Overcoming Your Difficult Family

We’ve all been invited to the Thanksgiving dinner where we know that Aunt Louise will be drunk; cousin Larry will scream at his kids and wife; Uncle Ben will try to talk us out of our current career and ask intrusive questions about our relationship; and Cousin Sue will break into tears because her brother just came out as gay. In addition, we’ve all repeated conversations about the same topics with family members until our heads spin, but nothing is ever resolved. How do we move on? How do we live our own lives without getting sucked back into these sorts of destructive family dynamics and patterns?

There is no pill that can make family life easy. There is no pill that can spare you pain if one of your parents is alcoholic, if one of your children is troubled, if your mother meddles in all your affairs, if your brother is needy and always trying to manipulate others in the family, or if your mate is cheating on you. But, finally, there is a solution. In Overcoming Your Difficult Family, renowned therapist Eric Maisel presents eight skills that individual can employ to survive difficult family life and, sometimes, even improve family life for everyone involved. Life is difficult and family life, with overlapping egos and various dynamics and relationships among family members, is even more difficult to navigate. Working as a family therapist with families, as a life coach and creativity coach with individuals, and as a mental health reformer within a system that isn’t helpful enough, Maisel knows that family life regularly takes its toll and that, when it does, little help is available.

Finally, a simple approach to a difficult problem. Maisel presents eight skills and demonstrates how to use them. The skills (which include remaining present, being brave, finding resilience,and being calm) to use in these situations and then describes twelve “difficult” family situations (such as argumentative or controlling families, bullying and critical families) and how to use the skills in each situation. No family is alike, but the skills to handle these often emotionally fraught and complicated situations can be learned and they will help you transform your own life if not your family. By resorting to these skills again and again, readers will find a way to navigate the chaotic and challenging situations and remain calm and confident.

Overcoming Your Difficult Family is made up of two parts: a skills section in which Maisel explains and teaches the eight skills needed in most family situations; and a second section where he describes and illustrates various common family configurations (rule-bound families, chaotic families, sad and anxious families, etc.) and explains how you can employ the eight skills in each of those families. Whether the challenges readers face are with one family member, or the entire clan, the skills taught here will help them through each situation, as they learn to take care of themselves first and not react to negative or destructive behavior patterns and language from others. With the description of the difficult families and patterns, Maisel goes on to describe how to use the skills you''ve learned in each of these family situations.