The coronavirus pandemic has brought new and challenging interpersonal situations into our lives. Each challenge is an opportunity to assert who we are, and what we truly need to live happy, healthy lives.

Have you recently walked away from a date or a conversation feeling uncomfortable or violated? Are you looking for ways to set limits with your spouse, kids, parents, or boss? This essential guide to setting and respecting boundaries is for anyone wanting to better understand themselves and others.

Just as a cut in our skin causes pain and injury, a breach of any of our physical, emotional, or sexual boundaries can be very harmful to our bodies and minds. We may need help to heal from past boundary violations, respect the boundaries of those around us, and learn how to set healthy limits for the future, particularly if we have a history of trauma, unhealthy relationships, addiction, or adverse childhood experiences. Drawing on decades of personal and professional experience as a therapist--as well as stories from others who have learned how to heal from serious boundary violations--Anne Katherine, MA, brings us an invaluable, foundational guide on the who, what, and why of boundaries. With nearly 100,000 copies sold, Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin has already helped thousands of readers stand up for themselves and nurture healthier relationship

Some of the topics covered in The Narcissist's Playbook are:

-What manipulation is and isn't.
-How to spot manipulative behaviors early (and why most people struggle with this).
-How and why people get caught up with manipulators, and why they have a hard time breaking free.
-How to identify the emotional hook that is keeping you stuck in manipulation and what you can do about it.
- How to effectively disable manipulation as it is happening.
- How to identify the common personality traits that are frequently exploited by manipulators.

Instant New York Times Bestseller

From the bestselling author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace, a road map for understanding and moving past family struggles--and living your life, your way.

Every family has a story. For some of us, our family of origin is a solid foundation that feeds our confidence and helps us navigate life's challenges. For others, it's a source of pain, hurt, and conflict that can feel like a lifelong burden. In this empowering guide, licensed therapist and bestselling relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab offers clear advice for identifying dysfunctional family patterns and choosing the best path to breaking the cycle and moving forward.
Covering topics ranging from the trauma of emotional neglect, to the legacy of addicted or absent parents, to mental health struggles in siblings and other relatives, and more, this clear and compassionate guide will help you take control of your own life--and honor the person you truly are.

Cutting ties with a toxic family member is a crucial step away from a legacy of dysfunction and toward healing and happiness. This compassionate guide will help you embrace your decision with a sense of pride, validation, and faith in yourself; and provides powerful tools for creating boundaries, coping with judgment, and overcoming self-doubt.

Do you have a toxic family member? Do you feel like cutting ties with this person--even as painful and scary as that may sound--would dramatically increase your well-being and improve your life? You're not alone. Severing ties with a family member can be devastating; and cutting this toxic person out of your life may bring up feelings of guilt and uncertainty--especially if you feel judged by others regarding your decision. Fortunately, you can free yourself from this toxic family member in a healthy, responsible, and liberating way.

In Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members, psychologist and toxic-family survivor Sherrie Campbell offers effective strategies for setting strong boundaries after ending contact with a toxic family member, and provides powerful tools to help you heal from shame, self-doubt, and stigma. You'll find the validation you need to embrace your decision with pride and acknowledgement of your self-worth. You'll learn how to let go of negative thoughts and feelings. And finally, you'll develop the skills needed to rediscover self-care, self-love, self-reliance, and healthy loving relationships.

Whether you're ready to sever ties with a toxic family member, or already have, this book will help guide you, every step of the way.

I read Jessie and Calen's book with my heart in my throat, at times, my eyes burning with tears. It is a gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately, life affirming, step-by-step account of how mental illness can shatter a family, but also how that family, through love and resilience, can not only survive, but triumph.--Glenn Close

Writing the book was like putting it back together, my fall into psychosis and how I began to recover.--Calen T. Pick, featured in People

For eighteen years, everyone looked up to Oliver. He was smart, funny, good-looking, and a talented artist. Everyone wanted to be his friend. But after his eighteenth birthday, he became morose and moody. He watched familiar faces melt into unknown strangers. Oliver fights to silence the sinister voice that tells him scary things as he tries to exist in a world that no longer makes sense to him. Oliver's parents and siblings grapple with how to help him find treatment while his delusions, anxiety, and hallucinations intensify. However, finding treatment proves to be even more difficult since Oliver's mother is bipolar and his father holds onto the denial he has regarding Oliver's increasingly dangerous behaviors.

