"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
