Freedom from Toxic Relationships: Moving On from the Family, Work, and Relationship Issues That Bring You Down

by Avril Carruthers

Overview

A guide to leaving painful, destructive relationships behind—both at home and at work

Toxic relationships often come disguised as seemingly normal ones. These subtly destructive relationships are characterized by the slow erosion of self-esteem, a loss of personal identity, or a growing desire to please friends, partners, and family members who are impossible to please.
 
In this uplifting and informative book, transpersonal psychotherapist Avril Carruthers will take a close look at adult relationships to show why we get involved in toxic relationships in the first place, and instruct the reader on how to recognize if they’re involved in one. Once the toxic relationship is identified, the author shows the reader how to begin their journey toward healing and how to meet the world with a new kind of confidence, so that the cycle of toxic relationships can be broken once and for all.
 
What Carruthers teaches is just how possible it can be to learn how to recognize the manipulative or sweetly corrosive partner, the family dynamics that make Christmas and other get-togethers seem like hell, or the nightmare boss who causes daily torment—and that we can learn to leave these painful, destructive patterns behind forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101633748
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/26/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Avril Carruthers is a transpersonal psychotherapist and author of Let Your Past Go and Live. She holds regular workshops and has been in private practice for over twenty years. She lives in Sydney, Australia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Contact websites xi

Introduction xiii

Part 1 What Is a Toxic Relationship?

1 Where it all begins 3

2 Toxic relationships 7

3 Am I in a toxic relationship or what? 11

4 Parents and children 21

5 Unhealthy family connections 38

6 Mending toxic childhood connections 52

7 Cutting the cord 55

8 Exploration 57

9 Forever baby 64

10 Why attachments don't go away by themselves 67

Subtle body awareness exercise 1: Etheric sensing 70

Part 2 Adult Relationships: Up Close and Personal

11 The thing about attraction 75

12 When old wounds come back to bite us 81

13 Pulling at the heartstrings 86

14 Breaking up 93

15 What happens to connections when we die? 100

16 Letting go 110

17 Strange phenomena 118

18 Seriously toxic-personality disorders 131

The Fatal Flaw Scale 146

Subtle body awareness exercise 2: Experiencing the astral body 150

Part 3 The Journey to Healing

19 Moving out of the tangle 159

20 Interdependence 165

21 How does a connection turn toxic? 170

22 The curious effect of clearing toxic attachments 174

23 Positive reconnections 180

24 Using relationships to evolve 183

25 Is my soul mate out there? 190

26 What hope have I got with parents like mine? 194

27 Learning to trust our own judgment 198

28 When the going gets tough 200

29 Our attachments and Characters 207

30 Forgotten pacts 211

31 Are deliberate cords okay? 226

32 Living in the present 222

Subtle body awareness exercise 3: Experiencing a present time connection 224

Part 4 Meeting the World with Confidence

33 Creating me, creating you, creating us 229

34 What the real you has to say 240

35 The gifts of long-term meditation 245

36 Making sense of it all 249

37 Do I need a clearer or can I do it myself? 252

38 Sacred space 259

Endnotes 261

Index 265

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Carruthers provides useful healing suggestions...It's a worthy addition to any self-help collection."
—Publishers Weekly

"[Carruthers] offers...realistic, compassionate guidance for doing what is often difficult work. She covers a broad range of toxic relationship problems and, of course, includes a section about finding a healthy intimate relationship."
—Retailing Insight Magazine

Editorial Reviews

09/30/2013
In this mix of psychotherapy and New Age principles, transpersonal psychotherapist Carruthers (Let Your Past Go and Live) examines how unhealthy relationships form—and what readers can do to heal them, or “cut the cord.” The author maintains that “etheric cords” are formed by those in intimate relationships, whether they happen to be parent/child, romantic, or unhealthy friendships or working situations. She is frank about the requirement of hard work: “clearing a cord is not a matter of simply imagining a giant pair of scissors, cutting the imaginary cord and being miraculously free thereafter.” Using exercises such as “etheric sensing,” “experiencing the astral body,” and explorative self-awareness techniques, Carruthers provides useful healing suggestions, although she responsibly advises seeking the benefits of professional therapy in detaching from and healing the wounds inflicted by these toxic relationships. It’s heavy on New Age–speak, but if one can get past that aspect to the core ideas, it’s a worthy addition to any self-help collection. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Carruthers provides useful healing suggestions...It's a worthy addition to any self-help collection."
—Publishers Weekly

"[Carruthers] offers...realistic, compassionate guidance for doing what is often difficult work. She covers a broad range of toxic relationship problems and, of course, includes a section about finding a healthy intimate relationship."
—Retailing Insight Magazine

From the Publisher