TW self harm.
I’m looking to recommend a (nonfiction) book or books (or other resources for that matter) to my partner.(25M) he’s been doing a lot of cathartic introspection about his upbringing and how it affected him; we’ve been having a lot of conversations about it recently as family events bring it up. I think he would really appreciate a book that’s relevant to his experience and explains some of the dynamics. I’ve tried to summarize the important parts below as briefly as I can while also giving enough info for a relevant book recommendation.
He’s a twin child of young parents really not ready for the responsibility (accident babies). His parents tried their best, loved them. Fought constantly and eventually divorced. Shit-talked each other constantly to the kids.
The two kids went opposite directions with their responses to the stressful childhood. His sister was angry, rebellious, depressed, suicidal, had to be hospitalized for self-harm. She needed the family’s time and support. She hit/hurt him a lot as a little kid, and struggled in school and life compared to him, and felt the family preferred him. She has cut off their dad’s half of the family and remembers dad as being terrible and indifferent to her, now gone no-contact.
My partner was the ‘easy’ kid, always seemed okay, always very high achieving, very successful in school. He quietly dealt with anxiety, depression, and suicidality and got into an emotionally/verbally abusive relationship for years, for which he received basically no emotional support. He was treated as the one stable emotional support outlet by his whole family who viewed him as their rock, not understanding or really asking whether he was also suffering quietly. Both parents would vent to him about their stresses and about each other.
He is somewhat baffled by his sister’s totally negative memory of their dad and paternal grandparents but positive memory of her mother. He remembers both parents as equally flawed but ultimately loving and not condemnable. It’s like they have totally different memories of their childhood, they describe it so differently. He speculates about whether he might have not formed memories of some of the worse stuff whereas his sister only remembers the bad parts. To hear them describe their parents it’s like they had totally different upbringings.
Does anyone have books or resources to recommend for a circumstance like this? The one title I have heard already is ‘Adult children of emotionally immature parents’.
Thank you very much for your help. I hope some of you may have recommendations that can help. If this is relatable to any of you, I hope you’re doing alright.
Edits: mostly cutting out unnecessary detail
by Vegetable-Ganache-91
6 Comments
Possibly these –
Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma by Dr. Mariel Buque
Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships by Nedra Glover Tawwab
The Book Keeps the Score
The Complex PTSD Workbook by Arielle Schwartz, PhD
A Practical Guide to Complex PTSD by Arielle Schwartz, PhD
Every Memory Deserves Respect by Deborah Korn, PsyD
There’s also an Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents Guided Journal by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD
Also Self Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD
There is absolutely loads of literature out there on this sort of thing. You could try reading about Family Systems theory, I think ‘No Bad Parts’ by Richard Schwartz could be a good intro to that. Also some of the stuff by Gabor Mate could be relevant, about trauma and the effects of stressed parenting. For more academic stuff, try reading Stephen Porges who talks about Polyvagal theory.
Thank you so much everybody! These are really helpful.
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery. A breakthrough book for me. It took me a long time to uncover the layers until I understood that Herman was talking about me, especially in the chapters on “Child Abuse” and “A New Diagnosis” (she gave CPTSD its name in this book). Herman was a professor at Harvard with a really big heart.