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Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality
An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out", unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point. In recognizing her struggle with borderline personality disorder, Johnson is ultimately able to seek help, embarking on a soul-searching healing process. It's a path that is painful, difficult, and at times heart-wrenching, but ultimately makes her more able to love and coexist in healthy relationships.
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 3, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews
February 5, 2012
Breathtakingly gorgeous writing! This is my *other* favorite BPD memoir, and a must-read for LGBT folks battling the illness.
July 11, 2012
I really wanted to love this book. It's the first BPD memoir I read after my own diagnosis, but I have to say...I hated it. If I'd been in group with Merri Lisa Johnson, I'd have had to write a repair.
I realize that the prose was meant to reflect her mental state at the time of the events described. She has a lot of feelings!!! Her poor (former) partner. However, it made me understand why we people with BPD are so infuriating and exhausting to others at times. Which, I guess, was part of the point of writing the book.
I realize that the prose was meant to reflect her mental state at the time of the events described. She has a lot of feelings!!! Her poor (former) partner. However, it made me understand why we people with BPD are so infuriating and exhausting to others at times. Which, I guess, was part of the point of writing the book.
April 2, 2019
i love memoirs.
i love memoirs about insanity even more.
i dont think i shouldve read this book at this particular juncture in my life. but then again im not really sure when the right time wouldve been to do so.
right away, i want to let you know that if you have bpd, dont read this. it WILL trigger you. i think thats what a lot of us are looking for in these sorts of memoirs. but i dont recommend this at all to borderlines. it made me feel like shit. in a good way. i cant explain.
bad relationships, bad parents, bad choices. poetic trainwreck. except its not poetic, and the author is very much ashamed of that. but i get it. i do. she ruins lives, mostly her own, and then cites the literature for an explanation. asking the audience, is this okay? im going to keep going until you say no. then ill flinch and run and blame YOU because MY LIFE IS FALLING APART AND I CANT DO THIS ANYMORE WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME FEEL LIKE THIS
i relate. i get it.
five stars would not recommend to other crazy people
i love memoirs about insanity even more.
i dont think i shouldve read this book at this particular juncture in my life. but then again im not really sure when the right time wouldve been to do so.
right away, i want to let you know that if you have bpd, dont read this. it WILL trigger you. i think thats what a lot of us are looking for in these sorts of memoirs. but i dont recommend this at all to borderlines. it made me feel like shit. in a good way. i cant explain.
bad relationships, bad parents, bad choices. poetic trainwreck. except its not poetic, and the author is very much ashamed of that. but i get it. i do. she ruins lives, mostly her own, and then cites the literature for an explanation. asking the audience, is this okay? im going to keep going until you say no. then ill flinch and run and blame YOU because MY LIFE IS FALLING APART AND I CANT DO THIS ANYMORE WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME FEEL LIKE THIS
i relate. i get it.
five stars would not recommend to other crazy people
June 14, 2012
Merri Lisa Johnson's fabulous autobiographical Girl in Need of a Tourniquet (2010) was the beginning of my lapse. Since I met her at a conference at George Washington University, and I thought it possible that she might see my thoughts, I wanted to write something worthy. The result: Absolute avoidance. Which is a shame because this is a lovely, thoughtful, thought-provoking book. It details Johnson's emergence into borderline identity and explorarion of the meaning of "borderline personality disorder" and her own life as as they play out against that one another; it's so accessible that I challenge anyone to read it without doing a little diagnostic self-check; the reader is bound to identify in some respects. I also particularly like that it makes its own way generically, successfully resisting tragedy, heroism, and saccharine, my three least favorite disability flavors. It's deeply personal and involving, but it's also smart, laced with the kind of research and analytical thinking that puts me in mind of Oliver Sacks' essays (though I don't know that Lisa will thank me for the comparison).
September 26, 2015
I thought this BPD memoir would be a good way of looking at relationships and maybe give some incite and relative information as to why I have some of the problems I do with relationships but it fell wayyyyy short. The style of this book is written in a bizarre point form that when the author uses a line or 2 or 3 she is moving onto a different topic. She bounces around from idea to idea which is very much like the thought process of a person with BPD at certain times. 2 relevant pieces of information were the 3 categories from the Strange Situation and the 2 dimensional model of interpersonal style. Those I found, I could the information and relate it directly back to myself and see how I fit and where I belonged on the scale.
The book was very confusing to read, and was not a useful or helpful BPD memoir in my opinion.
