It is estimated that as many as 34 million people grew up in alcoholic homes. But what about the rest of us? What about families that had no alcoholism, but did have perfectionism, workaholism, compulsive overeating, intimacy problems, depression, problems in expressing feelings, plus all the other personality traits that can produce a family system much like an alcoholic one? Countless millions of us struggle with these kinds of dysfunctions every day, and until very recently we struggled alone. Pulling together both theory and clinical practice, John and Linda Friel provide a readable explanation of what happened to us and how we can rectify it.
Revised and updated from the original, this honest and forthwright look at families of all shapes and sizes will help you down the path of healing (whether you know you need it or whether you're just not sure). Unlocking Your Family Patterns combines decades worth of counseling wisdom and pastoral care insights into this one practical resource. Your past may hurt, and your family's patterns may have left emotional scars, but your future has not been laid in stone yet. There is hope for healing, there are lessons to learn, and there are paths toward family health. Using clinical, biblical and practical examples to help you uncover the patterns your family has lived in, this book might lead you toward the family u-turn you've been looking for.
Most families are dysfunctional, and most people need help recovering from the issues caused by growing up in such families. This book includes 45 inspirational essays which offer comfort and insight to readers, helping those who were raised in dysfunctional families to uncover negative messages, heal their pain, and raise self-esteem.
What you don't know can hurt you— but it can also lead to self-acceptance and healing. Family Secrets gives you the tools you need to understand your family—and yourself—in an entirely new way. In his bestselling books and compelling PBS specials, John Bradshaw has transformed our understanding of how we are shaped by our families. Now join him on this fascinating journey of discovery, which starts with your life today and takes you back through the conflicts, the strengths, and the weaknesses of your parents’ generation—and even your grandparents’. Using a powerful technique for exploring your “family tree,” you’ll trace the visible and invisible patterns that have influenced you. You’ll learn about family secrets that are healthy and necessary, and also about the secrets that can limit your wholeness and freedom—even if you don’t know they exist. This work is sometimes painful, but it is always enlightening—filled with the kind of “aha” moments and realizations that make everything fall into place. With John Bradshaw’s guidance, you will come to a new appreciation and acceptance of yourself. You will also be able to build more open, honest, and loving relationships with the people who matter most.
The headlines ring with stories of opioid addiction and overdose. Parents complain about their children’s screen addiction, law enforcement decries the flood of fentanyl, scores of Americans overdose and die daily, and teen alcohol poisoning and marijuana-induced psychosis rates continue to rise. Disabling depression and anxiety are diagnosed at alarming rates in families across the country. Now, more than ever, families struggle to live with, care for, and protect their family members suffering with addiction or mental illness. Kenneth Perlmutter, a California psychologist with 30-plus years in the field, has written Freedom from Family Dysfunction specifically for family members who love someone battling addiction or mental illness who want to break the cycles of codependency and relapse plaguing their dysfunctional systems. The combination of compelling vignettes, lively dialogues, and step-by-step instructions makes this guidebook an indispensable tool for the parents, partners, adult children, and the clinicians who treat them, to heal the powerlessness, pain, and impossibility of life with someone they’ve been trying to help, sometimes for decades. Perlmutter takes a systemic and inter-generational view, combining current knowledge with his deep personal experience of addiction and family dysfunction to guide readers toward understanding their systems, their positions in them, and the forces that keep things stuck. “Stress-Induced Impaired Coping (SIIC)” is the term he’s coined to describe his ground-breaking model of family system pathology and recovery. He invites families to see themselves not as dysfunctional, but as wounded, as they work toward connection, closeness, and the restoration of systemic mental wellness and sustainability. Best of all, the method works regardless of whether the one identified as “the problem” makes changes or not. Family members who take up Perlmutter’s method will: · create closeness by pursuing connection over being right · reject “tough love" · learn to communicate authentically and to set boundaries confidently and fairly · rebuild trust, authenticity and equality in family relationships · reduce chaos, anxiety and distress in the mind and in the home · shift the entire family system itself toward wellness
