Showing titles in Dysfunctional Families

In this compassionate guide you'll find tips and tools to help you set boundaries with others, honor and validate your emotions, and thrive in the face of life's challenges. You'll discover how to protect yourself from hurtful behavior, stop making excuses for others' limitations, forge healthier relationships, and feel more confident in your life. Most importantly, you'll learn how to stop putting others' needs before your own and manage daily stressors. 

When your parents are pathologically self-centered, manipulative, or emotionally abusive, the pain they cause is deep and often difficult to put into words. You may experience anxiety, depression, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), low self-esteem, addiction, or other mental health conditions as an adult. But it was not your fault, and there are tools you can use to heal the trauma caused by your childhood.

Read by the author. Using the written word as her witness statement, Jessica Willis Fisher gives a lacerating portrait of a girl finding her voice after years of being silenced and an unforgettable story of risk and faith. Growing up the eldest daughter in a large, highly controlled...

A dramatic and remarkable narrative of an extraordinary teacher's determination, from the author of the Sunday Times bestsellers The Tiger's Child and One Child. Torey Hayden faced six emotionally troubled kids no other teacher could handle - three recent arrivals from battle-torn Northern Ireland, badly traumatized by the horrors of war; an eleven-year-old boy, who only knew life inside an institution; an excitable girl, aggressive and sexually precocious at the age of eight; and seven-year-old Leslie, perhaps the most hopeless of all, unresponsive and unable to speak.

All those years you tried your best to break me, and I'm still here. One day you'll see, I'm going to make something of myself. These words were Dave Pelzer's declaration of independence to his mother, and they represented the ultimate act of self-reliance. Dave's father never intervened as his mother abused him with shocking brutality, denying him food and clothing, torturing him in any way she could imagine. This was the woman who told her son she could kill him any time she wanted to—and nearly did.

Quiet streets hide the worst crimes Manchester’s Manor Estate is the kind of place people want to live – smart houses, neighbours who look out for you. But what if you don’t want to be seen? Behind the tidy front gardens and glossy painted doors it seems everyone’s got something to hide...

In this profoundly honest and examined memoir about returning to Iowa to care for her ailing parents, the star of Orange Is the New Black and bestselling author of Born with Teeth takes us on an unexpected journey of loss, betrayal, and the transcendent nature of a daughter’s love for her...

A Waterstones Best History Book 2024 'Compulsively readable' – Times Literary Supplement 'An outstanding work' – Philippa Gregory 'A powerful narrative told with frankness and sensitivity' – Helen Fry, historian and author of Women In Intelligence 'A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the...

'A compelling portrait of narcissism' Charlotte Cripps, The Independent 'I made notes in the margin - "Yes! This!" - on almost every page. Susannah Jowitt, The Daily Mail The scars inflicted on childhood by a parent with narcissistic tendencies are lasting - but they don't have to define your...

I start all of my true crime books with a quick word of warning. Most news articles and television true crime shows skim over the vile details of truly horrible crimes. In my books, I don’t gloss over the facts, regardless of how disgusting they may be. I try to give my listeners a clear and accurate description on just how demented the killers really were. I do my best not to leave anything out. The stories included in these books are not for the squeamish.

'I’ve never read a book like it. It’s as if they tore their own hearts out and asked the other to hold it for them while they wrote.' Phoebe Waller-Bridge ‘Alcohol flows across families like water over a landscape. Sometimes it moves in torrents, sometimes in floods, sometimes in...

If you and your family needed help, could you trust the law to be on your side? Award-winning barrister Charlotte Proudman has dedicated her working life to representing women who find themselves in need of help from the family law courts. Time and again, she has watched as these women are let...

Control. Jealousy. Isolation. Blame. Anger. Violence. The inspiring true story of a young woman who suffered a terrifyingly abusive relationship culminating in a horrific acid attack from the man who claimed to love her. Adele was just 23 years old when she was scarred for life by an acid attack...

Are you thriving in your relationship, or merely surviving? Are you the victim of constant manipulation, gaslighting, and deception at the hands of your partner? Do you find yourself constantly making excuses for your partner's abusive behavior? If you feel trapped in a relationship with someone who displays narcissistic or psychopathic behavior, you may be experiencing a trauma bond—a powerful connection you've developed with your abuser. It's important to remember that you're not alone and it's not your fault.

When Zoe was taken into care at the age of 13, she thought she was finally going to escape from the cruel abuse she had suffered throughout her childhood. Then social services placed her in a residential unit known to be 'a target for prostitution', and suddenly Zoe's life was worse than it had...

In A Cult of One, Richard Grannon exposes the insidious effects of narcissistic abuse and shares his own winding road to recognition and recovery. Through martial arts, mysticism, psychedelics, and psychology spanning over four continents and 44 years of life, Grannon discovered a systematic discipline for healing. Join him as he explains step-by-step with courage, humor, and optimism how to forge your own path to a better life.

An insatiable need for sex and love. Periods of overeating or starving. A pattern of unstable and painful relationships. Does this sound painfully familiar? Trauma counselor Kelly McDaniel has seen these traits over and over in clients who feel trapped in cycles of harmful behaviors-and are...

Traumatic Cognitive Dissonance, when understood, can be overcome. And that’s what this book is for—for you to gain the tools and information so that you’ll be able to reunite with your true sense of self and to move forward in your life with a renewed sense of joy. After all you’ve been through, you deserve it.

Imagine you are dying with a secret. Something you've never had the courage to tell your friends and family. Or a last wish - a task you need carried out before you can rest in peace. Now imagine there's a man who can take care of all that, who has no respect for the living, who will do anything...

A true-crime story that sounds like a thriller, Sleeping with a Psychopath is a blow-by-blow account of the power of manipulation and a testament to the human will to survive.