The book was very confusing to read, and was not a useful or helpful BPD memoir in my opinion.
April 16, 2015
3.5 is closer to my opinion of this book. It's hard to judge a memoir but if I do I make my evaluations based on literary quality and interest (what else?) This book was very disturbing and heart-breaking--not an entertaining read-- but it was genuinely well-written and compelling. The inventive style that gets on a lot of readers' nerves (apparently) is bang-on for the chaos of the subject material. The form and matter is so well matched that I was not surprised to hear of the author's academic background in literature.
I wouldn't recommend this book to my fellow book-lovers unless the "mental health memoir" sub genre is fascinating to you or you have a deeper interest in Borderline Personality Disorder. I Found Girl in Need of a Tourniquet (the title comes from an Aimee Mann song) on Goodreads lists of the best books on BPD. Also worthy are: Get me Out of Here
by Rachel Reiland and Girl Interuppted
by Susanna Kaysen. The non-fiction books on the list are more practically helpful but the memoirs help in terms of empathy.
I wouldn't recommend this book to my fellow book-lovers unless the "mental health memoir" sub genre is fascinating to you or you have a deeper interest in Borderline Personality Disorder. I Found Girl in Need of a Tourniquet (the title comes from an Aimee Mann song) on Goodreads lists of the best books on BPD. Also worthy are: Get me Out of Here
by Rachel Reiland and Girl Interuppted
by Susanna Kaysen. The non-fiction books on the list are more practically helpful but the memoirs help in terms of empathy.
January 16, 2013
I wanted to love this book and to identify with it on a deep level. I wanted to see myself in the book. I didn't, which I guess is evidence of the extreme amount of variation within mental health issues. I couldn't see myself in the author's behaviour. But I could see myself in her emotions. This was an incredibly brave book to publish. Writing can be very cathartic but actually publishing something so deeply personal - Merri Lisa Johnson deserves a medal for her courage in exposing her struggles to the world. I hope that the book was part of a healing journey to continue and I also hope if nothing else it can show other BPD sufferers that they aren't alone.
February 11, 2014
A memoir of one woman's experience with borderline personality disorder - focused mostly on her affair with a woman named Emily. I found the prose compelling, but sometimes suffocating - it was "literary", but often shrouded facts and skipped over what seemed to be important information. A short, incomplete, but sometimes beautiful mess - memoirs aren't supposed to be guidebooks on how to live one's life, and it's important to show that people don't always get better. Sometimes there's just a tunnel without light. We all live with our emotional scarring, BPD is a tricky one, and something that sometimes even years of therapy cannot cure.
June 5, 2014
Girl in need of a Tourniquet is the personal memoirs of Merri Lisa Johnson, or Lisa as she refers to herself within the pages, and how she came to discover and live with having Borderline Personality Disorder.
It’s funny how getting a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder leads to an intense heavy duty research fest. Maybe it is something to do with the lack of support following the diagnosis, I don’t really know but I had always suspected I was not alone in running out and buying every book I can find about the condition after my diagnosis and this book contains so much evidence that this is a natural reaction that it is reassuring.
Lisa, starts her story in 1994 when she graduated from college and begins with relating to the emotions that she believes must have been experienced by Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes during the celebrity’s very public breakdown in which she burnt a house down.
Married at 19, divorced at 20 and then discovering that her sexual preference was actually as a lesbian before the ultimate revelation of Borderline Personality Disorder; Lisa takes us on a journey through her turbulent mind and life as she struggles to discover who she is, what she wants from life and ultimately to ‘recover’ from BPD. Juggling relationships, affairs, work and therapy the strength of character that the emotionally unstable borderline somehow manages to hold on to shines through as a roaring example of the high intelligence and functionality that we often hold up whilst masking the inner devastation of a dying soul – no wonder most people don’t notice we are broken if this is how we show ourselves in public!
So much of what she portrays can be related to your own distorted impressions of life (if you have BPD). Issues of attachment, splitting, emotional dysregulation, self-harm and dissociation are amongst the elements of BPD that Lisa brings to life in full colour.
From the very beginning the memoir is punctuated with quotes from other books about BPD and journals, songs and other interesting sources, a full bibliography of the sources is given at the end of the book – a great reference list for further reading often amiss in this kind of book. The use of quotations and lyrics was very helpful to me as I often have a habit of relating my feelings and emotions to song lyrics that seem to ‘say’ what I could not put into words for myself and in this book they seem to do a similar thing – giving voice to the things that would be difficult to articulate personally.
