Many of the difficult people you encounter in daily life can be avoided, but what if they’re family members? What if the difficult person is a parent, a sibling, one of your children, or your mate? In Overcoming Your Difficult Family, life coach and retired family therapist Eric Maisel offers useful strategies for dealing with the people you’re connected to for life, even when they are not cooperative. Dr. Maisel tackles the problematic aspects of families, describing eight vital skills to help you cope with challenging relationships. The book also serves as a unique “field guide” to common types of dysfunctional families — authoritarian families, anxious families, addicted families, and more — and how to thrive despite those dynamics. By following Dr. Maisel’s battle-tested advice, you’ll learn to maintain inner peace in the midst of family chaos and create a better life for your whole family.

Many of the difficult people you encounter in daily life can be avoided, but what if they’re family members? What if the difficult person is a parent, a sibling, one of your children, or your mate? In Overcoming Your Difficult Family, life coach and retired family therapist Eric Maisel offers useful strategies for dealing with the people you’re connected to for life, even when they are not cooperative. Dr. Maisel tackles the problematic aspects of families, describing eight vital skills to help you cope with challenging relationships. The book also serves as a unique “field guide” to common types of dysfunctional families — authoritarian families, anxious families, addicted families, and more — and how to thrive despite those dynamics. By following Dr. Maisel’s battle-tested advice, you’ll learn to maintain inner peace in the midst of family chaos and create a better life for your whole family.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Dr. Susan Forward's Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them. When you were a child... Did your parents tell you were bad or worthless? Did your parents use physical pain to discipline you? Did you have to take care of your parents because of their problems? Were you frightened of your parents? Did your parents do anything to you that had to be kept secret? Now that you are an adult... Do your parents still treat you as if you were a child? Do you have intense emotional or physical reactions after spending time with your parents? Do your parents control you with threats or guilt? Do they manipulate you with money? Do you feel that no matter what you do, it's never good enough for your parents? In this remarkable self-help guide, Dr. Susan Forward drawn on case histories and the real-life voices of adult children of toxic parents to help you free yourself from the frustrating patterns of your relationship with your parents -- and discover an exciting new world of self-confidence, inner strength, and emotional independence.

A psychologist offers a roadmap for those looking to break free of toxic family relationships and thrive in the aftermath. Toxic family abuse is always two-fold. The first layer of abuse is the original poor treatment by toxic family members, and the second is someone’s denial of the ways in which abusers treat and harm them. Loving someone doesn’t always mean having a relationship with them, just like forgiveness doesn’t always mean reconciliation. A significant part of healing comes with accepting that there are some relationships that are so poisonous that they destroy one’s ability to be healthy and function best. But It’s Your Family is a remarkable account of what it means to cut ties to toxic family abuse and thrive in the aftermath. Inside, Dr. Sherrie Campbell clarifies: · How parents, adult children, siblings, grandparents, and in-laws can be toxic · The difference between flawed and toxic family members · Explaining the cutting of ties to children and others who may not understand · Spiritual and religious views on forgiveness · The definition of cutting ties and what No Contact actually means When readers are able to bring closure to those toxic relationships, they give themselves the space to love those family members from a distance, as fellow human beings, with the knowledge that it is unwise to remain connected. Readers learn how to love themselves in the process and fundamentally change their lives for the better!

Relinquishing family attachments that failed to meet childhood needs is the most difficult task individuals can undertake as they grow into adulthood. Leaving Home not only emphasizes the life-saving benefits of separating from toxic parents but also offers a viable program for personal emancipation. David P. Celani centers his program on Object Relations Theory, a branch of psychoanalysis developed by Scottish analyst Ronald Fairbairn. The human personality, Fairbairn argued, is not the result of inherited (and thus immutable) instincts. Rather, the developing child builds internal relational templates rooted in conscious and unconscious memories he internalized in childhood, and these guide his future interactions with others. While an attachment to neglectful or even abusive parents is not uncommon, there is a way out. Eloquent, relatable, and filled with rich examples taken from more than two decades of clinical practice, Leaving Home outlines the practical steps necessary to become a healthy adult.

