Friday Five: Five Books on a Theme

Well, it seems to be self-help/healing journey week here in the House of Strudel, so I think I’ll recommend five books that have been useful for me. Maybe they’ll strike a chord for someone else, or give an idea for suggestions for someone you know who might get some worth out of them.

1. I think the first book that really gave me a significant helping hand years ago, was Susan Forward’s Toxic Parents. There are forms of child abuse that are unmistakably abusive – physical and sexual abuse, the abuse sequence resulting from alcoholic parents, neglect, etc. There are also more insidious forms of abuse, and depending on the intensity of what one lived with as a child, and how the abusive parent continues to abuse the adult offspring, effects can really warp a person’s life.

I think this book does a good job of presenting baselines for what’s normal, showing some fairly mild (and some not so mild) case examples, not of child abuse, but of how those abuses effect adults, and how parents who are abusive will continue to find new, maliciously creative ways of continuing to try to keep the abusive system in place. The author also offers proactive means of counteracting those nasty “strings” that abusive parents use to tie their kids to the dysfunctional system, and she offers some good, helpful, motivation-bolstering self-talk for breaking the bonds of abuse so that they do not interfere with one’s daily adult life.

And it gives things a NAME. It’s important for things to have a name. Things that are named can be researched, discussed, healed, identified, raged at, spurned, examined, rejected, and overcome. Until they are named, they feel like amorphous failure, like something shaming or wrong within you. Once named, they can be excised, like a tumor, and you can take back control, set up systems to avoid them in the future, and de-intensify them and their effects on yourself.

As a parent, I re-read this book periodically to make sure that I am not visiting my mother’s demons upon my children inadvertently – as a self-check to make sure I’m living up to my goal of doing as little damage to my kids as possible, keeping it honest and real, admitting my areas of short-comings so that my children don’t think things are their fault, etc. It also helps me understand the pressures my husband feels from his parents and that whole system, which was less overtly damaging but which has affected his adult life as well.

2. Grace Mitchell’s A Very Practical Guide to Discipline with Young Children. Before I had kids, I knew that I would need help raising them, beyond the help any parent ordinarily needs. I had no good examples for parenting young children up to the teen years. From the teen years on, I had excellent examples to draw from – my Dad and Stepmom were fabulous at parenting me, the teen, but those early years were going to be a problem for me. I asked my spouse and my friends to let me put them on my “call” list, reminded them I had issues from being an abused child, and that I would need consultants to keep me on the path of good parenting, and did they feel up to being there for me. They did, and it did help. However, sometimes their answers didn’t seem right either.

I had read the usual monstrous library of parenting books handed out to new moms, the free stuff that comes in the mail, and everything in the library. This book was the hidden diamond for me. Written by a long-time preschool director, mother, and grandmother (all the same person!), it combines information on ordinary child development with strategies for coping with things that may be difficult, offers a mnemonic for addressing problems (AHIC), and urges compassion and understanding. It’s a very human book, and it gave me a paradigm shift in thinking about discipline.

I had been afraid of discipline because with my upbringing, discipline meant punishment. I didn’t want to be a lax parent with my children running amok either, or so afraid of myself that I could not rationally address this necessary aspect of parenting. Here is the phrase that helped me stop being afraid of myself and helped me become a confident, and I think, a pretty good parent:

“Discipline is the slow, bit-by-bit, time consuming task of helping children see the sense in acting in a certain way.”

And the follow up:

“Whether they deserve it or not and whether they like it or not, [parents and teachers] they wear the halos of heroes. Every child really wants to bask in the sunshine of approval of a favored adult…The word ‘discipline’ stems from ‘disciple’ and a disciple is one who identifies with his leader, and who consciously tries to follow in his footsteps…”

Bingo moment for BoS – discipline is not, as is commonly misinterpreted, punishment. Discipline is modeling appropriate behavior, teaching kids to make reasonable choices, teaching them to take care of themselves and teaching them why. And it takes time, patience, dedication, maturity, open communication, clear and appropriate consequences, etc. I could do that, and to the best of my ability, I have tried to stick to it, too. Sometimes I bore the crap out of myself as well as my kids as a result, BUT! It works, it fits within my conscience and my comfort zone, keeps me pretty calm, and the results are fine, indeed, for all of us.

On a highly personal level, the Practical Guide pointed out how many places my mom had gone wrong, so I knew what areas would be particular danger zones where I’d need to pay special attention to learning new, better, appropriate means of dealing with things.

3. Beyond Codependency by Melody Beattie. I came to her works within the last couple of years. I knew about codependency before this, about enabling, about dysfunctional systems, etc. I read the original book, and if I were at a different place in my life’s journey, I might have gotten more out of it than validation. This one, though, is pretty well-organized, points out that sometimes those of us who were codependent (and all survivors of abuse are, to some extent) can fall back into it without realizing it. It gives action plans, identification strategies, baselines, etc. It speaks to me as a peer, as a survivor, as a person of compassion towards others and towards myself. It’s a good reminder book. There’s a worthwhile companion book of daily meditations, which I also make it a point to read, but if I had to put out fresh money on one or the other, it would be this one.

4. NOT “Just Friends” by Shirley P. Glass. The term “emotional affair” has come into vogue over the last few years, and the author does a darned good job of defining it, giving some case examples, and talking about how to deal with it. She also goes further and discusses affairs of the physical kind. I have found this book useful because it gave me permission to be angry, which is something abuse survivors usually have problems with. Heck, I think women, in large measure, have been socialized to avoid or deny anger for one or another reason. That’s a misidentification, too. Rage is dangerous. Rage is out of control-ness and serves no one. Anger is my psyche’s way of telling me I’ve been violated somehow – whether it’s my trust, my person, my finances, or whatever. Anger, I need to listen to, and I have every right to express. Shirley reminded me to pay attention to my anger.

5. Emotional Blackmail by Susan Forward. There are a lot of people roaming around with some damned bad habits in their interpersonal relationships. I am related to some of them by blood, some of them by marriage, I’m exposed to some by proximity and frequency of contact, and I’ve worked for some others. At some point, they have pissed me off and left me feeling either taken advantage of or mean for expressing my desire not to be conned or pressured into something. Once again, Forward defines terms, gives baselines, and offers concrete, immediately useful strategies. She offers words and phrases to use, too. I have even given this book to Spawn to read when he had a problem girlfriend. He found it very enlightening and helpful.


OK, that does it for me for the week. Hopefully, next week I’ll be back to fun and frolics and adventures in the butt-end of nowhere! But, whatever happens, I’ll be me, happy to be me, lucky in having great kids, knitting daily, and lurching forward into the future in my own loud-mouthed, peculiar way!