Even the layout of the book helps it become a reader friendly experience, plenty of white space, subtly different fonts to separate other thoughts and interjections from the main storyline and the use of slash like lines to break up sections within chapters. I found the book to be a quick and easy read with a fast flowing narrative.
The use of celebrity, media and literary portraits help you to identify with the reality of Lisa’s story and understand her thought processes and experiences in a vivid, exciting way.
Even the process of writing the book features as a symptom of her Borderline Personality as Lisa struggles to gain order over the words and make sense of what she is trying to say to us.
I would highly recommend this book to Borderlines and people who love, live with, work with or care for a Borderline in their lives, as it really does give a helpful insight into the chaotic workings of our minds.
In closing a few of my favourite lines and quotes from the book…
A Borderline suffers a kind of emotional haemophilia; she lacks the clotting mechanism needed to moderate her spurts of feeling. Stimulate a passion, and the borderline emotionally bleeds to death ~ source: Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus, I hate You, Don’t Leave Me: Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder.
I make up for being borderline by reading fat books with hard words. I want to understand everything about borderline personality disorder. I want to be the best borderline personality ever. I want to be AMAZING ~ source: Merri Lisa Johnson, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: A memoir of a borderline personality.
The book was not a book but a symptom. My words came out in the wrong dis/order. I couldn’t make it write. ~ source: Merri Lisa Johnson, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: A memoir of a borderline personality.
It’s funny how getting a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder leads to an intense heavy duty research fest. Maybe it is something to do with the lack of support following the diagnosis, I don’t really know but I had always suspected I was not alone in running out and buying every book I can find about the condition after my diagnosis and this book contains so much evidence that this is a natural reaction that it is reassuring.
Lisa, starts her story in 1994 when she graduated from college and begins with relating to the emotions that she believes must have been experienced by Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes during the celebrity’s very public breakdown in which she burnt a house down.
Married at 19, divorced at 20 and then discovering that her sexual preference was actually as a lesbian before the ultimate revelation of Borderline Personality Disorder; Lisa takes us on a journey through her turbulent mind and life as she struggles to discover who she is, what she wants from life and ultimately to ‘recover’ from BPD. Juggling relationships, affairs, work and therapy the strength of character that the emotionally unstable borderline somehow manages to hold on to shines through as a roaring example of the high intelligence and functionality that we often hold up whilst masking the inner devastation of a dying soul – no wonder most people don’t notice we are broken if this is how we show ourselves in public!
So much of what she portrays can be related to your own distorted impressions of life (if you have BPD). Issues of attachment, splitting, emotional dysregulation, self-harm and dissociation are amongst the elements of BPD that Lisa brings to life in full colour.
From the very beginning the memoir is punctuated with quotes from other books about BPD and journals, songs and other interesting sources, a full bibliography of the sources is given at the end of the book – a great reference list for further reading often amiss in this kind of book. The use of quotations and lyrics was very helpful to me as I often have a habit of relating my feelings and emotions to song lyrics that seem to ‘say’ what I could not put into words for myself and in this book they seem to do a similar thing – giving voice to the things that would be difficult to articulate personally.
Even the layout of the book helps it become a reader friendly experience, plenty of white space, subtly different fonts to separate other thoughts and interjections from the main storyline and the use of slash like lines to break up sections within chapters. I found the book to be a quick and easy read with a fast flowing narrative.
The use of celebrity, media and literary portraits help you to identify with the reality of Lisa’s story and understand her thought processes and experiences in a vivid, exciting way.
Even the process of writing the book features as a symptom of her Borderline Personality as Lisa struggles to gain order over the words and make sense of what she is trying to say to us.
I would highly recommend this book to Borderlines and people who love, live with, work with or care for a Borderline in their lives, as it really does give a helpful insight into the chaotic workings of our minds.
In closing a few of my favourite lines and quotes from the book…
A Borderline suffers a kind of emotional haemophilia; she lacks the clotting mechanism needed to moderate her spurts of feeling. Stimulate a passion, and the borderline emotionally bleeds to death ~ source: Jerold Kreisman and Hal Straus, I hate You, Don’t Leave Me: Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder.
I make up for being borderline by reading fat books with hard words. I want to understand everything about borderline personality disorder. I want to be the best borderline personality ever. I want to be AMAZING ~ source: Merri Lisa Johnson, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: A memoir of a borderline personality.
