"How to Stop Your Relatives from Driving You Crazy" will help you keep your sanity when dealing with family frictions ranging from the trivial to the catastrophic. With candor, empathy, and a healthy dose of humor, Denise Lang offers clear-eyed solutions to the problems that ignite family explosions. Focusing on every important "family matter", including money, religion, adult sibling rivalry, divorce, blended families, serious illness, and death, Lang describes effective mechanisms for coping with irritating and destructive behavior. The book features tests designed to help you determine your role in the family-- from Dictator to Goat-- and helpful advice on employing periodic "reality checks" and planned communications. For those truly at the end of their ropes, there are even suggestions for creating a surrogate family!

When to say yes, when to say no to take control of your life.

The Dark Side of Close Relationships II is a completely new and up-to-date version of the original volume published in 1998, featuring new topics and authors. The volume showcases cutting-edge work on important topics by prominent scholars in multiple disciplines. It sheds light on the paradoxical, dialectical, and mystifying facets of human interaction, not merely to elucidate dysfunctional relationship phenomena, but to help readers explore and understand it in relation to a broader understanding about relationships. As previous Dark Side investigations have revealed, negative or dysfunctional outcomes can occur in relationships even though positive and functional ones are expected, and at the same time, positive silver linings are often found in some dark relational clouds. Such nuanced approaches are needed to better account for the complexity of close relationships. A unique and provocative collection, this volume will appeal to relationship researchers in communication, social psychology, family studies, and sociology.

“[Goulston’s]ideas are a bit counter-intuitive but they really do shift the dynamic and help people diffuse and disarm the irrational person leading to more positive outcomes.” -- Online MBA Because some people are beyond difficult... Let’s face it, we all know people who are irrational. No matter how hard you try to reason with them, it never works. So what’s the solution? How do you talk to someone who’s out of control? What can you do with a boss who bullies, a spouse who yells, or a friend who frequently bursts into tears? In his book, Just Listen, Mark Goulston shared his bestselling formula for getting through to the resistant people in your life. Now, in his breakthrough new book Talking to Crazy, he brings his communication magic to the most difficult group of all—the downright irrational. As a psychiatrist, Goulston has seen his share of crazy and he knows from experience that you can’t simply argue it away. The key to handling irrational people is to learn to lean into the crazy—to empathize with it. That radically changes the dynamic and transforms you from a threat into an ally. Talking to Crazy explains this counterintuitive Sanity Cycle and reveals: Why people act the way they do • How instinctive responses can exacerbate the situation—and what to do instead • When to confront a problem and when to walk away • How to use a range of proven techniques including Time Travel, the Fish-bowl, and the Belly Roll • And much more You can’t reason with unreasonable people—but you can reach them. This powerful and practical book shows you how.

Don Miguel Ruiz illuminates the fear-based beliefs and assumptions that undermine love and lead to suffering and drama in our relationships. He shows us how to heal our emotional wounds, recover the freedom and joy that are our birthright, and restore the spirit of playfulness that is vital to loving relationships.

"I Don't Even Know Where to Start!" Feeling overwhelmed? Wondering if it's possible to move from "out of my mind" to "in control" when you've got too many projects on your plate and too much mess in your relationships? Kathi and Cheri want to show you five surprising reasons why you become stressed, why social media solutions don't often work, and how you can finally create a plan that works for you. As you identify your underlying hurts, uncover hope, and embrace practical healing, you'll become equipped to... trade the to-do list that controls you for a calendar that allows space in your life decide whose feedback to forget and whose input to invite replace fear of the future with peace in the present You can simplify and savor your life—guilt free! Clutter, tasks, and relationships may overwhelm you now, but God can help you overcome with grace. Foreword by Renee Swope, bestselling author of A Confident Heart.