Toxic relationships often come disguised as seemingly normal ones. These subtly destructive relationships are characterized by the slow erosion of self-esteem, a loss of personal identity, or a growing desire to please friends, partners, and family members who are impossible to please.

In this uplifting and informative book, transpersonal psychotherapist Avril Carruthers will take a close look at adult relationships to show why we get involved in toxic relationships in the first place, and instruct the reader on how to recognize if they’re involved in one. Once the toxic relationship is identified, the author shows the reader how to begin their journey toward healing and how to meet the world with a new kind of confidence, so that the cycle of toxic relationships can be broken once and for all.

What Carruthers teaches is just how possible it can be to learn how to recognize the manipulative or sweetly corrosive partner, the family dynamics that make Christmas and other get-togethers seem like hell, or the nightmare boss who causes daily torment—and that we can learn to leave these painful, destructive patterns behind forever.