IF YOU ARE A PARENT, SCHOOLTEACHER, LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, or mental healthcare provider, Toxic Families, Violent Lives lays out what you need to know about what is causing heightened levels of childhood/adolescent mental illness, behavioral disorders, juvenile alcohol and substance abuse, gang membership, school dropouts, teen pregnancies, and pervasive crime and violence. Toxic Families, Violent Lives gets at the root of the problem. It's all about the impediments to healthy childhood/adolescent physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, and moral development. This book identifies a range of adverse childhood experiences that are the direct result of toxic family life rooted in poor parenting practices, and a range of dysfunctional and problematic parent behavior stemming from adult mental illness, alcohol and substance abuse, obsessions, insecurities, depression, anxiety, and maladaptive coping mechanisms. Parents need to understand the importance of developing a parent-child attachment, and a child’s self-control, empathy, and moral foundation. What can parents, schoolteachers, law enforcement, and mental health professionals do? Understand the pathways and pitfalls to healthy childhood / adolescent development and take an active role in that process. This book takes a read it, understand it, and apply it approach to the problem.

A warm, empathetic guide to understanding, coping with, and healing from the unique pain of sibling estrangement "Whenever I tell people that I am working on a book about sibling estrangement, they sit up a little straighter and lean in, as if I've tapped into a dark secret." Fern Schumer Chapman understands the pain of sibling estrangement firsthand. For the better part of forty years, she had nearly no relationship with her only brother, despite many attempts at reconnection. Her grief and shame were devastating and isolating. But when she tried to turn to others for help, she found that a profound stigma still surrounded estrangement, and that very little statistical and psychological research existed to help her better understand the rift that had broken up her family. So she decided to conduct her own research, interviewing psychologists and estranged siblings as well as recording the extraordinary story of her own rift with her brother--and subsequent reconciliation. Brothers, Sisters, Strangers is the result--a thoughtfully researched memoir that illuminates both the author's own story and the greater phenomenon of estrangement. Chapman helps readers work through the challenges of rebuilding a sibling relationship that seems damaged beyond repair, as well as understand when estrangement is the best option. It is at once a detailed framework for understanding sibling estrangement, a beacon of solidarity and comfort for the estranged, and a moving memoir about family trauma, addiction, grief, and recovery.

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.

"Surviving the Toxic Family" is a valuable book for anyone trying to recover from the devastating effects of growing up in a toxic or dysfunctional family. Drawing on engaging case studies, this book shows you how it is possible to recover from the trauma associated with a toxic family and leads you through the process to complete recovery. This book utilizes a three step process: Understanding why your family acts the way they do and why they treated you so poorly Changing the rules so that you do not have to continue being mistreated by them Taking your life back and living a life that's more authentic and genuine "Surviving The Toxic Family" promises to be a valuable tool for anyone who has a dysfunctional family, those with a loved one whom struggles with their family, and for therapists seeking to help clients from toxic families. This book provides practical hands-on strategies for surviving even the most toxic and dysfunctional families.

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.

In this compelling book, Elan Golomb identifies the crux of the emotional and psychological problems of millions of adults. Simply put, the children of narcissist—offspring of parents whose interest always towered above the most basic needs of their sons and daughters—share a common belief: They believe they do not have the right to exist. The difficulties experienced by adult children of narcissists can manifest themselves in many ways: for examples, physical self-loathing that takes form of overeating, anorexia, or bulimia; a self-destructive streak that causes poor job performance and rocky personal relationships; or a struggle with the self that is perpetuated in the adult's interaction with his or her own children. These dilemmas are both common and correctable, Dr. Golomb tells us. With an empathic blend of scholarship and case studies, along with her own personal narrative of her fight for self, Dr. Golomb plumbs the depths of this problem, revealing its mysterious hold on the affairs of otherwise bright, aware, motivated, and worthy people. Trapped in the Mirror explores. the nature of the paralysis and lack of motivation so many adults feel stress and its role in exacerbating childhood wrongs why do many of our relationships seem to be "reruns" of the past how one's body image can be formed by faulty parenting how anger must be acknowledge to be overcome and, most important, how even the most traumatized self can be healed. Rooted in a profoundly humanist traditional approach, and suffused with the benefit of the latest knowledge about intrafamily relationships, Trapped in the Mirror offers more than the average self-help book; it is truly the first self-heal book for millions.

"Highly irreverent, but filled with wisdom and infused with deep caring, Mixed Nuts is a memoir of a life working in psychotherapy." "Some people assume that all therapists are new-agey hand-holders who just listen and nod like bobbleheads, then suggest an astrology reading, a gluten-free diet, and your choice of complimentary love flower or polished healing stone on your way out the door. That's not me. My job is to help fix what's broken." Speaking to the layperson and the practitioner alike, even Rick's signature humor can't hide his deep understanding of mental illness, his desire to help heal it quickly and effectively, and his pragmatic and often creative approach to treatment."