Parents Who Bully: A Healing Guide for Adult Children of Immature, Narcissistic and Authoritarian Parents (Toxic Parents book)

by Eric Maisel PhD, John Duffy (Foreword by)

Overview

Break Free from Emotionally Abusive Parents

Parents Who Bully exposes the hidden epidemic of parental emotional abuse and authoritarianism, providing crucial insights and healing strategies for those affected. Learn how to break free from toxic parenting and find the path to emotional recovery and freedom.

Uncover the truth about authoritarian parenting in Parents Who Bully. Through compelling real-life accounts and authoritative research, you'll gain invaluable insights into the signs of emotionally abusive parents. Understand the lasting impact of authoritarian parenting styles, and discover the path to healing and emotional freedom. This eye-opening book empowers you to confront the turmoil and scars caused by parental emotional abuse, offering a guide to recovery and personal transformation.

Are you ready to break free from the chains of the authoritarian personality? Parents Who Bully equips you with the tools to recognize and overcome the toxic dynamics of your family. With expert guidance, you'll learn how to deal with emotionally abusive parents, heal your emotional wounds, and ultimately find relief and empowerment.

Inside, you’ll find:

• In-depth insights into emotionally abusive parents and their impact on adult children
• Authoritative research and real-life accounts that demonstrate the signs of toxic parenting styles
• Practical strategies to break free from bad parents and heal deep emotional wounds
• A comprehensive roadmap for understanding, recovery, and personal growth in the face of parental emotional abuse

If you learned from reading Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents; Children of the Self-Absorbed; or Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters; you’ll love Parents Who Bully.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684814909
Publisher:	Mango Media
Publication date:	04/23/2024
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Eric Maisel, Ph.D., is the author of more than 50 books in the areas of creativity, psychology, coaching, mental health, and cultural trends. He is a psychotherapist and the founder of the creativity coach profession, regularly working with lawyers, doctors, scientists, writers, painters, businesspeople, and folks from every walk of life. They include folks settled in a profession as well as people struggling to find an outlet for their intelligence and looking for work that will allow them to be as smart as they are. They include individuals who are successful in their careers and those who, because of the realities of the marketplace, struggle to achieve success. And through his books, they could include you.

Sought after as an expert in his field, Dr. Maisel regularly contributes to Mad in America, writes a monthly print column for Professional Artist Magazine, and writes the "Rethinking Mental Health" blog for Psychology Today. He has been the keynote speaker at many conferences and leads Deep Writing workshops worldwide.

Dr. Maisel currently resides in Walnut Creek, California. Visit him at www.ericmaisel.com.

Dr. Duffy is a highly sought-after clinical psychologist, bestselling author, podcaster, certified life coach, and parenting and relationship expert. He has been working in his clinical practice with individuals, couples, teens, and families for nearly twenty-five years. Dr. Duffy’s refreshing and unique approach has provided the critical intervention and support needed to help thousands of individuals and families find their footing.

Along with his clinical work, Dr. Duffy is the author of the number-one best-selling The Available Parent (Viva Editions, second edition released 2014). He is a frequent national media presence. He has been the regular parenting and relationship expert on Steve Harvey (with more than 75 appearances), and appears several times a month on WGN radio. He also appears frequently on other national and local television and radio outlets, and is cited regularly in national print and online publications. These include the Today show, Fox News, Chicago Tribune, Fox Good Day Chicago, The Jam, WGN-TV, the Morning Blend, NPR, the Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Redbook, Time, Good Housekeeping, Men’s Health, Chicago Parent, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Wired, Parenting, Your Teen, Parents, Family Circle, Chicago Sun-Times, and Real Simple magazine, among many others.

As noted, he is contributor to the Pear app and co-host of the podcast with Giuliana and Bill Rancic, consults on two films on teen anxiety, and co-host of a popular podcast, better, with his wife Julie. He is also a frequent guest on other parenting and self-help podcasts.

Dr. Duffy lives outside Chicago with his wife Julie and son George.

