Five days a week, seven-year-old Holly awakens promptly at six. She ensures that her five-year-old sister is washed, fed and dressed, and then she prepares breakfast for her single mother. With military precision and a gut-wrenching sense of responsibility beyond her years, Holly follows a strict regimen in an attempt to avoid the wrath of her abusive mother. She never knows whether she will encounter "nice mommy or mean mommy," and only when she and her sister are safely at school does she begin to breathe easily.
Holly's story is one of many that Dr. Anthony J. Castro relates in this unique approach to sharing psychological insights and offering guidelines for making difficult changes to tackle problems that threaten our well-being. The theme of this insightful book is "giving room." Weaving a tapestry of vignettes from patients' intimate lives with excerpts from scientific studies and examples from his own life, Dr. Castro demonstrates how all of us must learn to give ourselves room to enter into the unknown and endure change. Though change is often very hard, Dr. Castro shows through the experiences of his patients that by giving room to ourselves we unleash the potential for immense personal growth.
Some of his patients need to assert independence from their parents; others must learn to develop a mutually respectful marriage or to become wise parents. In all cases, Dr. Castro underscores that only by making room for our own needs can we then reach out to others to create healthy relationships. With a gift for interlacing important insights with engrossing real-life stories to illustrate salient points about growth and change, Dr. Castro offers an enlightening, jargon-free narrative that will encourage readers of all ages to take the time to create the happiness they deserve.