Breaking the Cycle of Abuse: How to Move Beyond Your Past to Create an Abuse-Free Future - Hardcover

There isn't just one way to break the cycle; there are many. In this powerful book Engel offers you empowering tools focusing on support and compassion, education, abuse prevention strategies, and long-term recovery strategies. If you are just starting to see signs of abusive or neglectful behavior in yourself or in a partner, if you are a victim of abuse, or if you are continuing a pattern of abuse, Engel gives you the ability—in the privacy of your home and at your own pace—to complete an entire therapeutic program designed to help prevent you from crossing the line or from continuing to do so.

Throughout the book, Engel shares many dramatic personal stories, including her own experiences with abuse and abusive behavior. She also addresses the sensitive topic of sexual abuse and how to avoid becoming an abuser if you were sexually abused yourself. Engel explains why abusive patterns are established and presents both short-term and long-term strategies for gaining control over emotions while offering alternative ways to react to stress, anger, fear, and shame—significant factors in continuing the cycle of abuse. Her step-by-step program provides the skills needed to:

• Stop negative behavior before it becomes habitual and causes significant harm to your loved ones
  
• Heal the damage you experienced from prior abuse or neglect
  
• Change negative attitudes and beliefs that create a victim or abuser mentality
  
• Learn healthy ways of communicating needs and resolving conflicts
  
• Learn parenting skills that will help prevent you from passing on what was done to you
  
• Repair damage that has already occurred to your relationships, including those with your children
  
• Seek out further assistance and support
  

Those who perpetuate the cycle of neglect and abuse do so because they are out of control and feel they have no other options. Breaking the Cycle of Abuse shows you those options, giving you the power to break abusive patterns for good and offering a legacy of hope and healing to you and your family.

"We all have the power to break the cycle of abuse. In this remarkably powerful, wise, and compassionate book, Beverly Engel leads readers step by step through a program that will help survivors of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse in childhood to heal from their wounds so they don't need to re-enact their abusive pasts. She offers expert advice and strategies to help parents and would-be parents avoid doing to their children what was done to them and helps both abusers and victims in emotionally and physically abusive relationships make vitally important changes in their relationships."
—Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of Toxic Parents and Emotional Blackmail

"A beacon of hope for women and men who fear that they will pass the abuse they have suffered on to their children, partners, or employees. Humane and compassionate but also clear and down to earth, this is a wonderful contribution to the literature on healing."
—Lundy Bancroft, author of When Dad Hurts Mom: Helping Your Children Heal the Wounds of Witnessing Abuse and Why Does He Do That?

PRAISE FOR BEVERLY ENGEL'S OTHER BOOKS

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 and coeditor of Journal 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?

Honor Your Anger

"A clearly written, insightful look at a topic that concerns everyone. You can indeed learn to understand and manage your anger, and this book will show you how."
—Robert Epstein, Ph.D., West Coast editor, Psychology Today, and university research professor, California School of Professional Psychology