Mothers Who Can’t Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters
Mothers Who Can’t Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters… 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
Mothers Who Can’t Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters…
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.
The Validation I needed I always seem to be a good candidate for Susan’s books. I’ve read Emotional Blackmail, Toxic In-Laws, and I’ve already had the chance to skim over Toxic Parents. I was so impatient for this book: Mothers Who Can’t Love to come out. How thoroughly relieving that someone dares to challenge the world’s greatest taboo: Unloving Mothers. I was born to a woman who should have never been allowed to be a mother. Since cutting off my ties with my mother, I have been urged to reconcile and have been criticized with every line possible. I’ve heard the “she gave you life” and “honour thy mother”. I’ve been told to try to understand her because of lack of education. I’ve been told to suck it up because everyone knew how she was. Susan lists all these cliches. The queen mother of all criticism and threats is: “I hope when you have kids, they will not do this to you.” Susan understands how hard it is to come to terms with not having a loving mother and how it’s even harder to defend your decision…
Mothers Who Can’t Love This book is truly about SURVIVAL for those of us who grew up as a hostage in this kind of home life. Some reviewers have pinged this book for spelling/grammatical errors, and I concede that is true; however, the true meat of the book is in the insights and background that give a basis for beginning to understand someone who is otherwise not understandable, as well as pointing out which patterns are in fact abusive. Doesn’t excuse what was done; just makes it less alien and gives hope for healing the damage. Even just RECOGNIZING that damage really did happen is huge; my experience was that the so-called “helping agencies” (the court system, counselors, authors of pop psych books, doctors, friends and family’s perception) did NOT help, but in fact increased the damage by taking the easy way out and telling me it was “all in my head” and “she couldn’t have done that.” This book has had a huge impact on my life already, and I will undoubtedly re-read it many…