Based on the authors' own experiences, Silence You follows a family coping with crisis. Oliver, the eldest son, is suffering from schizophrenia. As he goes through treatment, his parents and siblings deal with the repercussions. In particular, Oliver's mother, Elizabeth, must come to terms with her own mental illness and the role it may have played in Oliver's illness.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Drama Free and Set Boundaries, Find Peace, a hands-on resource for understanding and working through dysfunctional family dynamics--and recognizing when to walk away

Family can be a source of connection, and a source of conflict. In this exercise-filled workbook, licensed therapist and bestselling relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab offers powerful insights along with thought-provoking questions to help you unpack what's really going on--and express your needs and expectations going forward.
Whether you are coping with a long-term pattern of emotional neglect, addiction, or abuse, or trying to understand a new conflict that's come up with a parent, sibling, or in-law, you will find empowering information and tools to help you manage these complex relationships in a way that offers psychological safety and honors the person you truly are.

In Ungrieving, a memoir about family dysfunction and estrangement, religious doubt, and complex relationships, Jennifer Stolpa Flatt provides others with the book she needed but couldn't find. The insights will resonate with those who have experienced family divisions or who support those who do, and those who struggle to let go of the relationships they wanted but never had.

After a lifetime of emotional abuse, verbal attacks, and controlling behaviors, including a four-year estrangement from a man she called Daddy despite not feeling the warmth the nickname implies, her father's death left her struggling to make sense of their fractured relationship.

She felt both a sense of relief and a profound sadness:

I don't miss him and I feel guilty admitting that.

Sometimes I do miss him. And that confuses me.

Through relatable and compelling stories and essays, Flatt places readers in key moments throughout her family's journey, demonstrating how she, her sister, and her mom suffered as collateral damage due to her dad's untreated depression. The memoir artfully weaves in passages from her dad's journals, allowing her to explore his pain, his dreams, and his parenting choices.

Flatt also explores how Catholicism, changing her religious faith, music, mental illness, counseling, and feminism both united and separated her from her father.

Ungrieving challenges readers to think carefully about what we say to ourselves and what we say to others in moments of grief. Flatt's journey also helps ease the guilt readers might feel around strained relationships, questioning religion, or mental health concerns as readers learn to see themselves and others as individuals, and not only in relationship to others.

. . . a prime example of how sharing one's story with powerful vulnerability can deeply impact others. -Elizabeth Lyons, author of Write the Damn Book Already

This courageous memoir is proof that we can be cycle breakers. -Kim Strobel, speaker, author, educator, and happiness coach

What if your parents weren't really your parents?

What if somebody you loved kept a deep, dark secret from you for your entire life?

What if your real family was right next door all along?

In the summer of 2021, when author Margo Reilly published her tell-all memoir, When the Apple Falls from the Tree, she hadn't a single clue that an at-home DNA test kit would send her midlife identity crisis further into uncharted waters.

When You Shake the Family Tree is a vulnerable sharing of Margo's search for self. An emotional quest of connecting the dots that suddenly made her whole life make sense. Rejection and family secrets were themes she knew all too well. Her jaw-dropping DNA discovery journey will force you to grab your tissues and question whether you've been told the truth by your family.

Dive into these pages to learn how Margo followed her intuition to uncover who she truly is.

Escape the family trap, help your loved one on the road to recovery, and take back your life.

If you have a family member who suffers from mental illness, but refuses to seek treatment, you may feel like you're caught in a trap. If you try making life easier for your loved one, you wind up perpetuating dependency and entitlement. If you push for treatment, you are met with resistance or outright animosity. And when you reach out to professionals for help, you are told that nothing can be done unless your family member is ready to change. So, how can you escape the family trap?

