bookishspoonie's review against another edition
used for research. coming back to in a bit.
lestaslettering's review against another edition
1.0
Just no. Although I completely despise walking on eggshells, this book degrades those of us with bpd much more than that. I get the emotional intensity stuff, totally, but you don't have to mumble incoherently like a child that is totally winging the grammar. Some or many of the bpd diagnosed people are artists and poets and we do not fall under the category of that extent of a non-verbal disaster, i promise. I'm sorry. Part of this might be relatable but the author's forced attempt to make us feel like mumbling fools just pushed me not to give a damn about the rest of it. I'm in need of a vacation after reading this.
mushimilda's review against another edition
4.0
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.
sharongrigg's review against another edition
5.0
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.
foxwrapped's review against another edition
5.0
I really like this one. I think it is my favorite of the memoirs I've read that deal with BPD. I enjoyed the poetry of it.
marleywrites's review against another edition
5.0
I have read this book several times. It has become my personal Bible. I have never read a book that so truly and artfully reflects myself.
hija_de_bruja's review against another edition
5.0
I love the style of this book. It's not only a great memoir, but VERY informative. AND an added bonus, it's chock full of quotes giving me MORE books to add to my TBR pile.
amelia_esque's review against another edition
1.0
The writing style of this book made it nearly impossible for me to read.
rachael_perry's review against another edition
4.0
This was a wild and interesting read. It took me a couple chapters to grasp the frame of thought, and once I did, it took a surprising turn into the academic aspects of borderline personality disorder. I feel like Johnson took a bit of a skip from diagnosis to recovery, in a literary-linear way, and I would have liked more of that, or a bit more about her sisters and how they affected her own recovery and stability near the end of the memoir. Were it not for the small bag that I feel like I missed a piece of the puzzle toward the end, it would have gotten five stars. This is a brutally honest piece of writing that must have taken equal amounts of retrospection and distance to put on paper for the world to read.