I do caution that you may not want to read it by yourself depending on the level of trauma you dealt with as a child.

I sobbed, I mourned, and I walked out a more powerful version of myself. I have never so deeply analyzed my habits and deep seated ways of thinking. The exercises the book has take you step-by-step through different stages of your life in order to re-parent yourself. I do not exaggerate when I say this book changed my life. I usually hate self-help books, but my therapist recommended this book to me to help me cope with ongoing issues of being the adult child of both an alcoholic and an enabler. There are lots of great points here that rang true, but also a lot of dubious content that went along with it, and I quickly figured out that the best way to read it is to skim through, get the general idea and not fuss too much over the details. Overall, I’m sure that there are many more up-to-date books that better explain psychoanalytic concepts. However, a few tears did spring to my eyes while I was reading, so I have to admit it had the desired effect of helping me understand just how deep childhood wounds run. Additionally, many people won’t enjoy the implicit gender role stereotypes that abound in this book. Among other things, Bradshaw posits that repression causes cancer, and preaches Freud’s theory of psychosexual stages (oral, anal, etc.) which is no longer practiced or taken seriously in psychology. However, this book is a product of its time. On the one hand, the basic concept (how childhood wounds escalate into adult problems) is incredibly important.

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