Main description:

Being partnered with a narcissist or borderline personality can be hard enough, but learning how to shield children from the fallout is paramount. Here, the authors show readers how to manage parenting when a narcissistic or borderline partner is part of the equation.

Life in a narcissistic family system is at best challenging, and too often filled with chaos, isolation, emotional outbursts, and rigid controlling behaviors. It is too often devoid of peace and emotional safety. In the worst outcomes, children in these families grow up with low self-worth, issues with trust and belonging, and a lack of self-compassion. They are at significant risk of carrying the cycle forward and having poor adult relationships.
This book offers a way to intervene and disrupt the cycle of negative outcomes for children. Written by two family therapists who bring a combined total of sixty years of clinical practice with individuals and families, the book pulls no punches, giving clear-headed advice, easy to follow actions to help children, and an abundance of teaching examples.

Instead of the doom and gloom scenarios often presented about life with a narcissist or borderline, this book provides a much more positive outlook, and most importantly, it offers hope and a path to an entirely different outcome for the family members. Supported by current research in neuroscience, mindfulness and parenting information, the book focuses on teaching resilience and self-compassion to raise emotionally healthy children, even in a narcissistic family system.

It starts by helping parents get a clear understanding of what they face with a narcissistic or borderline partner. There is no room here for denial, but there are also many options to explore. It explains how and why the narcissistic family system functions so poorly for raising healthy children, and pinpoints the deficits while providing information on how to intervene more effectively for the benefit of the children.

Using their years of experience, the authors present ideas for staying together as well as knowing when to leave the relationship and how best to do that. Emphasis throughout the book is on supporting and strengthening the reader with encouragement, concrete ideas, skills and compassionate understanding.

Contents:

Author Note

Introduction

Part I: When the Other Parent Is Narcissistic or Borderline

Chapter 1: Self-Focused Parenting

Chapter 2: What the Narcissistic Family Is Like for Children

Chapter 3: What the Narcissistic Family Is Like for You

Chapter 4 Narcissistic Family System: Patterns and Problems

Part II: Building Resilience

Chapter 5: Resilient Parent, Resilient Child

Chapter 6: Changing Directions

Chapter 7: Building Your Own Resilience

Chapter 8: Self-Compassion: Key to Developing Healthy Self-Worth

Chapter 9: Creating an Environment to Thrive

Chapter 10: Responsive Parenting

Chapter 11: Help Your Children Develop Self-Compassion

Chapter 12: Help Your Children Have Their Own Lives

Part III: Parenting Will Be Different

Chapter 13: What to Say: Handling Family Communication

Chapter 14: What Not to Say and Do

Chapter 15: Responding to Emotional and Physical Dangers

Chapter 16: Assessing Your Situation

Chapter 17: Parenting in the Same Household

Chapter 18: Parenting After Divorce

Chapter 19: Being a Good Enough Parent

Chapter 20: Final Words

Appendix A: Vocabulary of Feeling Words

Appendix B: Communication Prompts

Appendix C: Suggested Reading

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Authors