Books

• Do you feel that you are in a crazy-making relationship with a loved one who is sometimes loving and attentive and at other times mean, angry, critical, and attacking?
• Do you feel responsible to always meet your loved one's changing and mercurial needs and even make amends when they are mad at you?
• Do you believe it is up to you to heal and fix this relationship?
• Are you wondering if your loved one is a borderline or narcissist?

When you get into a Caretaker role with a borderline or narcissist (BP/NP), your thinking gets distorted, you feel overwhelmed and confused, and you get locked into a victim-persecutor-rescuer pattern with them. This book explains the underlying rules and mystifying dynamics of the BP/NP's push/pull and love/hate crazy-making interactions. It is the first book to explain how your caretaking role traps you into feeling stuck and feeling like a hostage in a relationship that is slowly crushing your self-esteem.

If you feel you have lost yourself in a crazy-making relationship, and/or you are slowly wearing down into pessimism, anxiety, and hopelessness, then you could be caretaking a BP/NP. With lots of real-life examples and techniques this book helps you take back control of your life, learn more creative solutions, and make more effective choices.

Falling in love with a narcissist (NP) can be fabulously exciting, interesting, and engaging. At the same time, it often ends up also being painful, frustrating, complicated, and totally mystifying. NPs can be charming and loving one moment and hateful and demeaning the next. They tell you one thing and then do another. When you confront them with these discrepancies, they blame you, have a whole different story about what happened, and call you crazy.

Relationships with narcissists start out almost like a fairy tale. You felt adored, understood, and probably more smitten than you ever felt before. But after you fully pledged loyalty and devotion, something changed. The NP became more controlling, selfish, angry, blaming, and defensive. You felt disillusioned, tried hard to fix the relationship, and got exhausted.

Recovering from a narcissistic relationship can take a lot longer than getting over the end of a typical relationship. Your dreams have been crushed, and you may have even lost trust in your judgment and belief in yourself. This book shows you how to regain your emotional strength, heal your wounds, and regain your self-worth.

As a parent you naturally have a strong desire to raise your children to be happy, healthy, self-confident, and resilient. However, you have now found yourself in a family environment with a self-absorbed partner who is frequently negative, chaotic, hostile, and confusing.

• Upset by the BP/NP's self-centered and inconsistent expectations for your children?
• Frequently disagreeing on parenting goals and methods?
• Needing to soothe, calm, and help your children cope with the BP/NP's demanding and hurtful parenting tactics?
• Being undermined by the BP/NP's lack of support?
• Upset seeing the BP/NP act more like a child than a parent?

We show how your family's energy and time get hijacked because of the frequent need to calm and moderate the emotional volatility of the BP/NP. Instead of doing the caring, guiding, and loving parenting your children need, you end up being a referee between the BP/NP and the children.

The book is full of helpful, clear examples and life-tested techniques. We offer an emotional prescription that shows you how to teach your children to cope and develop into healthy, competent, and joyful people.