Product Description

A profoundly moving guide to personal and family growth that teaches us it is healthier to forgive than to blame.

For a generation, pop psychology and psychotherapy have promised healing and self-fulfillment through examination of our own childhood stories. We have been encouraged to indulge our interest in ourselves, to embrace our victimhood, and to reclaim and nurture the wounded inner child. But psychiatrist Barry Grosskopf has found a different path. Drawing on the ancient biblical tradition of the Fifth Commandment, Forgive Your Parents, Heal Yourself asks adult children to reframe their family's painful legacy as a way to free themselves from childhood hurt and trauma.

In this exceptionally wise and refreshing departure from standard recovery and relationship books, Grosskopf emphasizes the healing power and benefits of forgiveness and shows how adult children can approach their parents with open hearts -- without recrimination or blame -- to hear the stories of their family's past. Informed by both his experiences with patients and his command of issues in psychology and neuroscience, Grosskopf has developed a sophisticated and powerful plan through which children can repair their own character and relationships by respecting and understanding even hurtful caregivers. He suggests the questions to ask our parents and grandparents about their childhoods, how and when to ask them, and how to use the information to change self-destructive patterns.

Drawing upon a range of case studies and personal stories, including his own family experiences, Grosskopf leads us through a series of chapters that provide insight into the most difficult problems that can arise in a troubled childhood, from untimely loss to depression to food and drug addictions. We discover a novel approach that is particularly effective with survivors of the Holocaust, sexual abuse, and abandonment, for whom traditional self-help techniques rarely work. Forgive Your Parents, Heat Yourself encourages us to restore relationships with our parents, siblings, partners, and children and gain greater health, happiness, and emotional wholeness along the way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #645375 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Library Journal
Grosskopf, a Seattle psychiatrist, has written an extremely insightful book that will be of value to everyone who reads it. He explains that in order to understand our own problems and shortcomings, we must examine the lives of our parents as children. When we know their childhoods, we can begin to understand their behavior as spouses and parents, which allows us to look at our own lives and relationships and begin to change our own behavior. Grosskopf writes simply and beautifully. He skillfully uses the experiences of his patients to illustrate behaviors passed on through the generations as well as ways people have broken these patterns and moved on to healthier relationships. The only thing wrong with this book is its title, which may turn off the very people for whom it was written. Highly recommended for all libraries.AElizabeth Caulfield Felt, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Forgiving one's parents, rather than blaming them for our own psychological problems--and everything else--is not a new concept. What is new here is the laudable attempt by Grosskopf to require us to take a closer look at our parents and try to see through their eyes: that a parent's hand-me-down legacy of anger, alcoholism, abuse, or other psychological scarring may be the product of their own painful pasts. This view is especially relevant when you consider that many parents of today's baby boomers did, after all, go through war and, for some, a deep economic depression. Aside from these obvious historical legacies, Grosskopf points out that every parent has her or his own personal history, and it's worthwhile for the children to investigate it. Given this, it's very plausible that taking their parents' pasts for granted can blind scarred individuals from healing in the present. Certain to improve self-help collections. Marlene Chamberlain

Review
Rabbi Michael Lerner Editor, TIKKUN Magazine, and author of Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation At last, a psychologically sophisticated and emotionally viable way to observe the Fifth Commandment: Honor Your Father and Your Mother. Barry Grosskopf points the way to true reconciliation with our parents -- a precondition for a spiritually and psychologically healthy life. -- Review

Customer Reviews

A Must Read For Members of The Sandwich Generation
Increasingly, those of middle-age (and beyond) are becoming caregivers for aging but long-lived parents. All the more reason to learn the lessons of generational forgiveness and healing so wisely taught in this book. As I continue to research my own family's history, and to write what I know of the family story, this book is helping me to take a more compassionate stance toward my own parents. Dr. Grosskopf skillfully blends anecdotal accounts, biblical narratives, fairy tales and religious proverbs to help the reader ask their own parents, in a way which heals, the question from God to humanity in the biblical book of Genesis: "Where are you?"

Of particular use to me is the way the author reinterprets the fifth commandment's "honor thy father and thy mother." While reading through chapter two I was struck by the liberating potential for forgiveness in hearing the command to "honor" parents not as an authoritarian dictate but instead as an invitation to "imagine" parents as the powerful but complex individuals they really are.

In chapter four, Dr. Grosskopf underscores the need we all have for "witnesses" to our emotional pain and how restorative it can be for parents when their children meet such a need. For me, the main insight here is that children who would honor their parents (and heal themselves) can best do so in learning how to ask them (or others) "where are you" without implying judgment or rejection. In this way the answers may repair and transform the fabric of life shared by parents and children and all of society.

Substantial & Insightful, Despite the Cheesy Title
One of the absolute best self-help-ish books I've ever read. Super helpful, smart, interesting, engaging. Would also be helpful for new parents so they can see just how they will affect their child. This book helped lessen my own burden and is a gift to anyone who reads it.

Forget The Title - Read The Book
Babble free, sensible, profound. A soul opening work