the great news is that our self-therapy books and tools are nothing to the tools of people who have been doing this for years. this isn't going to be personality disorder specific, because fuck the clinical model, but as a rule: personality disorders should be treated as expressions of CPTSD, and treated accordingly
anyone who is interested in a Choose Your Own Adventure guide to getting better should check out the Integral Guide To Well-Being. if you click one single link on this post, make it this one
the second link you should click (especially if you have or suspect you have a personality disorder, but also just generally if you are suffering or have suffered. anguish is covert for a reason) is everything Pete Walker has ever written, starting with this
systems and dissociative folk may not know about kinhost.org or their podcast Many Minds On The Issue, both worth checking out; people with any degree of trauma and/or structural dissociation, from CPTSD to BPD to DID, may find Dis-SOS useful. the United Front Boot Camp is a very helpful way to start working together internally.
also for CPTSD and friends: if you can get your hands on the workbook "Finding Solid Ground", do that. we don't have it in our library and we can't give you our firsthand account, but to our knowledge, it's the single most comprehensive treatment plan for complex trauma and especially dissociative disorders out there. many very dedicated people (both practitioners and the people in their care) have worked hard to make it; you should be able to make use of it with a therapist or alone. most trauma books do not account for the amount of titration you need to do to safely absorb the information in the first place. it's a labor of years and the first of its kind
here's a shitload of books. it has so many books. we don't know if it has all of the ones we like (we didn't see Waking The Tiger at first glance, which is our top recommendation) so feel free to check out our much much smaller messy little library too. not in any way exhaustive; this is literally just the stuff we found on our phone. we've starred some of the ones we found helpful
our favorite library of meditations for self-compassion, attachment repair, schema therapy, and more is here; if it affects you way more than you expected, or if you get a weirdly strong resistance to doing it again, we recommend proceeding slowly, firmly and gently
Tapping/EFT sounds like it should be pseudoscience. It's not, but some of the people selling it are definitely predatory. Brad Yates on Youtube has a ton of free videos on what may well be every emotional issue under the sun, and we've decided we like the guy
not everything can be done with an electronic device. seriously: please consider going outside for several hours while leaving your phone at home, and having a serious emotional conversation with another person without trying to shield yourself or laugh it off. you can't replace time with nature and mutual vulnerability with anything and you need both.
(the lack of mutual vulnerability, by the way, is one of the reasons why we have so many issues with how therapy currently works. there is structurally a power dynamic inherent to being The Helper and The One Who Is Helped. you aren't going to get the same release and sense of belonging if therapy, or surface level relationships, are all you have.)
if you want to pursue self-treatment, we have a few books on Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) in the messy library linked above. looking into DBT is also worth your while. IFS is (in our opinion) the easiest therapy to self-guide through, and is a major feature in the Integral Guide at the top. however, important disclaimer: connection with someone else is a vital part of recovery. your nervous system will struggle to stabilize itself alone, and benefits enormously from having another nervous system to mirror that isn't hooked up to all your stress chemicals. talk to friends regularly, find someone to connect to. therapy is very useful when you have a person who is stable enough to take whatever you can throw at them. face to face contact is ideal, but do whatever you need to. direct yourself, and own your recovery, but don't do it alone.
This classic self-care flowchart, You Feel Like Shit
what'sokay.org, a sexual health resource that is a good reference for if you're okay, if how you treat others is okay, and if how others treat you is okay. good for everything from checking "am I anxious/obsessive-compulsive/self loathing/etc, or is something actually wrong?" to if you are being abused or being abusive, and what to do about it
The DARE Response (best anxiety treatment we've found). It also has an app.
this isn't everything that's out there and we might have forgotten some of the things we've used, but we can confirm that we have used all of these recommendations personally (with the exception of Finding Solid Ground and the mental health book library). distribute pirated goods freely and with discretion; we don't want to lose libraries by getting caught. let us know if any of the links don't work.
anyways. don't listen to anyone online, don't tell people what to do online, get the fuck out of your parents' house as soon as possible if you haven't already, own up to your shit, and learn how to steal so you can do it for your friends
