Susan Forward

Toxic Parents

“Of course, my father beat me, but in order to guide me on the right path. I don’t understand what this has to do with the fact that my marriage collapsed.”. Gordon, a successful orthopedic surgeon, came to see me when his wife left him after six years of marriage. He desperately tried to win her back, but she told him to forget about it until he went through therapy and changed his uncontrollable temperament. Gordon's sudden outbursts of rage frightened her, and besides, he exhausted her with his constant and merciless criticism. He admitted to an angry temperament and obsessive criticism, but the fact that his wife left him horrified him.

I asked Gordon to tell about himself, helping him with leading questions. When I asked about his parents, he smiled and painted me a rosy picture, especially about his father, a famous cardiologist: “Without him, I would never have become what I have become. He is the best, and patients generally consider him a saint.. When I asked what his relationship with his father was like at the present time, Gordon laughed nervously and said: “They were great...until I told him I wanted to try holism. He reacted as if I was going to try to become an assassin. About three months ago I told him about holism, and now every time we talk, he starts yelling about how he didn't send me to medical school to eventually become a "healer." And yesterday he became unbearable at all. He got up so that he said that I could say goodbye to my parents, and this upset me very much. I don’t know…maybe the holism idea isn’t the best.”.

I noticed that when describing my father, who turned out to be far from being as beautiful as they tried to show me at first, Gordon nervously intertwined, then untwisted his fingers. When he realized that I was seeing this, he managed to restrain his movements, connecting the pads of his fingers in a “professorial” gesture, which he probably learned from his father.

I asked him if his father always acted like a tyrant. "No, really, no" he replied. “I mean, he yelled at me and sometimes laid his hand, as all children do. I wouldn't say he was a tyrant". Something in his tone, in which he said "had a hand", a slight change in the timbre of his voice made me wary, and I began to insist on details. It turned out that Gordon's father "had a hand", and with a belt, two or three times a week! In order to give a reason for punishment, it was not enough: a harsh word, assessments that did not suit the parent, or a forgotten “duty” were already sufficient “crime”. Gordon's father also didn't particularly care about the form of punishment. Gordon remembered that he had spanked him on the back, on the legs and arms, on the buttocks. I asked if his father hurt him.

Gordon: Never before the blood, I want to say that nothing special was done to me. I needed to be obedient.

Susan: But you were afraid of him, weren't you?

Gordon: Deadly, but that's always the case with parents, isn't it?

Susan: Gordon, do you want your children to feel the same way about you?

(He looked away. He felt extremely uncomfortable. I pulled my chair closer.)

Susan: Your wife is a pediatrician. What do you think, if at her reception she saw the same marks on the child that your father left on your body when he “put his hand”, shouldn’t she immediately report this to the police?

An answer was not needed. Gordon's eyes filled with tears, and he whispered: “I have something terribly twisted in my stomach”. Gordon's defenses failed, and for the first time, with terrible emotional pain, he realized where the source of his bad temper was located, which had remained in the shadows for so long. Since childhood, he had suppressed a volcano of rage against his father, and now, when the tension became too strong, he would rush at those who were at hand, and most often at his wife. I realized that we needed to recognize the existence and cure the downtrodden little boy who lived inside Gordon.

That evening, at home, I kept thinking about Gordon, about how his eyes filled with tears when he realized that he had been abused as a child. I thought of the thousands of adult men and women I have worked with whose lives were still influenced, if not controlled, by the attitudes they had received in childhood from destructive parents. I realized that there are still millions of such people who have no idea why their life still does not work out, and who can be helped. And then I decided to write this book.

Why is it necessary to look back?

Gordon's story was not out of the ordinary. In my eighteen years of psychotherapy work in my private clinic and in therapy groups at the hospital, I have counseled thousands of people, most of whom have suffered tremendous damage to their self-esteem from being regularly beaten or criticized by one or both of their parents as children, or " joked" about how dumb, physically ugly or unwanted they were, or blamed them for everything, or sexually abused them, or made them take on too much responsibility, or didn't let a step go unsupervised and permanent care. Like Gordon, few of these people associated the problems in their lives with their parents. As a rule, this is an emotional "blind spot". It is simply very difficult for people to accept that their relationship with their parents has such a powerful impact on their lives.

Therapy, which previously focused on the first experience of life, has now moved away from "then" to focus on the "here and now." Attention is paid mainly to the analysis and change of present behavior, ways of interaction in actual relationships. I think this change came about because people were resentful of the huge waste of time and money that comes with conventional therapy, often with minimal results.

