Difficult Mothers: Understanding and Overcoming Their Power

Author: Terri Apter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393083926
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
An essential work for readers seeking compassionate, wise guidance about the powerful relationship between mothers and their sons and daughters. Mother love is often seen as sacred, but for many children the relationship is a painful struggle. Using the newest research on human attachment and brain development, Terri Apter, an internationally acclaimed psychologist and writer, unlocks the mysteries of this complicated bond. She showcases the five different types of difficult mother—the angry mother, the controlling mother, the narcissistic mother, the envious mother, and the emotionally neglectful mother—and explains the patterns of behavior seen in each type. Apter also explores the dilemma at the heart of a difficult relationship: why a mother has such a powerful impact on us and why we continue to care about her responses long after we have outgrown our dependence. She then shows how we can conduct an “emotional audit” on ourselves to overcome the power of the complex feelings a difficult mother inflicts. In the end this book celebrates the great resilience of sons and daughters of difficult mothers as well as acknowledging their special challenges.

Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters

Author: Karen C.L. Anderson
Publisher: Mango Media Inc.
ISBN: 1633537161
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
“An empowering book . . . strategies for freeing yourself from the control of an unhealthy mother relationship.” —Susan Forward PhD, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Toxic Parents For any adult daughter who struggles with a narcissistic, controlling, or otherwise difficult mother, here’s the good news: Your mother doesn't have to change in order for you to be happy. Inspired by her own journey, Karen C.L. Anderson shows women how to emotionally separate from their difficult mothers without guilt and anxiety, so they can finally create a life based on their own values, desires, needs, and preferences. With personal stories, practical tools, and journal prompts that can be used now to feel better. Anderson compassionately leads women struggling in their relationships with their difficult mothers through a process of self-awareness and understanding. Her experience with hundreds of women has resulted in cases of profound growth and transformation. This book is about Anderson discovering and accepting the whole of who she is (separate from her mother), and—in relatable, real, funny, and compassionate prose—making her discoveries accessible to women struggling to redefine their own challenging relationships with their mothers. Learn: · Why mothers and daughters can have difficult relationships · How to heal and transform your mother “wounds” · How to tell your stories in a way that empowers · How to handle the uncomfortable emotions that seem inevitable · The art of creating, articulating, and maintaining impeccable boundaries · How to stop “shouldering” How to “re-mother” yourself and acknowledge, honor, and meet your needs

For Mothers of Difficult Daughters

Author: Charney Herst
Publisher: Villard
ISBN: 0307804534
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
The first mother-daughter book for mothers, featuring a new Afterword and a Reading Group Discussion Guide ¸ Do you long for a better relationship with your daughter? ¸ Do you occasionally feel as though you have failed as a mother? ¸ Do you blame yourself because your relationship with your daughter is strained, faltering, or nonexistent? ¸ Do you feel that the relationship is unchangeable and that there is no chance that it could become a nurturing and deeply satisfying friendship? Dr. Charney Herst knows that there is always more than one side to a story, and in her book, For Mothers of Difficult Daughters, she uses her twenty-five years of experience as counselor and group therapist to provide mothers with solutions that work. In the book she first helps you understand your particular relationship with your grown daughter--untangling the complex web of personal history and intense emotion inherent in any mother-daughter relationship. Then she describes practical, successful, mother-tested steps you can take to repair this all-important bond.

Difficult

Author: Judith R. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538138891
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description
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.

The Difficult Mother-Daughter Relationship Journal

Author: Karen C.L. Anderson
Publisher: Mango Media Inc.
ISBN: 164250131X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
#1 New Release in Parent & Adult Child Relationships ─ Healing for Mothers and Daughters A compassionate guide: Karen C.L. Anderson is a storyteller, feminist, and speaker who views the world through the lens of curiosity and fascination. As a mother-daughter relationship expert, she gently guides readers through revealing painful patterns in their relationships to finding ultimate healing. Her book isn’t a quick fix. Rather, she writes to help mothers and daughters heal and either reconcile or peacefully separate. Tips and tools for healing: Anderson comes prepared in this book to offer readers practical advice for creating a healthier relationship. Her previous book, The Peaceful Daughter’s Guide to Separating from a Difficult Mother, was an international bestseller, and she offers new practical wisdom in this journal. From setting healthy boundaries to creating a new outlook, Anderson helps readers create peace in their troubled relationships. You’re not alone in the struggle: Studies suggest that nearly 30% of women have been estranged from their mothers at some point. It can be difficult to talk about the strain of mother and daughter relationships because they are so often glorified in our society as one of the most precious bonds. If anything, however, that makes them more important to talk about. Anderson’s book is ideal for mothers and daughters alike, whether they read it separately or together. Open it up and find: • Various prompts and practices for building a relationship around healthy interdependence rather than dysfunctional codependence • A way to transform things that create pain into a source of wisdom and creativity • An informative and intriguing self-care gift for women in the form of a healing journal Readers of self-help books such as Mothers Who Can’t Love, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters will find a wonderful source of help and healing in Anderson’s The Difficult Mother-Daughter Relationship Journal.