Written by clinicians and introducing the innovative family well-being approach (FWBA), this essential guide provides validation and doable strategies for anyone who feels trapped by a family member or loved one suffering from mental illness. Using the skills in this book, you'll learn how your responses to your loved one can worsen and even perpetuate the very problems you are trying to resolve. You'll also discover ways to promote healthy behavior in recovery avoiders, but only after the whole family is emotionally and strategically prepared to follow through successfully.

The family well-being approach outlined in this book is based on established principles of behavior change, family interaction research, and more than three decades of clinical experience. If you're feeling caught in a trap with a loved one who won't seek help--also known as a recovery avoider--this practical guide can help you find your way out, once and for all.

Anne Hope, daughter of German immigrants and wife to an ambitious but abrasive husband, only wants what is best for her two daughters. In a world of mid-century conformity and female oppression, this path is fraught with pitfalls, and actions often bring unintended consequences. Anne finds refuge in a summer home within the Colorado woods, but a mental-health crisis soon emerges, one that will rewrite her sense of self and her family's future.

In this stirring family saga, My Mother's Autobiography takes readers on a journey from the highs of the sweeping Colorado mountains to the lows of cold sanitariums: all written with heart-wrenching empathy from the pen of one of Anne's daughters.

In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family whose members blamed their woes on ghosts and demons when in fact they should have been on anti-psychotic meds.

Lindsay Wong grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic grandmother and a mother who was deeply afraid of the woo-woo--Chinese ghosts who come to visit in times of personal turmoil. From a young age, she witnessed the woo-woo's sinister effects; at the age of six, she found herself living in the food court of her suburban mall, which her mother saw as a safe haven because they could hide there from dead people, and on a camping trip, her mother tried to light Lindsay's foot on fire to rid her of the woo-woo.

The eccentricities take a dark turn, however, when her aunt, suffering from a psychotic breakdown, holds the city of Vancouver hostage for eight hours when she threatens to jump off a bridge. And when Lindsay herself starts to experience symptoms of the woo-woo herself, she wonders whether she will suffer the same fate as her family.

On one hand a witty and touching memoir about the Asian immigrant experience, and on the other a harrowing and honest depiction of the vagaries of mental illness, The Woo-Woo is a gut-wrenching and beguiling manual for surviving family, and oneself.

Paula was broken, traumatized, and bound by many addictions, but today she is free. And that is God's desire for you, too

Paula Jauch's life was controlled by trauma and addiction. Born into neglect and addiction, she inherited self-destructive patterns and emotional prisons she could not escape. She experimented with crack at age thirteen, became pregnant at fifteen, was initiated into a Hispanic gang, and bore her second child by the time she was eighteen. Starved for acceptance and worth, she began cutting her body, and developed a near-fatal eating disorder for twenty years.

Cross Addicted follows Paula's raw, stumbling journey toward freedom. You will find renewed hope and practical steps of recovery . -Recognize that there is nothing wrong with you.

• Learn how to forgive yourself and others.
• Understand addiction and trauma and the healing process through recovery.
• Find freedom by understanding what Jesus did on the cross.

Powerful tools to help you accept your decision, manage intense emotions, and thrive.

Estrangement from one or both parents--even by choice--can take a huge emotional and psychological toll. If you have cut ties with a parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, guilt, and shame. You may question or second-guess your decision. And you may have trouble setting or keeping boundaries with your parent, as well as others in your life. This workbook offers evidence-based skills to help you heal the emotional wounds of your past, so you can finally move forward.

With this compassionate guide, you'll identify the reasons why you cut ties, so you can accept and feel validated in your decision. You'll discover powerful tools to help you manage intense emotions, develop healthy coping strategies, and build a lasting and trustworthy support network. Most importantly, you'll learn to cultivate self-compassion and live your life authentically--on your own terms.