I truly believe in short-term therapies focused on changing destructive behavioral patterns. But my experience has taught me that dealing with symptoms is not enough; the sources of these symptoms must also be dealt with. Therapy becomes more effective when it follows two directions at the same time: to change the negative patterns of behavior in the present and at the same time make a break with the traumas of the past.

Gordon needed to learn how to control his own rage, but in order for the change to become permanent and resilient to stressful situations, he needed to go back and face the pain of his childhood.

Our parents sow mental and emotional seeds in us, and those seeds germinate in us. In some families, these are the seeds of love, respect and independence. But in many other families, seeds of fear, debt, and guilt are sown. If you are from these "other" families, then this book is for you. As you grew up, those invisible seeds sprouted and became weeds that flooded your life in ways you never imagined. Surely these weeds have damaged your relationships, your career, or your family; no doubt they have eroded your self-confidence and your self-respect. I want to help you recognize and weed them out.

Who are "toxic parents"?

All parents make mistakes. I myself have made terrible mistakes with my children, causing them (and myself) great pain. No father and no mother can always be in emotional closeness with children. Sometimes the parents may yell at the children, and sometimes (but very, very rarely) hit the child. Do these mistakes make all parents cruel and unpresentable? Obviously not. After all, parents are people and they have a lot of problems. And most children can handle a parental rage just fine, provided they usually also get the love and understanding from their parents that can counterbalance the bad moments.

However, there are many parents whose negative forms of behavior are invariable and turned into a source of constant influence on the life of the child. These are the parents that we call toxic, these are the parents who harm the child.

When I was looking for a definition of what these harmful parents have in common, the thought of poison constantly crossed my mind. Like a chemical toxin, the emotional pain caused by such parents pervades the child's entire being, and as the child matures, so does the pain. I can't think of anything more precise than the word "toxic" to define the "those" parents who continually traumatize their children by abusing and humiliating them, and who continue to do so even when their children become adults. As for the "permanence" and "continuity" in the behavior of such parents, there are exceptions. At the level of sexual and physical abuse, the consequences can be so traumatic that one episode is enough to cause great emotional harm to a child.

Susan Forward

Toxic Parents

“Of course, my father beat me, but in order to guide me on the right path. I don’t understand what this has to do with the fact that my marriage collapsed.”. Gordon, a successful orthopedic surgeon, came to see me when his wife left him after six years of marriage. He desperately tried to win her back, but she told him to forget about it until he went through therapy and changed his uncontrollable temperament. Gordon's sudden outbursts of rage frightened her, and besides, he exhausted her with his constant and merciless criticism. He admitted to an angry temperament and obsessive criticism, but the fact that his wife left him horrified him.

I asked Gordon to tell about himself, helping him with leading questions. When I asked about his parents, he smiled and painted me a rosy picture, especially about his father, a famous cardiologist: “Without him, I would never have become what I have become. He is the best, and patients generally consider him a saint.. When I asked what his relationship with his father was like at the present time, Gordon laughed nervously and said: “They were great...until I told him I wanted to try holism. He reacted as if I was going to try to become an assassin. About three months ago I told him about holism, and now every time we talk, he starts yelling about how he didn't send me to medical school to eventually become a "healer." And yesterday he became unbearable at all. He got up so that he said that I could say goodbye to my parents, and this upset me very much. I don’t know…maybe the holism idea isn’t the best.”.

I noticed that when describing my father, who turned out to be far from being as beautiful as they tried to show me at first, Gordon nervously intertwined, then untwisted his fingers. When he realized that I was seeing this, he managed to restrain his movements, connecting the pads of his fingers in a “professorial” gesture, which he probably learned from his father.

I asked him if his father always acted like a tyrant. "No, really, no" he replied. “I mean, he yelled at me and sometimes laid his hand, as all children do. I wouldn't say he was a tyrant". Something in his tone, in which he said "had a hand", a slight change in the timbre of his voice made me wary, and I began to insist on details. It turned out that Gordon's father "had a hand", and with a belt, two or three times a week! In order to give a reason for punishment, it was not enough: a harsh word, assessments that did not suit the parent, or a forgotten “duty” were already sufficient “crime”. Gordon's father also didn't particularly care about the form of punishment. Gordon remembered that he had spanked him on the back, on the legs and arms, on the buttocks. I asked if his father hurt him.

