Healing Your Emotional Self: A Powerful Program to Help You Raise Your Self-Esteem, Quiet Your Inner Critic, and Overcome Your Shame

Healing Your Emotional Self

"Emotionally abusive parents are indeed toxic parents, and they cause significant damage to their children's self-esteem, self-image, and body image. In this remarkable book, Beverly Engel shares her powerful Mirror Therapy program for helping adult survivors to overcome their shame and self-criticism, become more compassionate and accepting of themselves, and create a more posititve self-image. I strongly recommend it for anyone who was abused or neglected as a child."

--Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of Toxic Parents

"In this book, Beverly Engel documents the wide range of psychological abuses that so many children experience in growing up. Her case examples and personal accounts are poignant and powerful reminders that as adults, many of us are still limited by the defenses we formed when trying to protect ourselves in the face of the painful circumstances we found ourselves in as children. Engle's insightful questionnaires and exercises provide concrete help in the healing process, and her writing style is lively and engaging. This book is destined to positively affect many lives."

--Joyce Catlett, M.A., coauthor of Fear of Intimacy

The Emotionally Abusive Relationship

"Beverly Engel clearly and with caring offers step-by-step strategies to stop emotional abuse . . . helping both victims and abusers to identify the patterns of this painful and traumatic type of abuse."

--Marti Tamm Loring, Ph.D., author of Emotional Abuse

Loving Him without Losing You

"A powerful and practical guide to relationships that every woman should read."

--Barbara De Angelis, Ph.D., author of Are You the One for Me?

Healing Your Emotional Self

"Emotionally abusive parents are indeed toxic parents, and they cause significant damage to their children's self-esteem, self-image, and body image. In this remarkable book, Beverly Engel shares her powerful Mirror Therapy program for helping adult survivors to overcome their shame and self-criticism, become more compassionate and accepting of themselves, and create a more posititve self-image. I strongly recommend it for anyone who was abused or neglected as a child."

— Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of "Toxic Parents"

"In this book, Beverly Engel documents the wide range of psychological abuses that so many children experience in growing up. Her case examples and personal accounts are poignant and powerful reminders that as adults, many of us are still limited by the defenses we formed when trying to protect ourselves in the face of the painful circumstances we found ourselves in as children. Engle's insightful questionnaires and exercises provide concrete help in the healing process, and her writing style is lively and engaging. This book is destined to positively affect many lives."

— Joyce Catlett, M.A., coauthor of "Fear of Intimacy"

The Emotionally Abusive Relationship

"Beverly Engel clearly and with caring offers step-by-step strategies to stop emotional abuse . . . helping both victims and abusers to identify the patterns of this painful and traumatic type of abuse."

— Marti Tamm Loring, Ph.D., author of "Emotional Abuse"

Loving Him without Losing You

"A powerful and practical guide to relationships that every woman should read."

— Barbara De Angelis, Ph.D., author of "Are You the One for Me?"

Parents act as a mirror to show a child who she or he is. Throughout childhood there will be other mirrors, but children inevitably return to the reflection in that original mirror in order to determine their goodness, importance, and self-worth. In Healing Your Emotional Self, Engel offers her highly effective Mirror Therapy program to help you reject the distorted images your parents either intentionally or unintentionally projected onto you. She explores the seven types of emotionally abusive or neglectful parents and the seven most common parental mirrors, providing specific advice and recovery strategies for each one.

Helping you raise your self-esteem and improve your self-image, this innovative step-by-step program provides you with the skills you need to:

• Create a positive self-image separate from your abusive parents' distorted picture
• Separate emotionally from your parents and provide for yourself what you missed as a child
• Discover who you really are—including your likes, dislikes, values, goals, and dreams—by creating a word self-portrait and using other Mirror Therapy techniques
• Overcome your tendency toward self-blame, self-hatred, and self-destructiveness
• Learn self-nurturing and set effective limits to help you control your tendency to overeat, drink too much, overspend, and/or overwork
• Become the person you are meant to be by being more accepting of yourself

Learn to love who you see in the mirror with the breakthrough program found in Healing Your Emotional Self.

"Emotionally abusive parents are indeed toxic parents, and they cause significant damage to their children's self-esteem, self-image, and body image. In this remarkable book, Beverly Engel shares her powerful Mirror Therapy program for helping adult survivors to overcome their shame and self-criticism, become more compassionate and accepting of themselves, and create a more positive self-image."

—Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of Toxic Parents

"Engel's insightful questionnaires and exercises provide concrete help in the healing process, and her writing style is lively and engaging. This book is destined to positively affect many lives."

—Joyce Catlett, M.A., coauthor of Fear of Intimacy

In Healing Your Emotional Self, Beverly Engel, one of the world's leading experts on emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, explains how to heal the damage to your self-image and self-esteem caused by negative parental messages and offers treatment to help you lead a happier and healthier life. This breakthrough guide is designed to help you reject the distorted images your parents either intentionally or unintentionally projected onto you. Step by step, this innovative method will give you the skills you need to quiet your inner critic, boost your self-esteem, create a positive self-image separate from your abusive parents' distorted picture, discover who you really are, learn self-nurturing, and become the person you are meant to be.

Beverly Engel is an internationally recognized expert in emotional and sexual abuse. She is the author of several other self-help books, including the highly successful The Emotionally Abusive Relationship, Loving Him without Losing You, and The Emotionally Abused Woman. Engel conducts workshops and professional training programs and has appeared on many national television shows, including Oprah, Starting Over, Donahue, and Ricki Lake.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

Part One. How Your Parents Shape Your Self-Esteem, Self-Image, and Body Image.

1 Our Parents as Mirrors.

2 The Seven Types of Negative Parental Mirrors.

3 Your Body as a Mirror.

4 How Mirror Therapy Works.

Part Two.   Shattering Your Distorted Parental Mirror.

5 Rejecting Your Parents’ Negative Reflection.

6 Emotionally Separating from Your Parents.

7 Quieting and Countering Your Inner Critic.

Part Three.   Creating a New Mirror.

8 Looking Deeper into the Mirror: Discovering the Real You.

9 Providing for Yourself What You Missed as a Child.

10 Learning to Love Your Body.

Part Four. Specialized Help.

11 If You Were Neglected, Rejected, or Abandoned: Healing the “I Am Unlovable” and “I Am Worthless” Mirrors.

12 If You Were Overprotected or Emotionally Smothered: Healing the “I Am Nothing without My Parent” Mirror.

13 If You Were Overly Controlled or Tyrannized: Healing the “I Am Powerless” Mirror.

14 If You Had Overly Critical, Shaming, or Perfectionistic Parents: Healing the “I Am Bad,” “I Am Unacceptable,” and “I Am Not Good Enough” Mirrors.

15 If You Had a Self-Absorbed or Narcissistic Parent: Healing the “I Don’t Matter” Mirror.

16 Continuing to Heal.

Appendix: Recommended Therapies.

References.

Recommended Reading.

Index.