If You Had Controlling Parents: How to Make Peace with Your Past and Take Your Place in the World Paperback – 1 Oct. 1999

First of all, this book is about parents that not follow you everywhere like police(like many people might assume) but "love" you in a consuming way-"love" is seen as an exchange for your obedience to them.I gave this book to many of my friends and they simply loved it! This book structured in very easy, with headlined and categories of controlling parents! way so that you can use it as a reference when needed. It is helpful in UNDERSTANDING your problem and eliminating destructive patterns you see in yourself.However, please do not think that by reading this book everything will change instantly-making peace with your past is a long and painful process, very often impossible without support of the close ones or/and therapist.

This book is really helping me to view myself in the problem that smashed my life .Is written by a Dr.PHD and you can realize that for how he disectionate each fact and situation of your life to let you understand what happened to you .I highly recommend it ,I am learning a lot with it and dropping many tears and bad feelings ,is healing me .If you had been misstreated for your parents in any way ,from the softest to the hardest way you need this book to cure your soul and mind.

Well written with clear headings and sections. A welcome support for those coming to terms with an experience of childhood with parents who were not emotionally able.

Good read, makes you think

An eye-opening read that has helped me start to make a bit more sense of my upbringing; it helped me be brave in facing up to my parents.

Book for everyone to understand yourself and to have better life.

Bought this out of curiosity and enjoyed recognising some characteristics portrayed

Excellent

The book offers a detailed typology of controlling parenting styles, illustrated by relatable real-life examples, as well as very helpful practical tips on overcoming the effects of controlling upbringing.I would also recommend this book to all parents and parents-to-be: it shows the consequences of different parenting styles and the ways we might unconsciously hurt our children.

I would recommend this title to anyone who has had controlling parents and are unsure of methods to handle the emotions of realization or, as in the book, attempting to "emotionally leave home."Do you have negative self talk? Your parents may still be in there. Find yourself, methods and validation.The interviewes were really across the board and gave a wide perspective on the types of control and the resulting behaviours from the parents. You can feel yourselves in these survivors shoes.I feel like everything is starting to make sense and this book really helped with that.

This is yet another book I have purchased and read, in a long line of trying to POSSIBLY discern the horrendous rigors I endured as a child and into adulthood. Dan Neuharth endured a controlling father, unlike the authors of most books focusing on Borderline or Narcissistic parents, who merely write/speak from clinical research. I can tell you, that unless one has withstood the HORRORS of being abused by their parents, they both COULDN'T and SHOULDN'T speak knowledgably, when mere case studies couldn't possibly delve into what such an existence is like. However, the first part of the book only gives a few sentences regarding each case study. I truly WISH Mr. Neuhart could have elaborated further. Simply saying somebody's mother only "allowed one taste of each item served at dinner" and then the child had to "determine the substance within each item before she could continue eating her entire dinner", yes, that really hit home. But that poor girl's life HAD to consist of more issues of control BEYOND that rigorous dinnertime ritual. If somebody read MY memoirs, where my every THOUGHT, WORD, DEED, BODY FUNCTION, EMOTION, ACTION was not only scrutinized and questioned MERCILESSLY, and subsequently PUNISHED, then NOBODY would BELIEVE how I've actually survived such a horrible upbringing without winding up in the loony bin. All these books give more than half of each book toward trying to deal with our abusive parents now, and how to find forgiveness. Pretty hard to stomach, let alone deal with. The worst is seeing, in each and every book, how "hard" our parents had it in THEIR youth, which these authors SOMEHOW attribute toward our parents mistreating us EVERY MINUTE of our LIVES once they have become parents. For instance, HOW does it figure in, that my father lost HIS father when he was three? I never heard my dad EVER say he even REMEMBERED his father. Yes, of course it is sad he lost his father; especially so YOUNG. But his mother quickly remarried to a very nice man, who not only adopted Dad and his twin brother, he also adopted their older sister. This is the ONLY THING bad which happened to my dad, and yet he took out every POSSIBLE source of angst, hatred, frustration and aggravation on ME, painfully, physically, emotionally and verbally. I'm sorry, but I don't buy someone having the "license" to bash his offspring to death, seeing that his ONLY trauma was losing his father, and he NEVER went parentless; his mother had remarried. As for my mother, HER early trauma consisted of her parents divorcing when she was ONE YEAR OLD. She had normal, regular visits with her dad, and her mother was difficult, and yet this author claims such "trauma" is what caused MY MOTHER to become the hateful, angry, Borderline, Narcissistic CONTROL FREAK she has been, to watch every bite of food I ate and ridiculed me, watched every step I walked and ridiculed me, listened to every word I SPOKE and both ridiculed and corrected me, ridiculed me if I had artistic pursuits, shunned my musical pursuits (NEVER attending any of my band concerts at school unless she'd wanted to sit next to a single guy and flirt with him, paying absolutely NO attention to me other than to offer HARSH criticism over my performances.). She beat me practically to death, every single day, over everything she scrutinized about me that she didn't like and that she had perceived I had done incorrectly, never stopped pulling my hair, slamming me against walls, giving me black eyes and bloody, fat lips, crushing my jaw, crushing my hands and twisting them until I thought they would break, screaming NONSTOP AT ME, and complaining NONSTOP over her poor, pitiful life, which seemed 100000000000000000000000000000% better than MINE had been at her hands and at Dad's hands. So, yes, this book was technically excellent, but these parents know PRECISELY what they are doing and I DOUBT their cruel actions can be solely attributed to some minor childhood traumas. I don't discount what they went through, but neither my father nor my mother could have POSSIBLY endured the life they forced me to go through and to this day I struggle to live each day, when they have rendered me such a complete WRECK. These people are crafty and manipulative enough to know EXACTLY how they are acting, all under the supposed guise of "corporal punishment", which is NOT punishable by law. They LOVE seeing us scream and cry at their terror-filled hands. They smile and take DELIGHT in abusing us physically, mentally and verbally. And just TRY to report their evil actions to the police, like I tried to do on several occasions. The police did positively NOTHING and I was beaten to a pulp when Mom found out I'd had the supposed audacity to report her cruel physical violence. Forgive? Hardly. Forget? Never. Very sad.