Gordon: Never before the blood, I want to say that nothing special was done to me. I needed to be obedient.

Susan: But you were afraid of him, weren't you?

Gordon: Deadly, but that's always the case with parents, isn't it?

Susan: Gordon, do you want your children to feel the same way about you?

(He looked away. He felt extremely uncomfortable. I pulled my chair closer.)

Susan: Your wife is a pediatrician. What do you think, if at her reception she saw the same marks on the child that your father left on your body when he “put his hand”, shouldn’t she immediately report this to the police?

An answer was not needed. Gordon's eyes filled with tears, and he whispered: “I have something terribly twisted in my stomach”. Gordon's defenses failed, and for the first time, with terrible emotional pain, he realized where the source of his bad temper was, which had remained in the shadows for so long. Since childhood, he had suppressed a volcano of rage against his father, and now, when the tension became too strong, he would rush at those who were at hand, and most often at his wife. I realized that we needed to acknowledge the existence and cure the downtrodden little boy who lived inside Gordon.

That evening, at home, I kept thinking about Gordon, about how his eyes filled with tears when he realized that he had been abused as a child. I thought of the thousands of adult men and women I have worked with whose lives were still influenced, if not controlled, by the attitudes they had received in childhood from destructive parents. I realized that there are still millions of such people who have no idea why their life still does not work out, and who can be helped. And then I decided to write this book.

Why is it necessary to look back?

Gordon's story was not out of the ordinary. In my eighteen years of psychotherapy work in my private clinic and in therapy groups at the hospital, I have counseled thousands of people, most of whom have suffered tremendous damage to their self-esteem from being regularly beaten or criticized by one or both of their parents as children, or " joked" about how dumb, physically ugly or unwanted they were, or blamed them for everything, or sexually abused them, or made them take on too much responsibility, or didn't let a step go unsupervised and permanent care. Like Gordon, few of these people associated the problems in their lives with their parents. As a rule, this is an emotional "blind spot". It is simply very difficult for people to accept that their relationship with their parents has such a powerful impact on their lives.

Therapy, which previously focused on the first experience of life, has now moved away from "then" to focus on the "here and now." Attention is paid mainly to the analysis and change of present behavior, ways of interaction in actual relationships. I think this change came about because people were resentful of the huge waste of time and money that comes with conventional therapy, often with minimal results.

I truly believe in short-term therapies focused on changing destructive behavioral patterns. But my experience has taught me that dealing with symptoms is not enough; the sources of these symptoms must also be dealt with. Therapy becomes more effective when it follows two directions at the same time: to change the negative patterns of behavior in the present and at the same time make a break with the traumas of the past.

almost all adult children of toxic parents have surprisingly similar symptoms: low self-esteem, which pushes them to self-destructive behavior

About Susan Forward's Toxic Parents

This is a good book for family psychology, and especially valuable in it is a completely clear step-by-step explanation of the causes, consequences, necessary actions and zero water.

..almost all adult children of toxic parents have surprisingly similar symptoms: low self-esteem, which pushes them to self-destructive behavior. Somehow they all feel unworthy, unloved and inadequate ....

There are two kinds of news in the world: bad and good. The bad news is that if you had a difficult and traumatic childhood, then you always had a difficult and traumatic childhood. Good - childhood is in the past, and it's never too late to have a prosperous present.

So who are toxic parents?

Toxic parents are those parents who consistently treat their children in a manner that threatens their sense of personal dignity.

There is such a type of people, they are also called "heavy", so they become the most toxic, and not only parents. These are people who take life too seriously, burdened with prohibitions, conventions, stereotypes. Toxic parents, according to the author, "..tend to consider rebellion or even individual differences as attacks against oneself personally. They become defensive, thereby reinforcing the dependency and helplessness of their children. Instead of directing and stimulating healthy development, they unconsciously undermine it, often in the belief that they are acting in the interests of their children..."

And there - a child, a mobile psyche, full confidence that the parent is right. I think that everyone at least once in their life heard from their parents such phrases as "it strengthens the character" or "she / he needs to learn to distinguish between good and bad."

Or most are familiar with situations under the "name":

• must be portrayed good family with strangers;
• it would be better if you were not born at all;
• you are still a child, and do not get in my way;
• grow up - you will know / understand;
• you owe me because I raised you;
• do only as I said, because it's good for you!;
• I am always right, because I have life experience;
• you cannot become perfect, and don't try;
• You can't be trusted, you don't understand yet...
• etc...

