What are toxic parents? They are parents who caused us emotional or physical pain. Parents who ignored our needs or overburdened us with guilt. Parents who were alcoholic or abused drugs. Parents who were indifferent and inadequate, or exploitative and cruel. All toxic parents cause damage to their children—damage that manifests itself in adulthood as difficulties with relationships, careers, decision making, and depression. Millions of adults suffer from the hurtful legacy of toxic parents, often without knowing it.
It wasn’t your fault.
In this landmark new book, bestselling author and psychologist Dr. Susan Forward confronts the legacy of toxic parents—and shows why it is so difficult to leave behind. In both her private psychotherapy practice and on her national radio call-in program, Dr. Forward has encouraged thousands of men and women who have suffered the severe emotional aftereffects of toxic parents—and yet have made little, if any, conscious connection between how their parents treated them and their current problems. Like most of us, they idealized their parents and believed that everything bad in their childhood was somehow their fault. They were still struggling to win the parental love and approval they had always yearned for but never received. At the core of every adult child of toxic parents—no matter how strong or successful he or she may appear—is a blameless child whose trust has been betrayed.
“A dynamic, powerful, hard-hitting book. It offers tremendous hope, as well as understanding. It could truly be a lifesaver.”
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“I consider Susan Forward to be among the foremost therapists of our age. In Toxic Parents she offers us a penetrating model of how to heal the frozen grief of our dysfunctional past…. Please read this book!”
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