Synopses & Reviews
This groundbreaking book from the best-selling authors of
Getting the Love You Want and coauthors of
Giving the Love that Heals is the first to address the biggest unexplored issue facing couples today: Most of us are better at giving love than accepting it. We don't realize all the ways that our resistance to appreciation, praise, compliments, and accepting help from others hurts us and cripples our relationships.
Many partners learn how to give love, but many more undermine their relationships by for-getting something that is equally important -- learning to receive it. According to the authors, the root of the problem is the self-rejection that began in childhood, when our parents and caretakers unintentionally failed to nurture or directly rejected traits, characteristics, or im-pulses when we were children. We end up rejecting in ourselves whatever our caretakers ignored or rejected in the course of our childhoods. When we become adults, this makes it impossible to let in the love we want and need, even when our partners offer it. As a result, we dismiss compliments, minimize gestures of affection, and create obstacles to true intimacy.
In this book, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, co-creators of Imago Relation-ship Therapy, offer a definitive guide to breaking the shackles of self-rejection and embracing the love our partners offer. Receiving Love is a very personal book for Drs. Hendrix and Hunt, and much of their own journey is the inspiration for it.
Drawing on their renowned expertise, the wide clinical experience of hundreds of Imago therapists, and their own personal experience, the authors are able to offer detailed guidance on how to conquer the problems that come from self-rejection and embrace the gifts that are abundant in every person's life, if only we knew how to accept them. With its groundbreaking theory, challenging processes, and inspiring examples, this book holds the key to loving relationships that last.
Synopsis
While striving to learn how to give love, many people undermine their relationships by forgetting something that is equally important. Drawing on the renowned expertise that has earned them praise from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, co-creators of Imago Relationship Therapy, offer a definitive guide to embracing the love our partners offer. The authors bring firsthand experience to this book. Until they overcame their own issues using Imago Therapy, they were on the brink of divorce. From their odyssey, and the journeys of hundreds of other couples in Imago Relationship Therapy, they observed a tendency to reject love offered by others, even when they had asked for it. The roots include painful events of rejection by significant others in childhood, leading to unconscious rejection of parts or all of oneself. In adult life, this shows up as a tendency to reject compliments, to deny love offered by our partners and others, and to create obstacles to true intimacy. "Receiving Love guides us in recognizing this issue, and then offers detailed guidance on how to conquer it--through dialogue and self-awareness. With its groundbreaking theory, challenging processes, and inspiring examples, this book holds the key to loving relationships that last.
Table of Contents
ContentsIntroduction
PART I Understanding the Problem
chapter 1: Nothing's Ever Good Enough
chapter 2: Three Marriages Gone Wrong
chapter 3: The Unconscious Connection
chapter 4: The Childhood Roots of Self-Rejection
chapter 5: Rejecting Self/Rejecting Love
PART II The Solution
chapter 6: The Science of Relationships
chapter 7: Learning to Receive
chapter 8: Establishing Contact, Connection, and Communion
chapter 9: Restoring Life
PART III Exercises
exercise 1: The Gift Diary
exercise 2: The Imago Dialogue
exercise 3: Learning How You Know
exercise 4: Practice Receiving and Giving
exercise 5: Positive Flooding
exercise 6: Your "Receiving Quotient" Assessment
exercise 7: Your "Giving Love" Assessment
exercise 8: Your Imago
exercise 9: Intimacy
exercise 10: Becoming Whole Again
exercise 11: Discovering Your Hidden Potential
Afterword
Notes
Index