Such arsenals actually harm children's self-esteem, sabotaging any sprouts of their independence.

C. Forward identifies a whole series various types toxic parents. There are parents who are simply emotionally inadequate. There are parents who use overprotection, thereby preventing the child from getting their own bumps.

There is a child who, from infancy, is forced to seek the love of his parents, he realizes that no one will love him just like that, upon the fact of his birth, that he must try to please, be good, and then, perhaps, he will receive at least a hint of attention to him and a kind word.

From childhood, a complex is instilled that it is bad and unworthy, which causes a lot of problems for parents. And there is another category of children: children are good and make mom and dad happy, but he is such and such. As a result, personality grows who is sure that there is nothing to love her for. That all your life you need to get people's attention to yourself through pleasing. Swallows the negative from people with an air, as if this is how it should be, and passes it off as "respect" for another. If a woman meets loving man, he will never understand it. For her, this is crazy. She simply does not know how to accept love in her address. victim complex.

But still, these are relatively subtle types of parental toxicity and their consequences; others are much more violent.

Again, alcoholism becomes an important characteristic feature here.

Further: insults can be physical and verbal. In some of the situations cited, people said that it would be easier for them to endure beatings than verbal insults, because the scars on the body heal faster than the scars on the soul.

Finally, there is parental sexual abuse - a phenomenon that, as we know, in its various forms has a certain effect on a significant part of children, both female and male. The book refers to the suppression by the parents of the child, as the weakest and most dependent on them beings. Not the prohibitions of the bad, but the suppression of his personality. It's one thing when a child is forbidden to smoke and drink, and another thing when a child is forbidden to draw, for example, when he wants to, motivated by the fact that he can't draw (of course, you won't learn right away!) and will never be able to. Or that he SHOULD become a programmer or a doctor, because the PARENT wanted to once. And in adulthood toxic parents try to prove how much your family life hopeless or vice versa, they are madly in love with your partner, and you are considered a loser. There are many situations and I can't list them all.

The book describes the steps to heal anger, to build a new, adult relationship with parents.

And it helps to really work on yourself. There is no water in the book. She is completely practical.

Although this book was written in 1989, it has not lost its relevance.

However, it is necessary to point out, especially to female readers, that despite its simplicity and unpretentiousness, the text can evoke strong emotional reactions and triggers. Be careful and be very careful. However... this book can help a little in understanding your destructive behavior. It seems to me that knowing about the ways in which toxic parents act is easier to track the beginnings of such behavior in themselves and stop them at the very beginning of raising their children. However, we will be able to identify ourselves as a toxic or non-toxic parent only after many years have passed, when the child has already become an adult, independent person and will be able to tell himself how certain of our words/actions were imprinted in his soul. Although it’s still hard for me to bring my mother and grandmother to talk about it. Inside, everything turns over from the realization of many things. Although I was brought up by far from terrible methods, after all, no matter how hard the parent tries, it is IMPOSSIBLE to predict the imprint of his actions in the soul of the child.

Reading this book Be prepared to have...

• explore yourself and your personality;
• recognize the traumatic situation (or situations and circumstances) as having actually occurred;
• experience pain and despair, as well as their powerlessness and inability to change this in the past;
• accept your life as a whole, as it was, including the trauma or traumas in it;
• to express all the rage and pain, restoring the boundaries of the damaged personality, to experience the intensity of traumatic experiences;
• recognize all your feelings as legal and existing;
• accept that you will never be the same as you were "before";
• learn to live with the baggage of life experience that you have, regardless of whether it is good or not;
• accept yourself the way you are now.

However, remember two rules:

1. “You are not responsible for what was done to you while you were a defenseless child!”; and "you are responsible for taking positive steps to do something about it now!"

2. ...and get to work... published

Hello reader!

We have a book today. In my opinion it is good, even very good. Therefore, I’ll say right away - I can’t, and don’t want to write a neutral review, although the post is not paid for, but in a sense it is an advertisement: I liked this work, and I will be biased in its assessments and, moreover, I will take the liberty advise him.

So that the audience does not get the wrong impression, I will immediately make a reservation:

1 . This book is not magic, it will not solve all your problems. To be honest, I don't think any book is like that at all, and this one is no exception.

