I wish the author, Robin Norwood had titled this book “People Who Love Too Much”. It is so awkward to have to tell a men and lesbians to keep interchanging the pronouns.
This is the best book I have encountered to explain the dynamics of co-dependency. To begin with, the author elaborates on the characteristics of a typical woman who loves too much. She next includes many situations to illustrate some of these characteristics.
She has a wonderful chart to show the parallel between progression of the disease of alcoholism and the progression of the disease of loving too much. She explains how the woman becomes addicted to her own adrenaline in her brain, as a result of “walking on eggshells”. She shows how this addiction affects every area of the woman’s life. And the recovery process is essentially the same for either alcohol addiction or relational addiction.
My favorite part of the book is the last part where she helps the reader step by step to recover from the relational addiction. She has the reader reflect on each step from four different perspectives, i.e. what it means to stop managing and controlling. what it requires, why it is necessary and what it implies.
Just this one step is a lifetime of work.
The author gives so much hope and even lists the characteristics of a woman who has recovered.
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