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Unlocking Your Family Patterns: Finding Freedom for a Hurtful Past By Dr. Henry Cloud, Dave Carder, Dr. Earl Henslin, and Dr. John Townsend


In Unlocking Your Family Patterns, Dr. Henry Cloud, Dave Carder, Dr. Earl Henslin, and Dr. John Townsend explained the path to healing and overcoming your family hurts. Each chapter of the book is written by one of the four authors. The book explored the dynamics of David, Isaac, Jesus, and their family trees. For example, David slept with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. She becomes pregnant with David’s child. He ordered his army to pull back in the battle lines. Uriah is killed and Bathsheba loses the baby. David’s son Amnon raped his own sister Tamar. David doesn’t comfort the issue of what happened to his daughter and it wasn’t discussed and dealt with. Absalom eventually kills Amnon. You have to handle the issues in your life or they get passed to the next generation. The authors proved that they are many things to learn about healing from our pasts. History repeats itself unless we deal with the major issues. Families pass on the concepts of “Don’t Talk”, “Don’t Feel”, and “Don’t Trust” to multiple generations if the cycle isn’t broken. The book also contains discussion questions at the end of each chapter.



I have to say that with the book being written by four different authors they did a wonderful job of tying the material together in a helpful way. This book has immensely taught me the lessons that I don’t want to pass down to my kids. I see the need to heal from the past where I can move forward. I would highly recommend this helpful book to everyone. I am starting to see the traits that my family has taught me through the years. I learnt the different levels of bonding in relationships. I tend to stay in level two which is the level where people discuss events but you don’t share too much about things you’re going through. Walling yourself in and keeping a safe distance from others doesn’t help you achieve the intimacy in relationships that you need. The boundaries chapter also greatly opened my eyes. I have a difficult time saying no especially to family members! I would always feel the need to carry their problems and do things I didn’t want to do out of guilt. I also had the feelings that I was being selfish if I didn’t help them. I realize I’m not setting proper boundaries in the places they need to be placed. I found out I was codependent and not choosing how I want to live my life. The chapter about growing into adulthood was another area that I saw that I struggled with. I was feeling one down to other peers and I always thought I couldn’t ever compare to them. I thought they were so much higher up than me. I am starting to go through the process of achieving adulthood! This book really was an enormous life changing book for me. It exposed me to the truth and revealed to me the issues I haven’t seen before. If you’re struggling to heal from your past family hurts then read this book! If you don’t want to repeat something that happened in your family then pick up a copy of this book. It will help you to step forward without letting the pains from your past control your family and the next generation of your family!

“I received this book free from the publisher through the Moody Publishers book review bloggers program.”                                                                             
                                                                          



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1 comments:

This seems to be a great book and I completely agree with stopping family patterns or as some would say "generational curses" because if they don't stop with us then we'll definitely pass them on and the outcome will be worse and worse as the generations evolve!!! ;-)

 

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