It was a very interesting read for me and I am glad I purchased the book on my kindle.

[Laura Davenport · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely terrible. You can appreciate the empire she built as long as you don’t read the book.

[Kimberly Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir shows the beauty and power of the wounded healer. Not only did she use her pain to singlehandedly advance mental health treatment, but she bravely risked all of that to inspire others through this same story. I was especially moved by the parts about her spiritual path. The quote, “I eventually learned that when it comes to spirituality, the more you actively want it, the less likely it is to happen. You have to throw yourself into your life as it is, and be open to whatever might be” or said another way in the book, “You can’t think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking”. Great Book!

[Phoebe · Rating 2 out of 5]

The multiple famous people extolling this book on the back jacket clearly did not read the book. Marsha Linehan is a genius and her DBT has helped thousands of people live lives “worth living,” but this book is not well written and sheds little light on her life (especially if you are already familiar with DBT). Instead, it reads like a series of disconnected episodes, mostly from her professional life and her (admittedly impressive) accomplishments, with very little in the way of personal reflections offered on these episodes. I did not feel like I got to know her much at all through this book—a real disappointment.

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

A perfect book to be published in January. I remember the first time I heard Borderline Personality Disorder was from the movie, "Girl Interrupted" and I thought to myself that sounds like me. And I think when that book and movie came out I was still in high school. Well last year I heard the phrase again when a psychiatrist diagnosed me with Borderline Personality Disorder on top of my depression and anxiety. I was fortunate enough to attend a program that used Marsha's development of DBT therapy and I have continued using the same therapy today.

I thought her memoir was touching and she gave a clear concrete examples of how her suffering and thinking led her to help others and create DBT. I think at times she lost me when she switched from her narrative to explaining DBT and this crossed between memoir and self-help. Very inspiring and I highly recommend.

[Zanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm was surprised and kind of jarred by the fact that Marsha Linehan uses stigmatizing and outdated language such as "committed," and "completed" suicide in 2020. Mental health advocates for a long time has been advocating for a change to the term "died by suicide" to combat the stigma around suicide and I sort of assumed that Marsha would know this given the population she works with. To have Marsha, a distinguished professional and expert in the field, perpetuating the stigmatizing language is damaging to the population she wants so passionately to help. It is also disconcerting that there are other therapists who have reviewed the book as great and have not pointed this out as problematic. In short, if you can get over the stigmatizing language the book is okay.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book is a treat. I rarely buy books, and as soon as I learned she was releasing a memoir, I pre-ordered and had to wait. I am not disappointed. Maybe it's already obvious, I am a huge fan of Linehan and her therapy teachings, I imagine most people who pick up this book will be. This book is really well constructed, edited and her sense of humor comes out. I have truly enjoyed learning more about Marsha the the origins of DBT.

[Bethany Vaughn · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a teen, Marsha Linehan experienced suicidal ideation and was sent to an institution for the mentally unwell. Toward the end of her time there, she made a vow to God that once she got herself out of hell, she would do everything she could to get others out, too. DBT (dialectical behavior therapy), is what Marsha created as her best effort to keep her vow and help patients with suicidal behavior. She is so intelligent and dedicated to helping others! I thought this book has such a powerful viewpoint. It was very interesting to read of a therapist who has suffered from the same challenges that her patients are experiencing. This book is great for fans of psychology or memoir.
Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for gifting me this book in exchange for my honest review.

[J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s certainly a decent book, but it likely will not interest anyone who doesn’t already have an interest in the founder of dialectical behavior therapy. The writing is pleasant enough, but the disorganized hops across time muddle the clarity of the story’s chronology. Linehan’s life is remarkable even as her gaps in memory leave us with more questions than answers about some of the early events in her life. Overall, I’d recommend this for anyone who has a prior interest in Linehan, but it is unlikely to inspire or enlighten those who have never even heard of DBT.

[Rileigh Ard · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to use DBT skills to get myself through this book.

Am I allowed to harshly rate a memoir? I don’t know. I’m gonna do it anyways though.

Before I get into the harsh stuff I want to say Marsha went through a lot. She went from inpatient to doctorate and created a therapy modality. She has accomplished amazing things in her life. With that being said…

Warning. Harsh words ahead:

To say this book was disorienting and confusing is a vast understatement. This was awful. Like truly an awful read. (With the exception of the radical acceptance chapter.) This book gave me icky feelings. The author attempts to talk about her life story and how the creation of DBT came about; she fails miserably. Instead, the reader sits in a state of complete confusion for hours while trying to make sense of the jumble of words and contradictions that is this book. A book that is allegedly, mind you, supposed to lead them into “Building a Life Worth Living” or at least understanding how the author did that herself. Spoiler alert: You never do figure out how to build one or if she ever learned the schematics herself.