I had read other books on the subject. This is my favorite. I feel that if you want make the peace with the pass, this is the book that could help in the way... More than just realized all the damage that my parents did to me, the book help me to realized that my parents did just what they could with their own education and own pass. I believed that for improve, it is necessary to look for solutions, ways to don't do the same mistakes that our parents or grand parents did.

I looked through a lot of these types of books, and almost didn't buy this one because of the title and it was written almost 20 years ago (so I thought the examples might be dated). As far as the title goes, I didn't want a book that encouraged me to paint myself as a victim, and to me the title just seemed a little questionable. But it got fantastic reviews, so I bought it. Thanks reviewers! 😊 You did me a solid!This book is fantastic, but MAKE SURE you don't put it down before Part 3: Solving the Problem, p. 155. Otherwise you're just sitting there mired in all this depressing information not knowing what really to do about it.I wish the Author would put out an updated version where there are exercises at the end of each chapter, but that's just my preference. I like to feel like I'm actively doing something to help myself, and the strategies about what to do don't come until p. 155.But maybe I'm just being critical because I had perfectionist parents - BA DUM CHING! (Distracting jokes? See. . . I learned a lot! 😄)No, really. It is a good book for coming to terms with negativity and lurking weirdness in your life. And there is no opportunity for victimization here. The author lays it on the line pretty early about how it's really sad you had a hard time growing up, but you're an adult so your drama is your drama now and you can't blame Ma & Pa for your adult mistakes. There's also a really compassionate chapter on understanding what your parents may have gone through to make them controlling. At the same time it addresses the tendency to make excuses for bad behavior ala "They did the best they could." Well, that may be true, but that doesn't mean that acknowledging it wasn't all ponies and roses and smiles is betraying your parents.I got a lot out of the parts about your "internal parent," which is basically the self-punishing part of you that takes after the patterns you learned. It's like doing something you know isn't healthy because it's a habit. I really enjoyed this book, and am glad I got it. DEFINITELY worth far more than the five bucks or so I paid to get it used.P.S. You might laugh at me for this, but I think it even made me a better dog owner. The dog, however, didn't seem to care either way.