Healing From Family Rifts: Ten Steps to Finding Peace After Being Cut Off From a Family Member - Paperback

by Mark Sichel (Author)

Ten steps to surviving a family rift, finding peace, and moving on

A family rift is one of the most traumatic experiences a person can face. It can have a profound effect on virtually every aspect of life, causing depression, relationship problems, and even physical illness. Healing From Family Rifts offers hope to those coping with a split in their families. Family therapist Mark Sichel addresses the pain and shame connected with family rifts and offers a way through the crisis and on toward healing and fulfillment. Uniquely, Sichel does not assume that every rift will or even should be mended. Instead, he offers ways to recover from any outcome, including:

• A 10-step process to come to terms with the family dynamics that led to the split
• Methods to find peace and personal reconciliation
• Skills that help to build a second family of people whose values are in line with one's own
• Techniques to fight feelings of guilt when faced with a family rift
• Includes inspiring and instructive stories drawn from the author's patients that help readers put their own situations in perspective.

Back Jacket

Make peace with yourself and reclaim your life with Mark Sichel's powerful ten-step healing program

"That's it. I've had it. I never want to see or hear from you again." Those words may have caused great anguish, or great relief, at the moment they were spoken--depending on whether you were the giver or the receiver of the powerful punch. But now you're left with the nagging despair of losing a family member. The pain can be overwhelming, but there is a way out. Through the help of Healing from Family Rifts, you can find peace again and recover from the isolation of family exile.

Author and licensed clinical social worker Mark Sichel knows what it's like to suffer a family exile: his parents cut off all communication with him years ago. Now he's applying the steps used during his own recovery to help you overcome the heartbreak of your family rift. Through his powerful and proven ten-step program, along with the stories of other embattled survivors of family wars, you will achieve real, permanent, inner reconciliation, regardless of the cause of the rift--whether divorce, marriage outside your race or religion, emotional abuse, objections to sexual orientation, addictions, or any other reason.

From dealing with the shock of the rift to building your second-chance family, from recognizing the signs of acute stress disorder to learning from successful families, Mark Sichel's ten steps to healing will help you achieve serenity and contentment by learning how to make peace with yourself first.

Review from Library Journal

[This] self-help manual for adults seeking to better their family relationships emphasizes that readers can change only themselves and their own reactions-not the actions of others. A therapist and licensed clinical social worker, Sichel concentrates on relationships where one family member refuses contact with another, not limiting his discussion to parent-child rifts. Among other strategies, his ten steps lead readers to deal with their own trauma, learn to love themselves, understand family myths and roles, build supportive relationships with others (their "second-chance family"), and try to heal the break if possible. Drawing on stories from Sichel's patients and from personal experience (his father broke with him twice), this book is sure to be read eagerly by those in difficult family situations. -Kay Brodie, Chesapeake Coll., Wye Mills, MD Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Review from The Chicago Tribune

"The empathetic Sichel, a clinical social worker, stresses that those cut off have the right to be happy and at peace....Perhaps what Sichel does best is encourage readers to make meaning out of life's experiences, whatever comes our way."

Mark Sichel is a licensed clinical social worker who counsels individuals, couples, and families in New York City. He is the founder and editor of the award-winning website, www.psybersquare.com, has counseled hundreds of clients who have suffered family cutoffs, and has made it through his own family rift as well.

Author Biography

Mark Sichel (New York, NY) is a therapist and licensed clinical social worker who has counseled hundreds of clients who have suffered from family rifts. He is the founder and editor of the award-winning mental health website Psybersquare.com.