The way she “transitions”- and I use that word very loosely- into different parts of her life are so jarring I thought my audiobook skipped parts of the story. It’s so disorganized and non-cohesive I’m not even sure what I read. She never elaborated on any kind of story or feeling she described or the quotes she added from people in her life. It was like her entire story was bullet points. Her “breakthrough” moments that supposedly lead to DBT were all random mystical/religious experiences that had no relation to DBT. She, unsurprisingly, never made the connection. Or if she did it wasn’t clear to anyone but her. Because nothing in this godforsaken book that had me mentally going insane is ever connected, expounded upon, or clear.

About that topic- she talks nonstop about God. It was incredibly frustrating to read through all the mental gymnastics she did throughout her life to hold on to that belief even after it was very clearly harming her. Then one day she just decides- for God, mind you- to become better and stop having mental health issues. I’m sorry- what? And then boom, all of a sudden we arrive at the creation of DBT. All the while having no more mental health issues apparently. Or wait, maybe we did. Or wait, maybe we didn’t. I don’t honestly know because this story is all over the place, with so much tangential speech I’m not sure it would have passed a mental health exam. How did this get published? She mentioned in the book she couldn’t write- boy she wasn’t kidding.

What’s even more concerning is that this woman created a therapy modality that is supposedly centered around understanding and accepting your difficult feelings. I have no idea how she got to that conclusion, because all this book has talked about is her denying and shutting down her emotions, feelings, true self time and time again in the name of God and Zen, therefore further dysregulating herself. So actually, maybe some higher being was involved because it’s a miracle DBT was created from the brain of this woman. She did work very hard on her research and creation of this modality, and I did want to acknowledge the hard work and tenacity she put into paving a slightly different way for treatment in a male dominated profession at the time. I have no issues with that side- the details of her research portion of the book and treatment findings near the end was blessedly clear (such a relief after trudging through the beginning and middle of the book).

Additionally, there are many contradictions in the book that make no sense. For example, she talks about how DBT skills will “enhance your connectedness to yourself” as they are centered around “zen.” However, at the monastery, she had to ignore what she wanted to do (listening to herself and her body) to go do what she “should” do. Shoulding ourselves dysregulates our nervous system. Maybe thats why she’s constantly talking throughout the book how removed from herself she is- “but I was struggling mightily with where I was going and with what was expected of me in life (Mind you, this was after she created DBT and found zen and wanted to devote her life to it).” A “should” she should be doing based on God’s will. How in the hell are you going to connect with yourself more and heal yourself if you’re constantly putting off helping yourself in the name of god?

In fact, let’s keep talking about Zen here because one of the most excruciating and confusing parts for me was her saying “I loved zen!!!” She says how helpful zen is and then the VERY NEXT SENTENCE talks about how miserable, depressed, and lost she was at the END of her treatment that she was supposedly going to give up her entire life for. It just never adds up. You have someone who constantly says that you have everything inside yourself to heal yourself- Marsha and her DBT premise- yet cannot self reflect for the life of her and figure out (perhaps even to this day) that she is CONSTANTLY looking for outside validation- constantly looking for God to make her feel better. It is truly confusing.

She constantly talks about how amazing she is all throughout her life. She’s amazing, a zen master, the best zen student, a teenager who thought outside the box, who was amazing, who was just the best, etc. Like my eyes were hurting from all the eye rolling I was doing.

I’m not a fan of Taylor swift per se, but her song “anti-hero” has a line in it that says “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism” and that’s what popped into my head halfway through this book. Covert narcissism disguising itself as a hero helping others. Yes. I know that’s a strong statement. I stand by it because that’s how frustrated this book made me. Or maybe it didn’t. Or maybe it did. I don’t know anymore. Maybe it’s time to go do some DBT skills.

TL;DR: I hated this book. It made me irrationally angry.

I will now go and attempt to build a life worth living by using a toothbrush, a rock, and a piece of lint. (Which are actually much more useful items as opposed to what this book had to offer me.)

[Gregory Eakins · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought that a book by the creator of dialectical behavior therapy would be packed full of insights and information about the therapy and its applications. Instead, Marsha has presented a poorly-written, informationally sparse, commercial for DBT.

Every page of this book is a disorganized mess. Most of it is written as an autobiography, telling the story of her recovery. She manages to cram her narration full of incessant plugs for DBT and herself. She has constant quotes and testimonies about how awesome she is. Here is just one of the dozens of affirmations of Marsha's amazing character:

Marsha was a very intense person,” Gus said recently, stating the obvious to anyone who has met me. “She was very vocal. Extremely smart, very quick, and not reluctant to give her opinion and to say when things didn’t make sense or weren’t supported by logic or data."

So that's great and all, but I'm not looking to hire you. She does the same for DBT and sells it like it's the greatest idea ever conceived.

