If You Had Controlling Parents: How to Make Peace with Your Past and Take Your Place in the World

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 272 pages
• Published by: Harper Paperbacks September 8, 1999
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0060929324
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0060929329
• Book Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 7 ounces

Product Review
As Edmund Burke said, "The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse." This is sometimes excruciatingly true with parents. There are the typically anxious ones who get a little uptight about letting their teenagers borrow the car, and then there are the rigid kinds who will not even let their kids leave the house when they want to--or even eat or go to the bathroom when they need to.

Written for the 14 million adult children who've survived an upbringing with the latter type of parents, If You Had Controlling Parents takes the classic Toxic Parents to a new level. Author Dan Neuharth, Ph.D., a family therapist, knows his subject thoroughly; he survived a childhood with a father who has the candor to refer to himself as "an S.O.B."

Neuharth says, "If your parents controlled you in unhealthy ways, they may have planted land mines in your psyche." Research shows that behaviors and traits exhibited by adult children of controlling parents include the following: depression, low self-esteem, distorted self-image, eating disorders and other addictions, stress-related health problems, inability to sustain an intimate relationship, and more. While this may seem like a heavy lot to handle, Neuharth maintains there's always hope of overcoming the past and changing yourself--even if it means making the drastic move of cutting off contact with one or both of your parents.

He gives a lengthy self-test to determine if your parents were controlling; gives profiles of eight typical styles of controlling parents to help you better recognize how you may be presently affected by your upbringing; and then delves into the process of understanding why your parents acted the way they did in order to start healing emotionally. This is especially important, he says, if you now have children of your own and want to stop the damaging cycle of parental control. He doesn't give a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all recovery plan, but rather suggests several "paths to healing" and exercises to help you, as he terms it, "emotionally leave home." The book's subtitle--"A Guide for Letting Go of Anxiety, Self-Blame and Perfectionism and Improving Assertiveness, Boundaries and Confidence"--says it all. This is self-help at its best. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Although the term "controlling parent" most often brings to mind a domineering parent, there are actually several ways in which a parent may use control. Labeling the types as smothering, cultlike, abusing, using, depriving, perfectionistic, chaotic, and childlike, Neuharth describes the characteristics of each, giving examples. The emphasis is on understanding parenting behaviors and their effects, as the author asserts that understanding is the key to future therapeutic success. The final section describes some steps, e.g., emotionally leaving home and writing down one's experiences, as coping techniques. These ideas are not innovative, but, as self-help materials are always in demand, this would be a beneficial purchase for most public libraries.?Susan McCaffrey, Haslett H.S., MI
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This book is one of the best self help books I have read in a long time. It dealt more with the emotional than the physical abuse in childhood. I have always had a hard time because to me emotional abuse specially when mixed with religion can be so easily justified in your mind. You can feel like "something is really wrong here", but then in the same breath say "well they love me so much and are just obeying God and what he requires of parents". I have been eaten up with guilt for the rebellion against my parents that I displayed as a teenager. Now though I realize I rebelled against their control, not against them inorder to hurt them or make them miserable. I read this book, started seeing a therapist and confronted my parents and let me tell you how much freedom I feel for the first time in life. I actually feel happy, and a great sense of hope. What do I owe my parents? Why am I so fearful of hurting their feelings? Why can't I just do what is healthy for me? The book answered these questions and the exercises were wonderful. We need more books like this one because obviously there is a problem in parenting that needs to be looked at and changed fast! Kids are becoming more violent, less respectful of authority, and completely losing any conscience what-so-ever. So if I can break the generation sin that has been passed down for generations, then I am thankful I was put in the home I was put in and strong enough to SURVIVE!