Embracing Your Father: How to Build the Relationship You've Always Wanted with Your Dad - Hardcover

Nielsen, Linda

9780071423038: Embracing Your Father: How to Build the Relationship You've Always Wanted with Your Dad

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071423036 ISBN 13: 9780071423038

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 2004

An expert in father-daughter relationships shows daughters how to forge a new path to communication with their fathers

Psychologist Linda Nielsen shows readers how every daughter can transform her relationship with her father--if she is willing to be the adult who does the emotional embracing rather than the angry, hurt little girl waiting for Daddy to embrace her. Based on her popular Fathers and Daughters course--the first in the country devoted to exploring father-daughter relationships--Nielsen shows every woman how to:

Go first and initiate a better relationship
Examine her expectations regarding her relationship with her father
Cultivate self-reliance
Get to know her father as a person
Explore her mother's role in the relationship
Stay connected, even through divorce

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From the Back Cover:

Every woman is influenced by her relationship with her father. Your identity began when you were born, and was formed partly by the kind of relationship that you had with your father as you grew up--an identity that continues to be formed today.

It's certainly no secret your relationships your father can be complicated. Whether you haven't spoken in years, or have problems communicating, or simply have small difficulties that need to be addressed, it is possible to take that first step in Embracing Your Father. It's that first step in a process that will leave you happier and more fulfilled--because as you reach out and communicate with your father, you will also be coming into deeper contact with your true self.

In this encouraging and healing book, psychologist Linda Neilsen shows every daughter how she can transform her relationship with her father--if she is willing to take that first bold step, and be emotionally embracing rather than hold onto a long-held role of the angry, hurt, or passive daughter who waits for Daddy to embrace her.

Based on the phenomenally effective techniques taught in her popular Fathers and Daughters course--the first in the country devoted to exploring father-daughter relationships--Dr. Nielsen explodes the myths that may be holding you back from taking the first step and shows you how to:

Go first and initiate a better relationship
Examine your expectations regarding your relationship with your father
Cultivate self-reliance
Get to know your father as a person
Explore your mother's role in the relationship
Stay connected, even through divorce and remarriage
Talk to your father without pretending, clamming up, or engaging in superficial chatting
Deal with anger, and handle your differences

You'll also find eye-opening quizzes that help you recognize false assumptions and limiting beliefs. No matter how minor or major the need for improvement, your relationship with your father has the potential to become, happier, healthier, and more nurturing. Embracing Your Father will empower you to start down that road.

Find the connection you always wanted with your father

"Embracing Your Father helps fathers and daughters emotionally re-connect, heal their rifts and thereby tremendously improve their emotional lives. It's a must read for any woman who ever longed for a more fulfilling relationship with her father & any man who has felt for way too long he'd lost the capacity to communicate with a central woman in his life--his own daughter."

--William S. Pollack, Ph.D., author of Real Boys, Real Boys Voices, and Real Boys Workbook, Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School

Placing the burden of the father-daughter relationship squarely on the daughter's shoulders, Nielsen argues that women who believe dads should always take the first step towards friendship "haven't moved beyond seeing themselves as a little girl." The psychologist, who teaches a class on father-daughter relationships at Wake Forest University, offers many helpful suggestions to her readers, including tips on how to start seeing dad as "more than a wallet" and how to stop playing the innocent virgin daughter. Chapters on handling the turmoil of divorce and remarriage and on getting to know dad as a person (and not just as a father figure), round out this useful, if somewhat guilt-tripping, self-help guide.

Are you having trouble communicating with your father?
Do you wonder if you can really have a better relationship with your dad?
Do you feel he loves one of your siblings more than he loves you?
Have financial issues created bad feelings between you?
Has your parents divorce complicated your relationship?
Have you been out of touch for years and want to reconnect with your dad?

Your relationship with your father is one of the oldest relationships you have. It has helped form your self-image and influenced your path in life. So changing it in the face of decades of habits and traditions might seem daunting, or even close to impossible. But with the help of Dr. Linda Nielsen, professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, it's possible to create a new, open, and true avenue of communication between you and your father. Embracing Your Father provides active steps toward cultivating a better relationship with one of the most important people in your life, and will help you see that in trying to embrace your father, you embrace the best of your self.

About the Author:

Dr. Linda Nielsen (Lewisville, NC) is a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University and author of Adolescence: A Contemporary View and Motivating Adolescents: A Handbook for Parents and Teachers. She has taught her father-daughter course for 10 years and has received several awards for her research and writing.

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