The book was not a book but a symptom. My words came out in the wrong dis/order. I couldn’t make it write. ~ source: Merri Lisa Johnson, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: A memoir of a borderline personality.
April 23, 2018
About what I expected. Choppy. Just like me. Hard to siphon the useful parts from the crazy. Packed with quotes and other people's work. Too many fonts. Ugly. Melodramatic. Self-pitying. Everything I DONT want my book to be. Didn't read it from cover to cover. First 2 chapters just to confirm it's not as good as I was hoping. It's not juicy! SOMETHING about mental illness should be juicy or shocking, it's not about firing rounds of words that don't fit together coherently. That's for poetry class.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 29, 2017
Johnson accounts her borderline personality disorder and how to affects her relationships and life. Her style is very poetic and interesting. The combination of the style and subject is sometimes very exhausting, reminding me of a dizzying fever dream. However, I loved it. It's beautiful and just experimental enough to artistically and carefully tell her story in a way that feels authentic and packed with emotion, and I appreciate that.
August 31, 2013
This book is dramatic and brave. The author really peels back her skin to show everything and even goes into detail about how the five years of writing the book almost tore her apart. I loved the incorporation of song lyrics. The soundtrack to one's life is a fun plus for a memoir. I enjoyed this book.
February 10, 2013
If you are unlucky enough for this poetic hurricane to seriously resonate with you, it will rip you to pieces and spit out journal entries of your past like ticker tape while you read it. If you don't actually relate, I imagine its going to hit you like watching a thriller horror movie. Top 10.
June 20, 2017
Probably a 1.5, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. It wasn't very coherent; it didn't flow well. It wasn't very clear about her experiences. However, it was creative and experiential. (But if you're looking for a memoir of BPD, I wouldn't go with this).
May 27, 2018
incredibly disjointed and self indulgent....she writes more about her tumultuous relationships and and coming to realize she's gay. Her erratic font style reminds me of freshman poetry classes, where switching fonts and type size for DRAMATIC EFFECT is really only to cover a lack of content
May 9, 2011
An excellent, extremely psychologically informative memoir.
May 5, 2011
Absolutely beautiful and moving. My favorite BPD specific memoir so far. An awesome book written by and amazing woman.
June 23, 2014
The writing style of this book made it nearly impossible for me to read.
Read
August 1, 2025*i don't like rating memoirs* hug a bpd baddie today
January 20, 2020
Je continue dans ma lancée de mémoires queer sur les troubles psychiatriques, la dépression et les relations abusives. J’ai eu plus de difficultés à rentrer dans celui-là, principalement parce que l’autrice a travaillé la mise en forme du texte pour suivre ses humeurs, et que c’est du coup un peu intense (beaucoup de capslock). Ensuite on s’y habitue et le tout est très intéressant, et donne un bon aperçu du trouble borderline.
May 23, 2022
I really enjoyed this. As someone with borderline I felt heard and related to. Especially when talking about rage and the self harm. First book I’ve read on anyone with BPD since being formally diagnosed about a year ago. I couldn’t put it down. I felt like I was holding a conversation with the author. I felt like we were bonding over the things I can’t tell people because I’m afraid of being judged or I over share and realize how annoying it was later. I can’t say enough, I loved this book.
July 1, 2025
reread for comparison and perspective 🧐🧐🧐🧐
August 15, 2025
You look like a perfect fit, for a girl in need of a tourniquet, but can you save me?
December 10, 2013
I've been looking for memoirs and biographies that focus on borderline for awhile. I finally decided to buy one and this was it.
And I'm glad I bought it. I received this book today and I have just finished reading it. I actually sat down and read the whole thing with a brief break to tell my mother "This book is it. This book is everything."
I liked the way it was structured with anecdotes and brief excerpts from psych literature and sometimes normal literature. I immediately connected to the author when she opened comparing herself to Lisa Lopes from TLC. I liked that this book didn't seem stuffy. It was raw and real. The emotions she felt I feel too.
Like for example she writes about when she was diagnosed she googled it and she wrote "I'm going to be the best borderline." I mean...that is me to a T.
And she wrote about using her intelligence as a shield...again me to a T.
This was a beautiful book and I heartily recommend it.
And I'm glad I bought it. I received this book today and I have just finished reading it. I actually sat down and read the whole thing with a brief break to tell my mother "This book is it. This book is everything."
