Exploring the stages of estrangement between adult daughters and their mothers for mental health professionals who serve women, this book illustrates different stages of estrangement through the Estrangement Energy Cycle and client stories and provides practical tools to therapeutically support clients.
Iris Krasnow -- mother, daughter, and best-selling Journalist -- tackles the toughest relationship in the lives of many grown women: the mother-daughter bond. With women's life expectancy inching up past eighty, you may be embroiled with your mother well past the time your own hair turns white. The good news: Living longer means more time to make peace -- and this book shows you how. Drawing on her own experience with her colorful eighty-four-year-old mother and the collective wisdom of more than one hundred other adult daughters, Krasnow offers a fresh perspective on how to overcome the anger, guilt, and resentment that can destroy a family. The time to repair the bond is now, she reminds us: You can't kiss and make up at her funeral. The key is to let go of the fantasy mom and embrace the flesh-and-blood woman, with all her flaws.
The first book specifically for daughters suffering from the emotional abuse of selfish, self-involved mothers,Will I Ever Be Good Enough?provides the expert assistance you need in order to overcome this debilitating history and reclaim your life for yourself. Drawing on over two decades of experience as a therapist specializing in women's psychology and health, psychotherapist Dr. Karyl McBride helpsyou recognize the widespread effects of this maternal emotional abuse and guides you as you create an individualized program for self-protection, resolution, and complete recovery.An estimated 1.5 million American women have narcissistic personality disorder, which makes them so insecure and overbearing, insensitive and domineering that they can psychologically damage their daughters for life. Daughters of narcissistic mothers learn that maternal love is not unconditional, and that it is given only when they behave in accordance with their mothers' often unreasonable expectations and whims. As adults, these daughters consequently have difficulty overcoming their insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, sadness, and emotional emptiness. They may also have a terrible fear of abandonment that leads them to form unhealthy love relationships, as well as a tendency to perfectionism and unrelenting self-criticism, or to self-sabotage and frustration.Herself the recovering daughter of a narcissistic mother, Dr. McBride includes her personal struggle, which adds a profound level of authority to her work, along with the perspectives of the hundreds of suffering daughters she's interviewed over the years. Their stories of how maternal abuse has manifested in their lives -- as well as how they have successfully overcome its effects -- show you that you're not alone and that you can take back your life and have the controlyouwant.Dr. McBride's step-by-step program will enable you to:(1) Recognize your own experience with maternal narcissism and its effects on all aspects of your life (2) Discover how you have internalized verbal and nonverbal messages from your mother and how these have translated into a strong desire to overachieve or a tendency to self-sabotage (3) Construct a step-by-step program to reclaim your life and enhance your sense of self, a process that includes creating a psychological separation from your mother and breaking the legacy of abuse. You will also learn how not to repeat your mother's mistakes with your own daughter.Warm and sympathetic, filled with the examples of women who have established healthy boundaries with their hurtful mothers,Will I Ever Be Good Enough?encourages and inspires you as it aids your recovery.
Broken relationships between adult children and their parents is a widespread phenomenon. While the parent-child attachment relationship is of critical importance for the child in the early years of life, the parent-child relationship continues to be a source of great importance over the course of the individual’s life span for both the child and the parent. For adults and adult children who are estranged/alienated from each other, the pain and dissatisfaction never fully go away. Despite the prevalence of the problem of ruptured relationships, there are few resources available for mental health professionals working with this population. This book provides a tool for clinicians to turn to when they are working with adult children and their parents seeking to resolve conflict, improve communication, and enhance their relationships.
A much-needed perspective on how to mother difficult adult children while balancing one’s own needs. Difficult brings to life the conflicts that arise for mothers who are confronted with the unexpected, burdensome, and even catastrophic dependencies of their adult children associated with mental illness, substance use, or chronic unemployment. Through real stories of mothers and their challenging adult children, this book offers relatable, provocative, and, at times, shocking illustrations of the excruciating maternal dilemma: Which takes precedence—the needs of the mother or of the distressed adult child? With guidance for finding social support, staying safe, engaging in self-care, and helping the adult child, Difficult is a compassionate resource for those living in a family situation which too many keep secret and allows readers to see that they are not alone.
“An amazing resource for anyone who desires to deepen their mother-daughter relationship in a biblical, healthy, and healed way.” —Lysa TerKeurst, New York Times bestselling author and president of Proverbs 31 Ministries You can be restored even when your relationship is frayed Ever wonder why mothers and daughters can be so different and even seem to speak different languages? Mended gives you conversation starters to speak life into your relationship with your mother or daughter. Discover powerful words that usher in healing for wounded hearts and rebuild, restore, and reconcile your connection. Set new patterns going forward as you… find common ground and put your relationship ahead of your differences learn what to say when you don’t know what to say grow closer when you do hard things together If you have a difficult history with your mother or daughter, you don’t have to continue patterns of brokenness. No matter how worn you feel, you don’t have to become unthreaded. God wants to mend your heart to His and to hers.
This first systematic study of mother-daughter relationships as represented in Western European fiction during the second half of the 20th century provides a comparative study of works from England, France, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. For each individual body of texts, the authors identify characteristics arising from specific national literary traditions and from internal cultural diversities. The text suggests avenues for future investigation both within and across national boundaries. The featured writers include Steedman, Diski, Winterson, Tennant, de Beauvoir, Leduc, Djura, Wolf, Jelinek, Mitgutsch, Novak, Lavin, O'Brien, O'Faolin, Morante, Sanvitale, Ramondino, Chacel, Rodoreda, and Martin Gaite. The six contributing authors are scholars from New Zealand, England, Ireland, Italy and Wales. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In this enjoyable and insightful book, Yi-Lin Yu takes the heated and ongoing feminist debate over motherhood and maternal subjectivity onto a new plane - in search of a new synthesis. With its specific focus on the three-tiered matrilineal narratives, Mother, She Wrote is distinguished by its complex and innovative deployment of psychoanalytic subject-relations theories, and a meticulous and detailed discussion of various literary texts, which calls forth a powerful reformulation of these narratives. One of the main strengths of this book is this simultaneous and tactful command of theory and literary practice. Apart from advocating the burgeoning development of women's writing of matrilineal narratives, the author also sheds new light on further research in the area of feminist motherhood and mothering.
Volume 12 of the Progress in Self Psychology series begins with reassessments of frustration and responsiveness, optimal and otherwise, by MacIsaac, Bacal and Thomson, the Shanes, and Doctors. The philosophical dimension of self psychology is addressed by Riker, who looks at Kohut's bipolar theory of the self, and Kriegman, who examines the subjectivism-objectivism dialectic in self psychology from the standpoint of evolutionary biology. Clinical studies focus on self- and mutual regulation in relation to therapeutic action, countertransference and the curative process, and the consequences of the negative selfobject in early character formation. A separate section of child studies includes a case study exemplifying a self-psychological approach to child therapy and an examination of pathological adaptation to childhood parent loss. With a concluding section of richly varied studies in applied self psychology, Basic Ideas Reconsidered promises to be basic reading for all students of contemporary self psychology.