You'll also find step-by-step guidance to:

• Grieve your losses and release guilt, anxiety, shame, and anger
• Understand and overcome the effects of difficult family relationships
• Manage difficult days and occasions like holidays, weddings, and funerals
• Maintain boundaries and build healthy relationships

They say that family comes first; but it shouldn't be at the expense of your mental health, happiness, or future. If you've decided to cut ties, this book will help you confirm that you've made the right choice, and give you the tools you need to live your life with confidence.

A life-affirming manual on how to confront toxic family dynamics and find emotional freedom from your past.

How many times have you heard that family is sacred, even when your reality is different? Resilience and well-being coach Josh Connolly knows statements like You'll miss them when they're gone or Blood is thicker than water doesn't apply to everyone. With candor and compassion, he tackles the harsh reality of toxic family dynamics and provides the tools you need to deal with emotionally immature parents

It's Them, Not You helps you get unstuck and overcome past trauma, with:

• A deeply validating breakdown of how toxic parents operate and empowering tips to set clear boundaries that stick
  

• A step-by-step recovery process that combines breathwork with inner child healing and other therapeutic methodologies.
  

• Exercises and journaling prompts that support cognitive and emotional healing with deep reflection and self-compassion.
  
• Links to videos for guided conscious breathwork sessions to reconnect the mind and body and release stuck trauma safely.

Whether your solution is to go no contact, place new boundaries, or reconnect with community, this book is the ultimate handbook to reclaim your agency and freedom.

Cuando la violencia en la casa de mis padres, y el abuso físico y emocional que me causaba, pensé que al casarme todo terminaría. Sin embargo, cuando nacieron mis hijos y él empezó a beber, me di cuenta de que ya no estaba bien allí y le dije que me iría, que no podía vivir así. Estaba tratando de escapar de ese ambiente, pero me amenazó con que no me iría con mis hijos, que se quedarían con él. Fue entonces cuando miré mi prisión con la llave en la mano porque no sabía cómo resolver ese problema, pero los niños estarían conmigo y mi salud empeoraba. Más tarde, a pesar de ser profesional en Cosmetología y tener mi propio negocio que me hacía feliz, seguía siendo infeliz en casa, sintiendo que no había resuelto nada.

Después, fui a los Estados Unidos cuando mi salud se estaba deteriorando, pero tuve que llevar a todos conmigo porque no podía dejar a los niños atrás. Desafortunadamente, mi situación empeoró más tarde porque el alcoholismo de mi esposo no se podía controlar y ya no estaba dispuesta a soportarlo. Cuando se dio cuenta de que ya no podía controlarme, una noche amenazó con matar a los niños y a mí. Me di cuenta de que esas palabras no podían quedarse en el aire, así que busqué ayuda porque no iba a arriesgar más la vida de mis hijos. Gracias a la intervención de la policía, pudimos salvar nuestras vidas, y gracias a Dios, pudieron lograr sus metas de ir a la universidad y ahora vivir en paz. Cuando se ama, estoy abarcando de lo que estoy hablando, la esencia de lo que trata la historia.

To forgive as we have been forgiven is, in my opinion, the most difficult thing in Christianity. The Christian life is one big miracle. As believers, everything in our lives that is genuine is the result of Divine intervention. But to forgive as Christ forgives us, so much that as He looks at us today, He doesn't condemn us for any of the sins that we have committed against Him throughout the years. David Childers, in this book, affirms that we can learn to forgive in this same way, so much so that we are still able to remember the person who hurt us and we are not made slaves to those destructive emotions. If they have hurt you, the truth in Biblical forgiveness can make you free. It doesn't matter how brutal the trauma is that you lived through. Read this book and follow the author's recommended steps and you will see how God Himself will do a miracle in your life and you will be able to forgive. Scott K. Smith (Missionary to Spain) David LeRoy Childers is a Summa Cum Laude Graduate from Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, California. Since 1985, David LeRoy Childers has served in Las Vegas, Nevada as the Founding and Senior Pastor of Peace Way Christian Center. He is currently the Executive Presbyter for the State of Nevada for The Assemblies of God. He has studied the subject of Forgiveness for over 40 years and has presented The Biblical Forgiveness Seminar in many different nations. He and his wife, Madeline, have been happily married since 1981 and have been blessed with two wonderful children. David firmly believes the saying, To err is human, but to forgive is divine. We can touch the heartbeat of God when we practice the message of Jesus, which is FORGIVENESS

After her beloved dad got addicted to right-wing talk radio and Fox News, Jen Senko feared he would never be the same again...

