Customer Reviews
highly recommended; very clearly written - By: waterceltfire, 24 Jul 2007 
I can't recommend this enough. Packed with clearly presented information, easy to read, clear exercises, plus she herself was abusive & worked through it, so is completely speaking from a place of real informed balance & empathy.
Precious love-saving guide for partners and ex-partners - By: Wade Miller Knight, 26 Sep 2003 A lovely book. Engel comes from love & empathy for abusers & abusees alike & is wonderfully free of judgements. A moving, highly readable & deeply usable guide to how to recognise & then stop patterns of abuse when we arein the habit of giving or receiving it. An inspiring read, & manual, for counsellors & a potential lifesaver for human happiness for everyone from the multiply divorced to the person who's just shouted at their partner for the first time ever. But not for those who believe abusees are victims (poor me)and abusers are monsters: Engel holds that blame benefits no-one & everyone, if willing, can grow & learn new, loving, abuse-free habits that esteem both themself & their partner. Writtenin wonderfully plain jargon-free English (except that she refers to "borderline personality disorder").
Engel defines emotional abuse as "any non-physical behaviour designed to control, intimidate, subjugate, demean, punish or isolate another person" i.e. everything from blaming to sulking, demands to insults, domineering to overinquisitiveness. [So if you've lived with someone for more than a month & never ever given or received emotional abuse, click here for your halo:-)]
Beverly focuses on emotional abuse but but her techniques could be equally transformative for people who give or receive physical, sexual or verbal abuse. Similarly, the book is all about lifepartners but can be adapted to other close relationships e.g. parent/step-parent to adult child.
