You Don't Have to Take it Anymore Turn Your Resentful, Angry, or Emotionally Abusive Relationship into a Compassionate, Loving One »

Steven Stosny, PhD, has treated more than 4,000 people for various relationship problems through CompassionPower, the organization he founded and has directed for more than twelve years. His textbook, Treating Attachment Abuse: A Compassionate Approach, set a new standard for understanding and treating family abuse and is widely used in therapeutic settings in the United States and abroad. Dr. Stosny has authored many articles and chapters in professional books and has been quoted by, or been the subject of articles in, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Mademoiselle, Women's World, O: The Oprah Magazine, Psychology Today, AP, Reuters, and USA Today. He has also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and other national television shows.

As many as one-third of all American women tiptoe through life as if they are walking on eggshells -- at home, they spend most of their time trying to avoid criticism, anger, put-downs, or cold shoulders from their husbands or boyfriends. This verbal and emotional abuse can erupt over anything and everything, matters large and small: housework, cooking, work, spending money, buying household items and clothes for the kids, and going out. Clearly, verbal and emotional abuse is a serious problem.

Relationship expert Dr. Steven Stosny has been featured on national media for the revolutionary techniques he uses in his Compassion-Power and Boot Camp programs, which help men rewire their resentment and anger, stop using emotionally abusive language and behavior, and compassionately recommit to their marriages and families.

Now, in You Don't Have to Take It Anymore, Dr. Stosny puts his effective, highly sought-after program into print, making it widely available for the first time for women who want to stop walking on eggshells. Drawing on his seventeen years of experience treating thousands of clients, Dr. Stosny explains the many different forms a verbally and emotionally abusive relationship can take. He explains how to identify abuse and why it's important to take action to change the relationship -- for not only is verbal and emotional abuse monumentally destructive to both the adults in the relationship, it also hurts their children. Dr. Stosny shows women and men how to apply his methods at home, shows women how to get their men to change, and demonstrates how they can know if change is permanent. Additionally, Dr. Stosny's program helps women recover from thepain and abuse by practicing self-healing skills so that they can reclaim their natural sense of competence and confidence. Using language that is more compassionate and accessible than in any other book on relationship abuse -- and different tactics from most other therapies and therapists -- You Don't Have to Take It Anymore presents a practical program that both women and men can use to stop verbal and emotional abuse.

Publishers Weekly

If you're always walking on eggshells around your partner, Stosny is writing for you. The CompassionPower founder and relationship expert draws examples and exercises from his experience working with couples as he discusses core values, anger management, power struggles and reconstruction. Resentment is Stosny's main target (not possible underlying depression, anxiety or other factors). The approach may provide false hope if the reader's reality is too complex for self-help, but it could also foster important life changes. (Jan. 10) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Introduction: The Hidden Epidemic

Visceral Fear of Harm

How to Use This Book

 Self-Disclosure and Dedication

1 Why You Have Thorns in Your Heart

Walking-on-Eggshells Quiz

2 How Love Is Meant to Work and Why It So Often Doesn't

3 The Mirror of Love

4 Why Marriage Counseling, Psychotherapy, Anger-Management, and Abuser Treatment Made It Worse

Reclaiming the Self

5 Recovering Your Core Value

6 Removing the Thorns from Your Heart

7 Developing Your Natural Sense of Self, Competence, and Growth

Postscript to Part II

The Boot Camp

Introduction to the Boot Camp

8 Commitment to Healing

9 Finding Your Real Power

10 Connecting with Your Core Value

11 HEALS: Automatically Regulating Resentment, Anger, and the Impulse to Criticize, Reject, or Abuse

12 The Power of Compassion

13 Your Wife Needs Time and Lots of Compassion to Recover

14 Reestablishing Connection

15 Preventing Relapse: Weekly and Monthly Checklists

Resurrection for Your Marriage

16 How to Know That Change Is Permanent

17 Replacing Power Struggles with Mutual Empowerment

18 Rituals of Repair and Reconnection

Postscript: The Light within You

Appendix I: When Your Relationship Doesn't Make It

AppendixII: Resentful, Angry, and Abusive Women

Appendix III: Statistical Foundation of the Program

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author