Late Shift Collaborative

Building a Life Worth Living by Marsha Linehan – In my graduate program, I needed an introduction to dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and I was excited to see that the introductory text is its inventor’s autobiography. I could not have predicted how delightful this book was, and I recommend it widely to behavioral health professionals, friends, family, client, you on the internet. This book is so readable. Marsha, as she is known to clients and practitioners of DBT, is a force to be reckoned with, and her story is, frankly, fascinating.

I have struggled with how to format this book talk because I recommend this book to different people for different reasons, so maybe I will tell you what I have told them.

To my mom, I recommend this book because of Marsha’s devotion to the Catholic faith – at least until later in her life where its structural misogyny caused her to pivot to a different church. DBT, one of the most effective, scientifically tested therapy modalities was created by a woman who steadfastly adhered to her faith and to scientific rigor. So rarely do we hear about people of faith achieving things in secular professions. My mom is an avid reader, so I recommend this book because it is an engaging memoir. Marsha found herself, as a teen, in a psychiatric facility, in most secure area. She was profoundly distressed and self-harming. One day, at 14 years old, she made a promise to God that she would escape from the personal hell she was experiencing and return to help others escape. Then she did! 

To my classmates, I recommend this book because it answers so many questions about DBT. Is it, like, CBT? Sort of. Marsha was there, at the beginning of her career, when CBT became a popular therapy modality. She thought it had some good things in it that she would borrow from to make her scientifically-proven escape from hell method. What is “dialectical?” Oh my gosh! Dialectical is the same dialectical from Marx! It is the idea that two opposing things can be true at the same time. That still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but Marsha explains that she began seeing the most “hopeless” patients early in her clinical career, and she tried telling them that their lives were not hopeless and they could get better, and that made them mad because they felt they were not being heard. Marsha then tried affirming their experience, and that made them mad because it didn’t offer any help. Marsha realized that she must do both and teach her patients to do both. They must accept that their lives are difficult and even horrible, and they must, at the same time, try to change their lives so that they are more bearable. 

To clients, I recommend this book because it introduces some of the DBT skills in an entertaining and narrative fashion. It doesn’t feel like the worksheets, which are a slog. It feels like reading for fun. 

To the psychedelics side, I recommend this book because Marsha, in her search for a way out of hell that can be taught to others, studied and became a Zen master. DBT incorporates many of the teachings of Zen, and the way that Marsha has embraced and incorporated meditation, presence, nonattachment, and radical acceptance into her own life and into her work is an inspiration to those of us who are seeking our dharmic path or our way of Zen. 

So many reasons to read this book. I will certainly read it again. In terms of an autobiography, I put it up there with Just Kids by Patti Smith. It’s one of my all-time favorite memoirs.