2 . This book is not a substitute for a full therapeutic process. In general, she doesn’t claim it directly, but after reading it, you may get an opinion that you can just take it and just treat yourself according to the book. Will not work. Most likely it won't work. I tried, and the author directly says this. However, if you feel like it, I highly recommend giving it a try. In the process, you will probably be able to work through some of your troubles and thereby save time and money spent on therapy.

I'll start with general description. The book is based on a psychodynamic approach, but includes borrowings from Gestalt and CBT (in the field of technical advice). Personally, I liked the way the author combines the "depth" and historicity of the psychodynamic approach with fast and effective techniques from other directions, this is one of the most successful examples of such a synthesis (among those known to me).

To be honest, I myself am rather skeptical about such attempts to cross a grass snake with a hedgehog, but here the author turned out to be very, very good.

What I liked is that the book does not make accusations against the reader. In this, it compares favorably with the works of the same Perls or Frankl, who, after a lengthy introduction, one way or another try to put the idea that a person is to blame for his problems and almost decided to have mental problems.

Perhaps, in some cases, such an assumption is legitimate (otherwise the approaches described would not have gained such popularity), but the patient should be brought to the realization of such responsibility, IMHO, much softer and, I would say, more tenderly.

Here is another matter. The author offers a unique strategy - to shift the responsibility from the one who experiences the problem to those who are its source - the parents (for those who like to argue, I will say that the book is devoted to precisely those cases where they are the source, others are simply not considered there, and this area is beyond the applicability of the proposed method).

The main ideas are described in just a few sentences:

1 . There are families in which parents behave inappropriately, the author calls them (both families and parents are “toxic”).

2 . When a child grows up in such a family, he introjects inadequate models of reality. He does not get the experience of love, he gets a responsibility that he cannot bear, he gets a feeling of shame and guilt.

The fact is that the child does not have his own opinion and is not able to critically perceive parental attitudes. This leads to the fact that if a parent explicitly or implicitly gives the child a message about his wrongness, that he is bad, beats, rapes him or simply deprives him of emotional support, the child is simply physically unable to think that the parent is wrong.

The parent is always right, this is an axiom. And if the parent is toxic, the child, in order to justify him, comes up with a worldview system that will justify the parent.

So, if a parent beats a child, he (the child) will consider that it is his fault. There is a rather interesting mechanism here: since it is the parents who set the pattern of what is good (by their example) and what is bad (by their instructions), then in the eyes of the child, even an incestuous parent will a priori be good. And time good parent does bad things to the child, then the child deserves it.

I'll quote Forward here:

« The child is in the power of the parental gods and, like the ancient Greeks, never knows at what moment they can strike him with lightning. But the child of “the same” parents is always sure that sooner or later this lightning will overtake him. In the depths of the hearts of all adults who experienced abuse in childhood, even if later these people achieved all possible successes in life, a frightened and powerless child continues to live. The first step on the path that leads us to gain control over our own lives is the recognition of this fact.

The only way a child can explain to himself the emotional harm and/or abuse his parents inflict on him is by accepting responsibility for the behavior of toxic parents. »

3 . When such a child grows up and physically leaves the family (moves from his parents, becomes economically independent, starts his own family, and even experiences the physical death of his parents), he still remains captive to old attitudes and destructive emotional ties. He gets stuck, firstly, in networks of inadequate perception of the motives of other people's actions, secondly, in self-accusations and, thirdly, oddly enough, in attachment to a parent.

So, children who have been sexually abused by their parents cannot enter into normal relationships, because they “remain faithful” to their first partner, children of alcoholics either drink themselves or marry alcoholics, children who have been beaten either start someone to tyrannize, or to blame oneself, etc.

Again, I will quote:

« If one of my readers and female readers comes from a family with “the same parents”, most likely in life he / she had to make such decisions as “I can’t trust anyone”, “I’m not worth something”, "I will never achieve anything." These decisions were negative and counter-productive and need to be changed.»

Note: I am more than sure that among the readers there will be those who will say that all this is garbage: here he was, de, beaten, raped, soldered, and he is well done. To such a reader, I can answer that either he is lying (which is more likely), or he is included in the happy percentage of exceptions. In any case, this book is not for him. Although, no, in the first case, for him, but he will not read it. Protection is still protection, and the desire to preserve the family myth is such a desire :)

4 . In order to stop suffering, an adult who has grown out of such a child needs to emotionally get rid of his parents. The method of such a decoupling is "confrontation" - a dialogue built according to certain rules with parents, or with their personification (photo, therapist, grave), when this is impossible for some reason.