One of the worst themes packed into this mess is her "coming out" about being a troubled child. It's drawn out over the entire length of the book, and she won't stop mentioning things about how many people are going to be in the crowd or other comments on how big a deal this is. Nobody cares, Marsha. This is 2020. Everyone has mental health problems.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This woman's treatment saved my life, and now I saw into hers

Marsha Linehan is such an amazing person. I had known a little bit of her story before reading this book, like the fact she had been in a psychiatric hospital as a young adult. However, I wasn't prepared to experience as much suffering. Marsha truly "paid her dues" as a person who suffers from mental illness. As I read on about how she came about the skills for DBT, it was so organic to her life, it was poetry. I am a person who suffers from mental illness. I was on my way to a degree in psychology and then several life stressors uprooted my life. I have gone through DBT, and Marsha has been my hero ever since.

[Izaskowronska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uważam, że jest to książka, którą powinno się czytać przed zetknięciem się z wątkiem samobójstwa w ramach fikcji. Daje potrzebną podstawę teoretyczną i wiedzę.

Ponad wszystko cenię tę książkę za to, że pokazuje *proces* powstawania teorii psychologicznej. Najczęściej spotykamy się już z produktem gotowym (który nierzadko jest pozbawiony człowieczeństwa) - tu na kilkuset stronach czytamy o porażkach, odrzuceniu, trudnych wyborach, szukaniu prawdy po omacku. Marsha, która odniosła sukces w świecie psychologii - bezwzględnie obnaża całą niepewność w jakiej poruszała się w swoim życiu. Potrzebujemy więcej takich historii - nie historii sukcesu, a historii porażek, które prowadzą do dobra.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir will mostly appeal to clinicians and those interested in dialectical behavior therapy, as it's not just the story of Marsha Linehan but also the story of the therapy she created. So if you don't fall under these categories, you might not love this book. I happen to be a therapist, however, and I ate it up. Linehan is a truly heroic figure, someone who encountered enormous obstacles, including her own mental health problems, and yet never gave up and went on to pioneer an unorthodox and revolutionary treatment for some of therapy's most difficult-to-treat patients.

[Yousif Al Zeera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marsha is a psychologist who developed a new psychotherapy (called ‘Dialectical Behavior Therapy’ or known as “DBT”), an evidence-based therapy that combines cognitive restructuring with acceptance, mindfulness, and shaping.

The book is her memoir, from the days she struggled herself with suicidal behavior and mental illness that was not diagnosed at the time (which she now believes was ‘borderline personality disorder’) and her journey to overcome these challenges and later becoming a prominent psychologist herself. Her rise culminated in the development of a new revolutionary therapy, thanks partly to the time she spent learning and practicing spiritual Zen teachings in different countries.

[Upasna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marsha Linehan is a major figure in Psychiatry and an inspiration and this review is in no way a review of her life or her work, DBT. As a memoir, this was often boring to read. Many times I felt like I was reading a self help book. As someone whose outlook on life is completely different, it was a chore for me to read about her spiritual beliefs (Catholicism and Zen). As other reviewers have pointed out, I often lost track of which decade of her life I was reading about. Her single minded focus on working with suicide and the fact that she spent so much time in research before dealing with patients was really impressive. When she met with a council to obtain a grant for her therapy for suicidal patients, she was asked whether her therapy was meant for borderline patients. At that time, she had no idea what borderline meant. This was amusing for me as now her name is the first name that comes up when one thinks of treating borderline patients. Another interesting titbit was her meeting Otto Kernberg and her experience in his clinic. This was an interesting look at how DBT came to be and I wished I could have read more about her experiences with patients, however, large parts of the book were too dull for me to read.

[Celine Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very moving memoir from the founder of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), one of the most clinically effective treatments for highly suicidal patients and people diagnosed with BPD. DBT is quite interesting as a treatment—it was one of the earlier Western psychotherapeutic modes to incorporate Zen Buddhist ideas, such as mindfulness.

I’m quite critical of overly behaviourist therapeutic practices (cognitive behavioural therapy/CBT being the main offender), so DBT is also interesting because it synthesizes behavioral tactics with the more traditionally psychoanalytic attention to the relationship between therapist/client, and how a genuinely positive, trusting relationship is necessary for the patient’s wellbeing.

Also relevant (and sadly LACKING in today’s culture imo!) is DBT’s approach to client autonomy and skill:

DBT puts heavy emphasis on treating clients as equals and not viewing them as somehow damaged goods who need to be coddled—what I call fragilizing them.

[Susan Jackson · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s hard to write a memoir when you can’t remember several crucial years of your life that led to the development of the groundbreaking DBT therapy. While I’ can certainly understand why her memory of those traumatic times is not there it leaves me with so many questions and no real understanding of how a popular promising student ended up completely psychotic in seclusion rooms, in and out of psych hospitals for years.

The best part of the book for me is the title, as building a life worth living I think is a admirable goal for anyone struggling with severe depression and suicidal ideation. I also appreciated learning more about DBT. But I agree with others, this was choppy and not well written, the constant references to religion were also a turn off for me