The epic horrors of psychopathic mastermind Eddie Lee Sexton from the New York Times bestselling author who “knows how to dramatize true crime” (Elmore Leonard). For years, Eddie Lee Sexton ruled his large family like Charles Manson. The depraved patriarch dominated his ragged brood of twelve children mentally, physically, and sexually, and enforced every cruelty imaginable, from vicious beatings to raping his daughters and fathering their children. Finally, in 1992, Sexton’s eighteen-year-old daughter Machelle, seeking refuge in a women’s shelter, revealed the shocking, sordid details of her father’s abuse to authorities. As the law attempted to catch up to Eddie Lee Sexton, he moved his family to a mobile home in western Florida. Ultimately, Sexton’s efforts to escape prosecution led to two grisly murders in his own family. Yet Sexton’s sick genius almost helped him elude the justice he deserved. Lowell Cauffiel’s true-crime masterpiece vividly exposes the horrors of Eddie Lee Sexton’s psychosis and the shattered lives of those who survived. Includes sixteen pages of photos “An odyssey into American pathology . . . Deeply disturbing.” —Detroit Free Press “Incest, rape, murder, infanticide, torture, psychological abuse . . . House of Secrets is bedtime reading for devoted true crime fans!” —Booklist “A balanced and grimly engaging account of one of the weirdest domestic situations this side of the House of Usher.” —Publishers Weekly
Based on the public television series of the same name, Bradshaw On: The Family is John Bradshaw's seminal work on the dynamics of families that has sold more than a million copies since its original publication in 1988. Within its pages, you will discover the cause of emotionally impaired families. You will learn how unhealthy rules of behavior are passed down from parents to children, and the destructive effect this process has on our society. Using the latest family research and recovery material in this new edition, Bradshaw also explores the individual in both a family and societal setting. He shows you ways to escape the tyranny of family-reinforced behavior traps--from addiction and co-dependency to loss of will and denial--and demonstrates how to make conscious choices that will transform your life and the lives of your loved ones. He helps you heal yourself and then, using what you have learned helps you heal your family. Finally, Bradshaw extends this idea to our society: by returning yourself and your family to emotional health, you can heal the world in which you live. He helps you reenvision societal conflicts from the perspective of a global family, and shares with you the power of deep democracy: how the choices you make every day can affect--and improve--your world.
All families have secrets. Some secrets are healthy, but others - those that John Bradshaw calls 'dark secrets' - limit the wholeness and freedom of every member of the family, often generation after generation. In Family Secrets, John Bradshaw examines the family's mysterious power to affect our lives. He explains how secrets are created, how they influence us (even if we don't know they are there), and describes the risks and benefits exploring them. With the aid of a genogram, which can be used to chart key relationships, Bradshaw provides us with a step-by-step guide to uncovering the secrets of the past and the present. Family Secrets includes dozens of fascinating case studies which illustrate how we can recognise crucial gaps and silences, reconstruct missing information and decipher partial memories. It provides vital advice on how to deal with the truths revealed and shows us ways to stay safely and honestly connected with our families. For more information on John Bradshaw please visit www.johnbradshaw.com
"With prose that positively vibrates and characters who defy expectation, Kelly Simmons brings us straight to Nantucket, into the bright, beating heart of this one-of-a-kind family, and never lets us go."—New York Times bestseller Kate Moretti, author of The Vanishing Year and Blackbird Season The last word in families is lies... Any one of the perfect Warner family could have been behind the accident. Each of them had a problem that threatened to tarnish more than their old-money silver. Having spent the past three decades' worth of summers on Nantucket, the Warners are as much a part of the island as the crust of salt on the ferry. But this year is different: Tripp is no longer the father he was, and it becomes clear that nothing—not the beams that hold the house together, and not the values the family clings to—can survive the ravages of time. When their Nantucket summer tradition turns to tragedy, the creaky old house swirls with suspicion. Even in a perfect family, there are just so many reasons to want someone gone. With no easy answers as to how, why, or who, the Warners must face another frightening question: do they really want to know the truth? A tense family portrait of secrets, lies, and inevitable change, The Fifth of July will ensnare any book club fond of beautiful beaches and ugly drama. Also by Kelly Simmons: Where She Went One More Day
When a mysterious man claims to be her long-missing brother, a woman must confront her family’s closely guarded secrets in this “delicious hybrid of mystery, drama, and elegance” (Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author). Washington, DC, 2019: Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister Beatrice as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared forty years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea’s warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers. Bangkok, 1972: Genevieve and Robert Preston live in a beautiful house behind a high wall, raising their three children with the help of a cadre of servants. In these exotic surroundings, Genevieve strives to create a semblance of the life they would have had at home in the US—ballet and riding classes for the children, impeccable dinner parties, a meticulously kept home. But in truth, Robert works for American intelligence, Genevieve finds herself drawn into a passionate affair with her husband’s boss, and their serene household is vulnerable to unseen dangers in a rapidly changing world and a country they don’t really understand. Alternating between past and present as all of the secrets are revealed, What Could Be Saved is an unforgettable novel about a family broken by loss and betrayal, and “a richly imagined page-turner that delivers twists alongside thought-provoking commentary” (Kirkus Reviews).
