Break Through by Springle and Clinton

Description: "While most of our relationships may be healthy and satisfying, we often have one or two important people who change the rules and drive us crazy--a deadbeat dad, an alcoholic spouse, a wayward child, a demanding boss, a lazy roommate.

When we act out of enmeshment and codependency, we may think we are experiencing love, but it's a shallow substitute for the love God longs for us to share and enjoy. Break Through helps you exchange manipulative and unhealthy relationships for reciprocal relationships that honor boundaries and allow each person the freedom to take responsibility for his or her own choices.

This important book, with its transformational tools and insightful illustrations from leading Christian counselor Tim Clinton and noted author Pat Springle, will guide you in not only breaking through to better relationships but making big changes for the better.

Their expert insights will help you:

•  Identify why you gravitate toward certain relationships, and why you stay
•  Discern the warning signs of an unhealthy relationship
•  Live within your limits, and help others to do the same
•  Redefine love, trust--and your responsibility to the people you care about
•  Learn which choices and behaviors cause relationship troubles
•  Experience the power and freedom of forgiveness

With proven principles for learning to say yes when you want to and no when you need to, you'll discover how to give up your need to please, rescue, fix, or control anyone else. Leave others' unrealistic expectations behind. Speak the hard truth to those who have hurt you. And exchange harmful relationship habits for healthy ones."

Like a GPS that guides you through the detours in your travels, Break Through offers sure navigation across the landscape of troubled relationships, giving you a saner perspective, along with practical steps and valuable tools that can protect you from the controlling, irresponsible behaviors of others. And the study questions, checklists, and inspirational stories in this book will help you fulfill your deepest potential for connecting to others in authentic ways. God longs for you to experience with the people who matter most!"

Stephanie's Review:

I personally thought this book was quite remarkable for it's subject type. Most books of the psychological or self-help genre are more liquified or watered down in their theology. This was definitely the exception to the rule. I was constantly impressed by the focus on Christ as the healer and how vital he is to the healing that needs to occur for us to have healthy relationships.

There is much wisdom in this book to be examined and contemplated. So many of us struggle because of the relationships we have experienced. These things have robbed us of healthy, life-giving relationships in our lives. This can be especially true of those of us who have been wounded in church or by people in spiritual authority to us. I highly recommend it.