Read an Excerpt

From Parents Who Bully

In the 1960s, developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind, reporting on her research with preschool-age children, described three parenting styles, one of which came to be known as the authoritarian parenting style. She described this style as characterized by strict rules, a refusal to explain the rules, the demand that these rules be followed unconditionally, and harsh punishment if they weren’t followed.

The typical authoritarian—the typical family dictator—looks one way in private, but manifests another, sometimes completely different persona in a public setting. It is no wonder that victims of authoritarian wounding report that even up to the present day, they are still confused when it comes to making choices and doing intellectual work, as well as in their understanding of the exact nature of their authoritarian wounding.

Authoritarians often look good in the world, even very good. They can be charming in public and expert at reserving their authoritarian wounding for family members. This conscious, calculated duplicity is a feature of an authoritarian’s cynical desire to get what he or she wants—primarily the ability to inflict punishment—without experiencing negative consequences.

Some authoritarians are authoritarian everywhere and are easy to spot because they are cruel and dictatorial wherever they go. But others look absolutely wonderful in public, and it’s only behind closed doors that they wreak their havoc. We are going to look behind those closed doors at the lives and stories of the children they harm: the ones that they harm in childhood, and the ones that they continue to harm when those children become adults.

What appears to be at the heart of the authoritarian personality, whether that individual is a so-to-speak leader, follower, or (as often occurs), both, is a deep reservoir of hatred and a ferocious need to punish. Where this reservoir of hatred and need to punish come from is anyone’s guess. No one can explain the why of it. Maybe authoritarians were born that way. Maybe evil exists. Maybe authoritarians were wounded themselves and are passing that blight along. What we can say for certain is that throughout human history and as far into the future as we can see, we will have to deal with family authoritarians and the harm they inflict.

You’ve no doubt heard a lot about bullying at school and about cyberbullying, but almost nothing about something at least as terrible, if not worse: the bullying that takes place in the home at the hands of cruel, narcissistic, authoritarian, immature, punishing parents. This bullying, which is rarely discussed, produces lifelong scars and ruins millions of children, preventing them from reaching their full potential and creating despair and high anxiety.

I am appalled but not surprised that so many parents are cruel to their children (and to their adult children). I am not surprised because it appears to be a constant of our species that a sizeable number of human beings, estimated by pundits to be in the 20–25 percent range, are authoritarian either by nature or training. Authoritarians are among us, numbering in the millions. So of course, they can also be found by the millions in families.

There they are, brimming over with hatred and a passion for punishment. In public, they may do a lot of smiling. In private, they are a terror. How could a child possibly make sense of this caustic reality, of how her mother or her father is so vicious and unloving? How can that child make sense of that actuality, even when he or she has grown up? Perhaps by hearing their stories, we can begin to comprehend the extent to which parental bullying harms our children. Maybe by shining a bright light on this abuse, we can help those who have been bullied as well as those who are still being bullied. Let us hope!

What will family dictators say about all this? They will say, “Stop your whining.” “Stop bashing parents.” “Stop acting all superior.” “Stop exaggerating.” “Stop lying.” And of course they will say, “Go to hell.” The bullies out there will rush to engage in more bullying. That is to be expected. That is what bullies do. Our job, however, is to persevere, to share the truth about family dictators, and to make the world a safer place for our children.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Author’s Preface
Part I. The Look of Mean

• The World of Mean
• Adverse Childhood Experiences
• What Family Bullies Look Like
• The Aggression Cluster
• The Exploitation Cluster
• The Narcissism Cluster
• Born in Alabama
• Daughter of a Beat
• The Pleasure She Derived
• Any Sadism Will Do
• How Can I Survive?
• Quixotic, Unclear Rules
• My Accomplishments Will Not Bring Me Happiness
• The Shaming Began
• An Empty Shell
• It Was a Pretty Typical Household
• Theft by Amphetamines
• They Dominate My Mind
• When I Felt Strong Enough
• So You Think That You’re Better Than Me?
• Snapshots of Consequences
• Eight Truths