I liked the way it was structured with anecdotes and brief excerpts from psych literature and sometimes normal literature. I immediately connected to the author when she opened comparing herself to Lisa Lopes from TLC. I liked that this book didn't seem stuffy. It was raw and real. The emotions she felt I feel too.
Like for example she writes about when she was diagnosed she googled it and she wrote "I'm going to be the best borderline." I mean...that is me to a T.
And she wrote about using her intelligence as a shield...again me to a T.
This was a beautiful book and I heartily recommend it.
February 7, 2015
Good Memoir
This memoir of a college instructor coming to terms with her recent diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder is an excellent read. She is able to hide her constant turmoil and chaos from others including coworkers for a long time, but eventually her affair with a coworker and then a student gives her dysfunctional reasoning away. At one point she cuts her arm with a razor all night and then proudly displays her arm at work the next day in sleeveless attire; it amazes me she was able to keep her job. The ending was abrupt and jumpy, and I would honestly like to know how she managed to maintain a job teaching college students while proudly displaying her cutting and making out with students in the parking lot, even riding with one to a conference held in Atlanta. That boggles my mind that the college didn't step in...
This memoir of a college instructor coming to terms with her recent diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder is an excellent read. She is able to hide her constant turmoil and chaos from others including coworkers for a long time, but eventually her affair with a coworker and then a student gives her dysfunctional reasoning away. At one point she cuts her arm with a razor all night and then proudly displays her arm at work the next day in sleeveless attire; it amazes me she was able to keep her job. The ending was abrupt and jumpy, and I would honestly like to know how she managed to maintain a job teaching college students while proudly displaying her cutting and making out with students in the parking lot, even riding with one to a conference held in Atlanta. That boggles my mind that the college didn't step in...
July 24, 2017
I had been waiting so long to read this book, and I really thought I would love it. Don't get me wrong, it has a special place in my literary heart, but only because I am a borderline too.
I feel like she really let her BPD run away with her while writing this book. While beautifully written in a spastic prose that exhausts the reader (just like the mercurial thought process of the borderline exhausts us), but in true BPD fashion, she spent FAR too much time pining over her lost lovers, especially Emily. It was lovely to see LGBT themes represented in this book though.
In the end, this book fell short for me. It felt more like a journal youd write post-breakup to your exes. I feel like she played into the BPD stereotype rather than exploring all the other trials & challenges of life as a borderline. 5/5 for her madly paced writing style, 2/5 for content.
I feel like she really let her BPD run away with her while writing this book. While beautifully written in a spastic prose that exhausts the reader (just like the mercurial thought process of the borderline exhausts us), but in true BPD fashion, she spent FAR too much time pining over her lost lovers, especially Emily. It was lovely to see LGBT themes represented in this book though.
In the end, this book fell short for me. It felt more like a journal youd write post-breakup to your exes. I feel like she played into the BPD stereotype rather than exploring all the other trials & challenges of life as a borderline. 5/5 for her madly paced writing style, 2/5 for content.
September 28, 2011
Naturally, being the memoir of a Borderline Personality, this book attracts and repels in equal measures, but it contains a plenitude of useful nuggets about Borderline Personality Disorder. Makes me want to dig out my DBT material and give it a good once-over. Some good, solid clinical information and compelling (and appropriate) quotations and song lyrics, scattered among the eye-popping recounting of MLJ’s sexual exploits and cutting practices. Wouldn’t read it again, but I’m glad I read it once.
May 5, 2014
This book is an interesting look at what it's like to be a person living with Borderline Personality Disorder and the family traumas that can contribute to it's development. However, the author takes such a long time to get to the point (as in, her diagnosis with BPD and her reactions and coping skills learned) that it's easy to mistake this book to, initially, just be about a really bad break up.
November 2, 2016
I really enjoyed this. her prose is beautiful, and reallyn ours you in the mindset of what it's like to be fully in the throes of Borderline Personality Disorder, so much so that at times I felt extremely uncomfortable. this has been thrown around for years as a possible diagnosis for me, but I've yet to find someone really willing to help me explore and deal with it. Reading her words made me feel less confused, less alone, and more hopeful.
February 10, 2011
What was up with all the different fonts and spacing? You can't be a designer via Microsoft Word (just my own pet peeve). She was kind of all over the place regarding her own life and song lyrics and celebrity stories. The reader never knows what happens to her family, either! I'm guessing her first book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews