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Family.
We all have one.
And with all the gifts they bring, along comes at least a few lumps of coal-from some friction to downright anger and dysfunction.
What’s a healthy family anyway? What’s a toxic one? Where is the middle ground? And how do you navigate family relationships to negotiate conflict resolution?
WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY FAMILY explores the problems stemming from even the healthiest to the most destructive ones. Most important, it teaches what issues arise within you from your own family of origin, and how to heal from the wounds. A book of hope, it shows that no matter where you come from, you can live your best life anyway.
What’s Wrong With My Family? And How to Live Your Best Life Anyway
is available in ebook and paperback on Amazon.
This book is FILLED with tools to help you heal. From the moment you came into the world, you were either treated well or not. Yes, there are in-betweens. The thing is, if you were not treated well and want to enjoy your life in spite of this, this book is what can help you. Learn how you can become a better person. Learn how you can move on and be who you want to be. Learn what you want in life. It’s much like a toolbox. Read the book. Put it on your shelf and dig it out when you need a tool. Put it back on the shelf for the next time you need it. We all come from a family. How did you come out? –Judith Peterson
Introduction
Down the rabbit hole
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” –Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
“My family is so awful. It’s impossible to be around my relatives without getting upset, but I have no choice. You can’t choose your family, can you. I should have been raised by wolves!”
This scene has repeated in my office and on hospital rounds countless times in my years as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Variations occur with my friends and neighbors, and yes, within my own family and household. The sentiment is universal.
So, is everybody’s family dysfunctional? Actually, yes! It’s just a matter of degree. Can you “fix” your family dysfunction? With about the same degree of success as bending spoons with your brain waves. But you can adjust to your family and sometimes influence the whole. And, you can still have your “best life” regardless of the nature of whatever pack of wolves from which you might have emerged.
The trick is to understand what actually happened, and what is happening to you, and to set a course through your own values and boundaries to escape unscathed. You must be you, but still a part of “them.” Daunting perhaps, but very possible.
Because we literally cannot escape our families.
What’s Wrong With My Family? And How to Live Your Best Life Anyway
is available in ebook and paperback on Amazon.