Books to read

Iv read many of alice Miller's books,there is a website to her work

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/

• Divorcing a Narcissist: Advice from the Battlefield

Prior to stepping onto the battlefield with a Narcissist, it is imperative to know their playbook both forwards and backwards. The behavior of individuals wit

h Narcissistic Personality Disorder generally defies logic but sadly, their tactics in the Family Court System often fool Judges, Commissioners, Attorneys, Minor’s Counsel, Social Workers, Therapists and even trained Evaluators. Narcissists are the masters of manipulation and projection and are known to launch stealth assaults that will leave their victims in an utter state of confusion and desperation. Victims are often left shattered and without a voice because they feel that no one could possibly believe or understand what they are silently enduring. Author, Tina Swithin, understands what it’s like to divorce a narcissist. Tina spent over four years on the battlefield of the Family Court System while acting as her own attorney in a desperate attempt to protect her two young daughters. While Tina’s first book, Divorcing a Narcissist: One Mom’s Battle details Tina’s personal journey and court battle, her new book offers solid advice and sanity-saving wisdom for transforming from victim to survivor. Education is power and Divorcing a Narcissist: Advice from the Battlefield is your personal guide and resource for navigating through high-conflict divorce. Receive advice for every stage of the battle: • Leaving the Narcissist: Strategies and advice • Divorcing: Advice on attorneys, tactical moves, courtroom preparation, anxiety/PTSD, evaluations and more. • Narc Decoder: Learn to decode emails and communication. • Children: Sharing custody, sheltering children and breaking the cycle. • Life Beyond the Narcissist: Loving again, personal growth and healing. • Stories of Hope • Resources

Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

The first book for daughters who have suffered the abuse of selfish, self-involved mothers, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? provides the expert assistance you need in order to overcome this debilitating history and reclaim your life. Drawing on more than two decades of experience as a therapist specializing in women’s health and hundreds of interviews with suffering daughters, Dr. Karyl McBride helps you recognize the widespread effects of this emotional abuse and create an individualized program for self-protection, resolution, and complete recovery.

Narcissistic mothers teach their daughters that love is not unconditional, that it is given only when they behave in accordance with maternal expectations and whims. As adults, these daughters have difficulty overcoming feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, emotional emptiness, and sadness. They may also have a fear of abandonment that leads them to form unhealthy romantic relationships, as well as a tendency to perfectionism and unrelenting self-criticism or to self-sabotage and frustration. Dr. McBride’s step-by-step program will enable you to:

(1) Recognize your own experience with maternal narcissism and its effects on all aspects of your life

(2) Discover how you have internalized verbal and nonverbal messages from your mother and how these have translated into overachievement or self-sabotage

(3) Construct a personalized program to take control of your life and enhance your sense of self, establishing healthy boundaries with your mother and breaking the legacy of abuse

Warm and sympathetic, Dr. McBride brings a profound level of authority to Will I Ever Be Good Enough? that encourages and inspires you as it aids your recovery.

• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents’ emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.Discover the four types of difficult parents:

• The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety

• The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone

• The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting

• The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory

• The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Revised Edition

Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided thousands of readers with an answer—and has helped them to apply it to their own lives.Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents' expectations and win their ”love.” Alice Miller writes, ”When I used the word 'gifted' in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb… Without this 'gift' offered us by nature, we would not have survived.” But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth.

• Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse

Within every community, toxic people can be found hiding in families, couples, companies, and places of worship. The cryptic nature of psychological abuse involves repetitious mind games played by one individual or a group of people.

Psychological abuse leaves no bruises. There are no broken bones. There are no holes in the walls. The bruises, brokenness, and holes are held tightly within the target of the abuse.

A guided Personal Reflections journal is included in the back of the book to help the reader go deeper in their application of the six stages of recovery. The journal can be used individually, in a small group setting, or with a therapist. 

• Stalking the Soul: Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity by Marie-France Hirigoyen (2004-09-01)

Emotional abuse exists all around us—in families and work. Stalking the Soul is a call to recognize and understand emotional abuse and, most importantly, overcome it. Sophisticated and accessible, it is vital reading for victims and health professionals.

• The Empathy Trap: Understanding Antisocial Personalities by McGregor, Dr. Jane, Tim McGregor (2013) Paperback

Sociopathy affects an estimated 1- 4% of the population, but not all sociopaths are cold-blooded murderers. They're best described as people without a conscience, who prey on those with high levels of empathy, but themselves lack any concern for others' feelings and show no remorse for their actions. Drawing on real life cases, The Empathy Trap: Understanding Antisocial Personalities explores this taboo subject and looks at how people can protect themselves against these arch-manipulators. Topics include: - Defining sociopathy, and related conditions such as psychopathy, narcissism, and personality disorder - How sociopaths operate and why they're often difficult to spot - Identifying sociopathic behaviour - The sociopath's relations with other people and why they often go unpunished - Coping with the aftermath of a destructive relationship - Re-establishing boundaries and control of your life - Practical advice for keeping sociopaths at bay - Resources and further help

• The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout (2005)

Who is the devil you know?

Is it your lying, cheating ex-husband? Your sadistic high school gym teacher? Your boss who loves to humiliate people in meetings? The colleague who stole your idea and passed it off as her own?

In the pages of The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He’s a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too.

We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.

How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others’ suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.

The fact is, we all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. Part of the urgency in reading The Sociopath Next Door is the moment when we suddenly recognize that someone we know—someone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted for—is a sociopath. But what do we do with that knowledge? To arm us against the sociopath, Dr. Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game.

It is the ruthless versus the rest of us, and The Sociopath Next Door will show you how to recognize and defeat the devil you know.

• The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness by Stout, Martha (2002) Paperback

The Myth of Sanity is a landmark book about forgotten trauma, dissociated mental states, and multiple personality in everyday life. In its groundbreaking analysis of childhood trauma and dissociation and their far-reaching implications in adult life, it reveals that moderate dissociation is a normal mental reaction to pain and that even the most extreme dissociative reaction-multiple personality-is more common than we think. Through astonishing stories of people whose lives have been shattered by trauma and then remade, The Myth of Sanity shows us how to recognize these altered mental states in friends and family, even in ourselves.