For many people, cutting ties with a toxic family member is a crucial step away from a legacy of dysfunction and toward healing and well-being. In Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members, psychologist Sherrie Campbell offers readers effective strategies for setting strong boundaries after ending contact with a toxic family member, and provides powerful tools to help them heal from shame, self-doubt, and stigma.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by unstable moods, negative self-image, dangerous impulsivity, and tumultuous relationships. Many people with BPD excel in academics and careers while revealing erratic, self-destructive, and sometimes violent behavior only to those with whom they are intimate. Others have trouble simply holding down a job or staying in school. Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder is a compassionate and informative guide to understanding this profoundly unsettling--and widely misunderstood--mental illness, believed to affect approximately 6% of the general population. Rather than viewing people with BPD as manipulative opponents in a bitter struggle, or pitying them as emotional invalids, Valerie Porr cites cutting-edge science to show that BPD is a true neurobiological disorder and not, as many come to believe, a character flaw or the result of bad parenting. Porr then clearly and accessibly explains what BPD is, which therapies have proven effective, and how to rise above the weighty stigma associated with the disorder. Offering families and loved ones supportive guidance that both acknowledges the difficulties they face and shows how they can be overcome, Porr teaches empirically-supported and effective coping behaviors and interpersonal skills, such as new ways of talking about emotions, how to be aware of nonverbal communication, and validating difficult experiences. These skills are derived from Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Mentalization-based Therapy, two evidence-based treatments that have proven highly successful in reducing family conflict while increasing trust. Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder is an empowering and hopeful resource for those who wish to gain better understanding of the BPD experience--and to make use of these insights in day-to-day family interactions. Winner of the ABCT Self Help Book Seal of Merit Award 2011

A large segment of the population struggles with feelings of being detached from themselves and their loved ones. They feel flawed, and blame themselves. Running on Empty will help them realize that they're suffering not because of something that happened to them in childhood, but because of something that didn't happen. It's the white space in their family picture, the background rather than the foreground. This will be the first self-help book to bring this invisible force to light, educate people about it, and teach them how to overcome it.

DON’T LET PROBLEM PEOPLE GET TO YOU! Whether it’s a manager who keeps moving the goal posts, an uncooperative colleague, negative friend, or critical family member, some people are just plain hard to get along with. Often, your immediate response is to shrink or sulk, become defensive or attack. But there are smarter moves to make when dealing with difficult people. This book explains how to cope with a range of situations with difficult people and to focus on what you can change. This book will help you to: Understand what makes difficult people tick and how best to handle them Learn ways to confidently stand up to others and resist the urge to attack back Develop strategies to calmly navigate emotionally-charged situations Deal with all kinds of difficult people – hostile, manipulative and the impossible Know when to choose your battles, and when to walk away Why let someone else’s bad attitude ruin your day? How to Deal With Difficult People arms you with all the tools and tactics you need to handle all kinds of people – to make your life less stressful and a great deal easier.

Despite all her best efforts to break the cycle of catastrophic, destructive patterns of mental illness, Anna Berry found herself at the end of her rope----unemployed, penniless, homeless, and in the throes of a psychotic episode that threatened to destroy her life. Alone and unwell, she manages to find her grip on life, seeks the help she needs, and embarks on a life and career that illustrate that mental illness does not have to be ruinous. Unhinged: A Memoir of Enduring, Surviving, and Overcoming Family Mental Illness is a powerful memoir that chronicles Berry’s life as both a casualty and survivor of family mental illness. From her point of rock-bottom to her own recovery, as well as her efforts to help her still-afflicted mother and brother find hope and healing, we see how she struggles to recognize her own illness while coping with the fallout from her family’s other victims. In telling her story, Berry uncovers the difficulties inherent in not only growing up with mental illness among family members, but also the frustrations of not being able to recognize or handle the trajectory of her own illness. Yet, after successfully finding methods of treating her symptoms, Berry goes on to become a successful journalist and author, who now helps educate the public about mental health through her writing, while also serving as her mother’s court-appointed legal guardian. This story shows the devastating impact of mental illness on whole families, but offers readers a message of hope and healing. Berry’s story is sure to resonate with the many people who deal with the mental illness of family members, and their own struggles to cope with their own diagnoses.