The Obligation Myth: Rethinking What You Owe Your Difficult Aging Parent --A Guide for Adult Children of Narcissistic, Toxic or Abusive Parents

Does your parent's name on your phone fill you with dread instead of love?

You are not alone...and you are not a bad person.

For adult children of narcissistic, toxic or abusive parents, the question of caregiving arrives loaded with decades of unresolved wounds, guilt, religious pressure, and family expectations. Society already seems to have the answer. But what if society's answer is a betrayal of your deepest truth?

The Obligation Myth is the first book to directly address the caregiving crisis no one is talking about: the millions of adult children--scapegoats, invisible children, enmeshed children and golden children--who are being asked to care for the very parents who wounded them.

In this groundbreaking book, psychologist Lisa D. Stinson, Ph.D. gives you: A framework for understanding the four toxic family roles and how each one shapes your response to obligation. The science behind guilt, trauma, and why your body reacts before your mind can catch up. Tools to stop reacting to your parent's triggers and start responding from your own values. Permission--backed by psychology--to define what this relationship looks like on YOUR terms. A path to becoming your own protective adult, making conscious choices rather than compulsive ones.
Whether you choose full caregiving, partial support, limited contact or no contact--this book helps you to make that choice from clarity, not fear or guilt.

You survived them. Now it is time to choose.