Part II. Tools and Tactics

• Create Physical Separation and Limit Contact
• Create Psychological Separation
• Practice Right Thinking
• Redesign Your Mind
• Grow Your Strength
• Enlist Allies
• Acknowledge Trauma
• Listen to Your Body
• Practice Calm Self-Awareness
• Practice Self-Care
• Stay Alert for Triggers
• Create a Support System
• Release Guilt and Shame
• Speak Up
• Honor Your Freedom
• Identify Your Life Purposes
• Live Your Life Purposes
• Dismiss Apologists
• Call Bullies on Their Behaviors
• Practice Resilience
• Think in Multiples
• The Authoritarian Wound Questionnaire

Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Parents Who Bully will resonate with anyone whose life has been compromised by domineering and authoritarian parenting. The book is rich with real life stories and filled with strategies to help people heal and thrive. With compassion and kindness, Dr. Maisel gently encourages you to live the life you’ve always wanted!”
—Professor Timothy Carey, PhD, Chair, Country Health Research and Innovation, Curtin University

“Eric Maisel approaches the harrowing subject of parental bullying in his experienced, direct and inimitable way and describes a powerful healing process for those who have been affected by authoritarian parenting. Coaches and therapists will find this book a goldmine of useful tips and case studies and every reader will be helped to a newfound understanding of this terrible, silent epidemic. Vital reading? In the truest sense of the word, yes!”
—Ian Jefferis, director, Young Minds Coaching, specializing in support of children and adolescents

“In Parents Who Bully, Dr. Maisel skillfully uses real-life stories to comprehensively examine parental meanness and its lasting effects. Far from clinically sterile or theoretical, this book is refreshingly active and practical, instilling hope by taking the reader on a step-by-step journey toward understanding parent-induced trauma and ways of finding relief.”
—Chuck Ruby, PhD, author of Smoke and Mirrors: How You Are Being Fooled by Mental Illness—An Insider’s Warning to Consumers

“The author of this guide to parental bullying has wisely turned large portions of the narrative over to those who have lived through and survived such experiences. Their heart-wrenching tales and hard-won solutions breathe life into this volume. Also useful is the author’s roadmap to the myriad forms bullying takes and the duplicitous rationalizations perpetrators use to justify their transgressions. This long-needed guide will be a godsend to those who have suffered at the hands of authoritarian, narcissistic parents—particularly those who have mainly had to suffer in silence and isolation.”
—Jay S. Efran, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Temple University

“It is rare that an author of a self-help book writes so directly about the nature of psychological problems and provides clear pointers to self-healing. This is exactly what is needed for someone who has suffered at the hands of a bullying or authoritarian parent and finds it hard to articulate how they have been damaged. Maisel describes the full-range of psychological insults, both by listing them and by providing numerous biographical accounts with which a reader can easily identify. By validating their experiences, he helps in the process of constructing a new relationship with their own selves and with others. By reviewing and writing about their experiences, the reader learns to adopt ‘eight truths’ that lift any sense that she or he was in any way responsible for their status as victims, and the author implants the belief that change is possible. There follows twenty eminently practical chapters on ‘tools and tactics’ for effecting change. This book will be of great value to anyone starting out on a journey of self-discovery and will serve as a valuable adjunct to formal therapy as a way of pressing home the important messages on which change is based.”
—Richard Hallam, PhD, author of Abolishing the Concept of Mental Illness

“Eric Maisel’s new book, Parents Who Bully: A Guide for Adult Children of Immature, Narcissistic, and Authoritarian Parents, provides a clear exploration of parental bullying, its effects on family members, and, most importantly, thoughtful guidance on how to recover. Maisel categorizes parents who bully as either aggressive, exploitative, or narcissistic and provides detailed descriptions of each type. Bullying is often denied, minimized, or blamed on the victims themselves, but those excuses are blasted apart by the searing personal stories of grown-children who bear the scars from living with such parents. Maisel encourages his readers to undertake a healing journey and offers hope for readers in the form of practical suggestions such as redesigning your mind, listening to your body, enlisting allies, and releasing guilt and shame, to name but a few. I especially appreciate the use of journaling at the end of each chapter as a way to capture your own thoughts immediately after reading. This book will be an invaluable resource for anyone who’s lived with a bullying parent.”
—Ann Bracken, author of Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery

From the Publisher