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Breaking Up Blues

A Guide to Survival and Growth

• By Denise Cullington

Normal Price: $17.00

Our Web Price: $15.30add to cart

• Price: $17.00 $15.30
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 296
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 31st March 2008
• ISBN: 978-0-415-45547-3

About the Book

Breaking Up Blues is an indispensable, practical self-help book for those going through break-up and divorce.

Leaver or left, breaking up is much more painful than you’d ever expect. There are so many pitfalls that can leave you stuck in bitterness and rage, emotional emptiness, or in endless depression. Time on its own does not necessarily heal all.

Written by a psychoanalyst, who has her own experience of break up, Denise Cullington is sympathetic but challenging. She takes you gently but firmly through the areas we would rather not think about – feelings of failure and of guilt; of hatred and envy; of sadness and loss – and shows the cost of pushing such feelings out of conscious mind. Facing up to emotional pain can be healing, and helpful for the future.

Breaking up but doing it as well as possible; remaining together in a strengthened relationship; helping children face love and loss; learning from experience; discovering how your own defences get in the way of intimacy: all packed into this wise, readable and heartening book.

Reviews

"A wise and practical book for managing heartbreak and change." – Dorothy Rowe

"I wish this book had been available during my first marriage, as the advice it contains would have saved me a bit of subsequent heartache. Denise Cullington doesn’t just provide a guide to making break-up as painless as possible – she explores every aspect of relationships, both good and bad. If you are in an unsatisfactory relationship – or if you’ve already broken up and you’re unhappy about it – then this book will not only make you feel better, it will help you avoid making the same mistakes again." – Jonathan Self

"With immense psychological insight the Author draws on her own experience and on her clinical work to examine every aspect of so painful a process as breaking up. It is unique in its combination of depth and accessibility. It deserves to be a classic." – Margot Waddell, Psychoanalyst and Consultant Child Psychotherapist

"...an excellent new book on surviving divorce..." - Bel Mooney, Daily Mail

"...it's to Denise Cullington's credit that she has authored such a useful book brimming with a very wise sense of recognition of what it is to be human..." - Anthony Cantle

"Seldom have I read a self-help book that has been so sensitive and empathetic, yet so challenging and constructive. Many of those who come to therapists for consultation have serious relationship difficulties; therefore I feel this book is useful for counsellors and psychotherapists and I would not hesitate to recommend it to clients." - Jenny Bloomer, Therapy Today, October, 2008

Table of Contents

Part I: Prelude to Break Up. Introduction. Should You Leave? Should You Stay? Being Left. Part II: The Trauma of Break-up. Loss. Rage. Legal Battles. Refusing to Mind. Depression. Part III: Toolkits. Emergency Toolkit. Part IV: Emotional Toolkit. Letting Go of Hatred. Facing Your Part. Acceptance – and Mourning. Part V: Children. Noticing Children’s Distress. Evidence of Impact on Children. Parenting After Break-up. Part VI: A Wider Focus. Roadmap of the Unconscious. Problems of Intimacy. Different Developmental Tasks of Boys and Girls. Stress and Stages of Life. Part VII: The Future. A New Partner? Moving On. Appendix.

About the Author(s)

Denise Cullington is a psychoanalyst living and working in Oxford. She trained at the Institute of Psychoanalysis; the Tavistock Clinic, London; and as a Clinical Psychologist.

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