When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends

Author: Victoria Secunda
Publisher: Delta
ISBN: 0307431304
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Book Description
“A book of great value for every daughter and every mother; useful for sons, too.”—Benjamin Spock, M.D. From the Introduction: The goal of this book is to help readers achieve that separation so that they can either find a way to be friends with their mothers, or at least recognize and accept that their mothers did the best they could—even if it wasn't “good enough”—and to stop blaming them. Among the issues to be covered: • To understand how a daughter's attachment to her mother—more so than her relationship with her father—colors all her other relationships, and to analyze why it is more difficult for daughters than sons to separate from their mothers, as well as why daughters are more subject than sons to a mother's manipulation • To recognize the difference between a healthy and a destructive mother-daughter connection, and to define clearly the “bad mommy,” in order to help readers who have trouble acknowledging their childhood losses to begin to comprehend them • To conjugate what I call the “Bad Mommy Taboo”—why our culture is more eager to protect the sanctity of maternity than it is to protect emotionally abused daughters • To describe the evolution of the "unpleasable" mother—in all likelihood, she was bereft of maternal love as a child—and to recognize the huge, and often poignant, stake she has in keeping her grown daughter dependent and off-balance • To illustrate the consequent controlling behavior—in some cases, cloaked in fragility or good intentions—of such mothers, which falls into general patterns, including: the Doormat, the Critic, the Smotherer, the Avenger, the Deserter • To understand that the daughter has a similar stake in either being a slave to or hating her mother—the two sides of her depen dency and immaturity • To illustrate the responsive behavior—and survival mechanisms —of daughters, which is determined in part by such variables as birth rank, family history, and temperament, and which also falls into patterns, including: the Angel, the Superachiever, the Cipher, the Troublemaker, the Defector • To show how to redefine the mother-daughter relationship, so that each can learn to see and accept the other as she is today, appreciating each other's good qualities and not being snared by the bad • Finally, to demonstrate that a redefined relationship with one's mother—adult to adult—frees you from the past, whether that re definition ultimately results in real friendship, affectionate truce, or divorce.

The Peaceful Daughter's Guide to Separating from a Difficult Mother

Author: Karen C. L. Anderson
Publisher: Difference Press
ISBN: 9781942646693
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
Every woman has a mother story. A story she uses to define herself, to limit herself, to react from, to blame from, and to shame herself from. Using her own story, the author provides a series of thought-provoking concepts and tools to help adult daughters rewrite and transform their mother stories from tales of blame, shame, and reaction, to narratives of resilience, empowerment, and autonomy.This is NOT another "here's what's wrong with your mother" book!In The Peaceful Daughter's Guide to Separating from a Difficult Mother, Karen C.L. Anderson shares her down-to-earth and light-hearted wisdom and personal examples to illustrate the process she used to feel better about herself, using her relationship with her mother as the lens through which to focus.Readers will learn: ?* The difference between stories that hold you back and a story that sets you free.* What emotions really are, how to literally feel and process them, and how to safely express them.* The connection between thoughts and feelings.* The art of setting empowered boundaries.* How to stop "shoulding" when it comes to yourself and your mother.* How to start truly taking care of yourself and meet your own needs.Advance Praise for The Peaceful Daughter's Guide to Separating from a Difficult Mother"The work that Karen Anderson is doing with daughters in regards to their mothers is some of the most important work on the planet today. When we understand how influenced our minds are by what happened when we were growing up, we can then decide to let it go. In this book, Karen gives us the steps to do just that. I know from experience that this work is not easy, but it is by far the most important work I have ever done. Let Karen show you the way."~ Brooke Castillo, Master Coach Instructor & Founder of The Life Coach School

Wild Game

Author: Adrienne Brodeur
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 1328519031
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
On a hot July night on Cape Cod, at the age of 14, Brodeur became a confidante to her mother's affair with her husband's closest friend. Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help, but when the affair had calamitous consequences for everyone involved, Brodeau was driven into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. In her memoir she examines how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. -- adapted from jacket

Mothers Who Can't Love

Author: Susan Forward
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062204351
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Book Description
With Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters, Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of the smash #1 bestseller Toxic Parents, offers a powerful look at the devastating impact unloving mothers have on their daughters—and provides clear, effective techniques for overcoming that painful legacy. In more than 35 years as a therapist, Forward has worked with large numbers of women struggling to escape the emotional damage inflicted by the women who raised them. Subjected to years of criticism, competition, role-reversal, smothering control, emotional neglect and abuse, these women are plagued by anxiety and depression, relationship problems, lack of confidence, and difficulties with trust. They doubt their worth, and even their ability to love. Forward examines the Narcissistic Mother, the Competitive Mother, the Overly Enmeshed mother, the Control Freak, Mothers who need Mothering, and mothers who abuse or fail to protect their daughters from abuse. Filled with compelling case histories, Mothers Who Can’t Love outlines the self-help techniques Forward has developed to transform the lives of her clients, showing women how to overcome the pain of childhood and how to act in their own best interests. Warm and compassionate, Mothers Who Can’t Love offers daughters the emotional support and tools they need to heal themselves and rebuild their confidence and self-respect.

Tough Mothers

Author: Jason Porath
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062796100
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 644

Book Description
The author of Rejected Princesses returns with an inspiring, fully illustrated guide that brings together the fiercest mothers in history—real life matriarchs who gave everything to protect all they loved. Mothers possess the "maternal instinct"—an innate fierceness that drives them to nurture, safeguard, fight, and sacrifice for the most important things that matter to them. For some mothers, it’s their children. For others, it’s artistic expression, invention, social cause, or even a nation that they helped to birth. In Tough Mothers, Jason Porath brings his wisdom and wit to bear on fifty fascinating matriarchs. In concise, deeply researched vignettes, accompanied by charming illustrations, Porath illuminates these fearsome women, explores their lives, and pays tribute to their accomplishments. Here are famous women as well as lesser known figures from around the globe who have left their indelible mark as they changed the course of history, including: The Mother Who Sued to Save Her Children from Slavery—Sojourner Truth The Mother of Rock n’ Roll—Sister Rosetta Tharpe The Mother of Holocaust Children—Irena Sendler The Mothers of The Dominican Republic—The Mirabal Sisters The Mother of Yemen’s Golden Age—Arwa al-Sulayhi A celebration of motherhood and female achievement, Tough Mothers reminds us of the power of women to transform our lives and our world.