But, on the one hand, confrontation is not the goal. It's just a method. The goals are different - to throw off the responsibility that does not belong to him (for example, to understand that he was raped not because he is bad (see above), but because they are perverts, that his mother drank not because he was not good enough , but because she is a fucking alcoholic, etc.)

Although this may seem obvious to a healthy person, I can assure you that the author correctly defines the goals: for a child who grew up in a “toxic family” (we won’t point fingers at the author of the review, huh?), It’s hard to believe this. It is even more difficult to live with this awareness.

Another goal is to learn to love. Immediately I will send what for immature cynics (mature - welcome to the comments), denying the importance of this feeling. The fact is that such a child does not know how to love - neither himself, nor others, nor God (if he believes), nor animals. More precisely, he is able to experience some mixed emotions, which he calls love, but they have little to do with real healthy love.

And, finally, he needs to learn to build his own boundaries, take responsibility for himself when required and (more difficult) not to take on someone else's responsibility.

The thought that struck me to the core, and which I myself did not think of (and, therefore, I am extremely grateful to the author for it) is that it is impossible to negotiate with toxic parents.

As long as a person hopes that they will understand him, as long as he wants to explain something to them, while he is waiting for them to accept him, he will experience difficulties.

Only by understanding and recognizing at all levels, including the emotional, including the deepest depths of the unconscious, that the parents are inadequate, only by ceasing to believe that everything can be fixed (in their relationship), he will be free.

In fact, the point is to be ready to send them forever and very far, to cut them out of your life. Paradoxically, this is not always required in real life. But readiness itself is necessary.

Again, a person far from the topic will say that this is already obvious without any books, but here I agree with the author: if such a person himself grew up in such a system (or studied in detail the psyche of those who grew up there), he would not say so.

And one more thought, which logically follows from the previous one: such parents cannot be forgiven. Forgiveness won't do anything. They are guilty and have no forgiveness. And again a quote:

« I have often encouraged my clients, many of whom were severely abused as children, to forgive their abusive and aggressive parents. In addition, many clients solemnly stated at the beginning of therapy that they had already forgiven their parents, but later I found that more often than not, they did not feel better at all for forgiving. They continued to feel very bad. They retained all their symptoms. Forgiveness did not cause any important and lasting changes in their well-being. To tell the truth, many felt even more inadequate and told me things like: “Maybe I don’t forgive enough?”, “My confessor says that my forgiveness is insincere”, “Is there anything I can do right?
<…>
The more I thought, the more I realized that absolution in forgiveness was nothing more than another form of denial: "If I forgive you, we can both pretend that what happened wasn't so terrible." So I realized that it was this aspect of forgiveness that kept people from finally getting their lives back on track.»

It is important to note that the book successfully combines theoretical material with a description of practical methods. Those. rather unequivocally answers the question: “And now what to do with it?”

I said above that it will not replace full-fledged therapy (well, OK, let's leave 0.0..1% chance that someone can do it themselves), but this does not lose its value. Firstly, it does not replace therapy, not because the author, wanting to attract clients to himself, does not finish something, no. The forward is sufficiently hyped not to need such fraud, she is well aware that the better the book she releases, the better things will go in her private commercial practice.

Secondly, the book gives a good understanding of the therapy process, which reduces the fear of it, because people are often afraid of the unknown, although they do not always admit it.
Thirdly, it can be used to move from the state of “what the hell do I need to dig into this at all” to the state of “damn, this is a problem, and it needs to be solved.” Again, it will not help everyone, but some readers will quite pass along this path.

Techniques, for the most part, are borrowed from Gestalt (psychodrama, conversations with chairs, letters, fairy tales), but despite my dislike for the latter, even for me they look quite organic and logical.

Well, finally, I answer an unasked question, which, however, is implied in Runet: “Did it help yourself?”

The first thing I consider it necessary to say is that I have not undergone Forward therapy. I read the book, applied its recommendations in my own practice (somewhere more successfully, somewhere less), did some of the tasks myself, but I have not yet gone through the full cycle of therapy.

At least paranoid conceptions about my father no longer haunt me at every step (I quite allow myself to walk hand in hand with K., although before that I hid in a seven-year “civil marriage”, afraid that my father would notice me), I can talk with my mother, I stopped flinching from phone calls. Yes, the quality of life has definitely improved.

I can’t say that this is only the influence of the book, it would be unfair, because I am going through several therapy programs at the same time. But, it seems to me, and she contributed.