Get Me Out Of Here

Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder by Rachel Reiland
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have so many mixed feelings about this book. Of course I found it hard to read because I suffer from BPD myself and this book was written from the perspective of a person that had a lot of anger issues and suffered a lot of trauma in her childhood. There was a lot of similar content for me and that is why it took a little bit longer to read, but I did come out with this gleaming bit of wisdom : IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO HELP A PERSON WHEN THEY ARE DOWN AND IN NEED, ESPECIALLY WHEN SUFFERING FROM MENTAL ILLNESS. Reiland was super lucky to have the amount of support and the support systems that she had. Most people have half of what she had or much less. Her husband stuck by her through thick and thin, she had people in her church that didn't judge her but just helped her with her kids or sent home care package meals, her pastor was an ear in times of need, and most importantly she had a very devoted psychiatrist that was very dedicated to helping her with her recovery and her treatment. He made it clear that it was going to be a long hard process and that it was going to take a lot of work, and more importantly, that he would not give up on her. The fact that Reiland's psychiatrist was so invested really meant a lot to me because I know what it feels like to have doctors and people on your 'team' that feel once you have a diagnosis of bpd that you are lost cause. I have been with my therapist for over 5 years now and she has been a life line like no other. She has helped me through many of my addictions, she has helped me overcome violent tendencies and we are currently working on positive relationships and boundaries as well as other skills within the dbt realm. I wasn't the most keen on the fact that religion ended up helping Reiland a lot but that is not my choice, I do not believe in God. If it worked for her than I am happy that she was able to get some comfort from that.

I will say that the major disappointment of the book is that after you have read it you find out that Rachel Reiland is a pseudonym. I realize that she probably had to use a false name because some of the things she wrote about could have gotten her in big trouble but it's almost like she has duped the reader. She has told you all these dark and deep secrets about her life, some of them crushing and probably hard to even put down on paper and then she hides behind a fake name. That to me is the ultimate deception. When writing a memoir like this you need to be able to own the shit that you have been through, and one of the ways that I see someone doing that is by putting their name on their work. So even though "Rachel Reiland" didn't own her dirty laundry there is some great one liners that can be taken from reading this book. It may be a painful or informative read, depending what perspective you are reading it from but it sure is an eye opener on BPD, and there is not enough accounts of what BPD is like so it is great to see more people telling their stories.

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