Great for readers who have engaged with DBT and Marsha Linehan's Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder to understand the foundations and creation of DBT.

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

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.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review. You can purchase a copy for yourself here: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Life-Worth-Living-Memoir-ebook/dp/B07QFN6GFJ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Building+a+Life+Worth+Living+by+Marsha+M.+Linehan&qid=1611087838&sr=8-1


Woah baby! This book is not for the light of heart. This book is written by a woman who has treated many patients and has a PHD. The thing that I did NOT expect was the fact that not only was she a therapist, but also once a patient, one who was treated for quite a while! We are taken on the detailed adventure of Marsha's battle with mental health. This was some journey and she managed to not only win the battle, but she surpassed the battle and got a degree and is now treating other people. She has surpassed anyone's expectations. This is truly a story of overachieving and beating the odds! Marsha has been through the ringer in the path that she has walked, but yet overcome the odds. I am so blessed to have received this book and gotten to review it!

After studying Marsha Linehan in school, it was totally surprising to find out that someone as successful and respected as Dr. Linehan had been institutionalized for borderline personality disorder. This is that story, and it details how Marsha overcame a cold mental health system without a lot of helpful treatment options to create her own treatment, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which is now widely used in psychology. However, I think this memoir lacks wide-ranging appeal.

When I downloaded this book, I was vaguely familiar with Linehan. As a Psychology major, research nerd, and book lover, I was curious and I actually own a DBT workbook that I have been working through, slowly, for my own anxiety/depression issues. What I found in this book instead, when I expected it to focus more singularly on DBT was so so much more and I love it. It is such a great book. Marsha writes in a way that makes you feel like you're reading her journals or having a conversation with her but at the same time having an eye opening discussion with a therapist not in a clinical setting. I really enjoyed this book.

This was a good memoir about Marsha and how she created DBT therapy. It helped me learn more about DBT overall as well as how the author used her own experiences to create it and help a lot of people. I would reccomend this book to anyone who is considering DBT therapy or just beginning it.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

Building a Life Worth Living is a interesting and informative book. DBT therapy is a great therapy that has helped thousands of people. This is a well written book and it would to give those interested in DBT.

I think then I requested this one I didn’t expect it to be so logical? Or insightful? It wasn’t what I was expecting but it was still pretty good!

I really enjoyed learning a bit more about Dr. Linehan's life and the development of DBT-- I learned information that I had not known before. Personally, I would have liked more memoir-type information since I know a good bit about DBT. However, I think this would be a great precursor to those going through or about to lead DBT.

If you don’t know about Dialectical Behavior Therapy, learn about it right now. This is a brilliant form of therapy that can help everyone. Its a way of reframing your thoughts in order to make better, wiser choices and to process things that make us uncomfortable. I have been through it and want to learn more and feel that it is invaluable to every person, especially those prone to depression and anxiety.

When I saw this book, Building a Life Worth Living by Marsha M. Linehan, I knew I needed to read it. This is the story of how Marsha came up with this form of therapy. She was a young woman who suicidal thoughts and severe depression who spent a long time “locked up” in a psychiatric hospital. She vowed to help others in some way when she got out and she dedicated her life to studying and learning about psychology, eventually developing what became DBT.

“Over the years, DBT had saved the lives of countless people fighting depression and suicidal thoughts, but Linehan had never revealed that her pioneering work was inspired by her own desperate struggles as a young woman. Only when she received this question did she finally decide to tell her story.

In this remarkable and inspiring memoir, Linehan describes how, when she was eighteen years old, she began an abrupt downward spiral from popular teenager to suicidal young woman. After several miserable years in a psychiatric institute, Linehan made a vow that if she could get out of emotional hell, she would try to find a way to help others get out of hell too, and to build a life worth living. She went on to put herself through night school and college, living at the YWCA and often scraping together spare change to buy food. She went on to get her PhD in psychology, specializing in behavior therapy. In the 1980s, she achieved a breakthrough when she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a therapeutic approach that combines acceptance of the self and ways to change. Linehan included mindfulness as a key component in therapy treatment, along with original and specific life-skill techniques. She says, “You can’t think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking.”

Throughout her extraordinary scientific career, Marsha Linehan remained a woman of deep spirituality. Her powerful and moving story is one of faith and perseverance. Linehan shows, in Building a Life Worth Living, how the principles of DBT really work—and how, using her life skills and techniques, people can build lives worth living.”



Due out January 7, order it here!