I don't know where to go with this but I guess I will start off my opinions with the content of the book. I was really shocked by reading other peoples struggles with there family's and was not fully aware of how much toxic *censored* fills our lives. The one that I found bizarre, but true, is the direct control thing, through guilt. The story I am speaking about was the grown man from California, who was going to go to Boston to be with his folks for their wedding anniversary. His wife got sick and he tried to cancel his mother said she would die. He compromised and showed up for one day. His mother was devastated when he left early; she carried on like it was the end of the world. Its like t

From this I will go in the false beliefs that we all live with in some sense or another. I was aware of the term behavior and what kinds of processes go into producing certain types of behavior but I was unaware of the relationship between your beliefs and your feelings had any thing to do with self-defeating behavior. To understand this relationship would help correct that kind of negative behavior. I was the type of person to bury my feelings when it came to the strong emotional reactions I had towards my parents. I was always the person that nothing was going to affect me and it seemed like it did not until you looked into my behavior and my feelings. I avoided confrontation with my folks and never won any arguments. I pretty much answered yes to all the questions on the checklist (page 199) and I have just started to regain my feelings as a person in the last year.

he parents would let this man (Mike) live his own life and felt threatened by his happiness. This I see through out my circle of friends and it is an almost accepted form of abuse. People, including myself had or have no idea (until I read this case) that that was a problem.

I will now go into the dinosaur in the living, part of this book or the alcoholic parent's part of the book. This I can totally relate to and I live with these burdens and emotions, and abuses daily. My father was an addict from pot, cocaine, to alcohol. As a child we had no idea anything like this was going on in our home. My mother's father was an alcoholic, so my mother was an expert at denying the problems that excised within their marriage. As we (bother and sister) got older and recognized the signs our self's problems became overwhelming.

Some common words found in the essay are:
California Boston, Susan Forward, , watched family, feelings book, parents don't,
Approximate Word count = 1147
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)