Frank Senko had always known how to have a good time. Despite growing up in a poverty-stricken family during the Depression and having to fight his way to middle-class status as an adult, he tended to look on the bright side. But after a job change forced Frank to begin a long car commute every day, his daughter Jen noticed changes in his personality and beliefs. Long hours on the road listening to talk radio commentators like Rush Limbaugh sucked her father into a suspicion-laden worldview dominated by conspiracy theories, fake news, and rants about the coastal elite and libtards trying to destroy America.

Over the course of a few years, Jen's dad went from a nonpolitical, open-minded Democrat to a radical, angry, and intolerant right-wing devotee who became a stranger to those closest to him. As politics began to take precedence over everything else in her father's life, Jen was mystified. What happened to her dad? Was there anything she could do to help? And, most importantly, would he ever be his lovable self again? Jen began the search for answers, and found them... as well stories from countless other families like her own.

Based on the award-winning documentary, The Brainwashing of My Dad uncovers the alarming right-wing strategy to wield the media as a weapon against our very democracy. Jen's story shows us how Fox News and other ultra-conservative media outlets are reshaping the way millions of Americans view the world, and encourages us to fight back.

Do you have a narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath in your life, or think that you might?
Do you continually feel anxious around someone in your life, but can't pinpoint why?
Do conversations seem to go off track, leaving you feeling knocked off balance and confused?
Does it feel like they are making your life a living hell, but they insist that you are too sensitive, crazy, or to blame?
Perhaps you know you are being manipulated or abused, but don't know how to make it stop.The Narcissist's Playbook can help.
Dana Morningstar is a domestic violence advocate, author, podcaster, YouTuber, speaker, and group leader. She writes from personal as well as professional experience in the field of domestic violence awareness, narcissistic abuse, and advocacy.
Some of the topics covered in The Narcissist's Playbook are:
- What manipulation is and isn't.
-How to spot manipulative behaviors early (and why most people struggle with this).
- How and why people get caught up with manipulators, and why they have a hard time breaking free.
- How to identify the emotional hook that is keeping you stuck in manipulation and what you can do about it.
- How to effectively disable manipulation as it is happening.
- How to identify the common personality traits that are frequently exploited by manipulators.
You can take back your life. The Narcissist's Playbook tells you how.

All my life I have been fascinated with females. As a little boy they had a way of making me smile. They gave me a sense of fulfillment. I liked everything about them like their appearance and the way they walked and talked. I liked the way they smiled. I just liked looking at them. I truly thank God for women. Even now as a man I feel the same way. This book's first note was written in 2010 on a small piece of paper. I think it was a receipt from the grocery store or something. If just one person or a couple can build a healthy relationship with God involved that culminates into marriage or someone's marriage can be saved, my writing this book will not be in vain. Kyle enjoys Xbox, Playstation, and motorcycling. A native of Chicago, Kyle Williams shares consequences of his sexual experiences in unhealthy relationships. He has learned to say no to sex in unhealthy relationships from knowledge and understanding from God. He has learned that if you want something to be good, put God in it. Kyle does not want anyone else to suffer the way that he did from unhealthy sexual relationships. This is his story.

Who makes you anxious? A family member, boss or co-worker? A member of your church?

You can't change them. But you can change yourself.

Understanding your family of origin is the first step. Read this book and you will:

• Understand the principles that govern how families function.
• Learn how to take responsibility for yourself and no one else.
• Learn how you can be a non-anxious presence in your family, workplace and congregation.

If You Met My Family, You'd Understand takes a complicated subject, Family Systems Theory, and makes it easy to understand. It will teach you how your family of origin influences your thoughts and actions, and how awareness and intentionality can help you to find new, more healthy ways of being.