Hiding from Love

I'm taking the class now. It's a wonderful book and work book to have . Makes you really take a magnifying glass and look back at your life and help you understand why because of past wounds, we hide.

Even if you are not a Christian, the psychology of self and relationships with others is excellent. This is not a good book for people who refuse to be honest with themselves about themselves. If you are stuck in life, this book offers practical insight into owning yourself, learning about yourself, and authentically connecting with other people. If you are not in a place where you can be honest with yourself, this book will be a waste of time. This book uses Bible references and Christian principles heavily. But, concerning the Christian aspect, a non Christian can easily ignore the God talk and walk away with tremendous personal and relational growth. This book is about you and how to own yourself. It takes a courageous person to apply the principles of this book to themselves. I found the challenge rewarding. Difficult, but long lasting. This is no "power of positive thinking" book. It is a "be honest with yourself about yourself" book. An excellent guide for Christians and non-Christians alike.

This book was an incredible read. Helped me understand myself and the others around me. Objectively look at others gives understanding and therefore giving grace is a doable thing.

I bought this book for a friend on what I thought at the time was some urging of the Spirit of God. The message is absolute spiritual dynamite of the best sort. Before giving it to my friend, however, I read the first paragraph or so of a few chapters to test the book out. As a result, I have decided not to give it to him.In my admittedly limited exposure to this book, I found many illustrations of people, all female, all speaking to female concerns with "security," the very thing that can cause women to build up walls that keep out the good as well as the bad. The most excellent advice seems to be, "Start taking down those walls for the right people." However, this is spelled out in a way that did not speak to me at all as a man. Indeed, men with superiority/insecurity complexes might be easily misled by pride after cracking this book, simply because of the feminine bent to it all. Their response might be something like "Oh, this is ridiculous. I am not concerned for myself like these women are. These examples are alien to me, and do not speak to me." The denial of insecurity would be false, but the latter statement about the book's examples would be completely true if you ask me.I admit I have limited exposure to the book, but I don't think I'd recommend it for males.

Loved this book as a guide in improving my personal spiritual insight on why I hide and how to address coming out of hiding. Discovered this book in a small group Bible Study. Great information for Christians seeking answers about their personal relational lives. I would recommend this for book clubs, singles and marriage ministries. In addition a must for use in Christian counseling.

This is a difficult read. If you want to work through some unmet needs and issues in your own life, this book is a great resource. Dr. Townsend uses Scripture and metaphorical stories to explain how issues that we may experience have formed. (If you are not interested in Scripture, don't rule this out. He doesn't preach at the reader, but simply gives Biblical foundation to his explanations.) We may hide from others because of past hurts (also explained as unmet needs). He explains the helpful time of hiding and the harmful time of hiding. If you really examine yourself as you read through this book, it will take some time to go through, but if you want to see an improvement in your thought life towards other people and your relationships with other people, this book will definitely help!

It’s a wonderful book! It goes into all the different facets of life and explains different quirks. Helps you identify how you might be hiding from certain things. Helps you figure out what you’re hiding from. As well as how to fix it. No matter what your situation in life there’s something for everyone in it which is great. It’s a very good read. And you’ll find you’ll end upGreat read recommending it to others in your life

Great book. Teaches you how your attachment patterns stem from childhood and how to understand how past trauma influences the ways in which we interact with others and how we view ourselves and others in relationships. *One tip: This book is essentially the same book as Henry Cloud's Changes that Heat so I would suggest just buying one or the other rather than making the mistake I did which was buy both as Amazon suggests, OOPS!

Amazing book - lots of good insight into withdrawal patterns and the reasons behind them. I found it quite affirming of things I suspected to be true - especially in regards to healthy and unhealthy ways to love and what constitutes enabling. Definitely worth a read!

In this book the author (who is the co-author with Henry Cloud of the Boundaries series) uses an extended allegory to explain the problem that many people have in their relationships. In the allegory, a girl has to hide from enemy forces that have taken over her town. She learns not to trust anyone especially soldiers in uniform. Eventually when friendly, liberating forces arrive she responds to them in the same way i.e. with fear, mistrust and hatred. This allegory is presented as a picture of the tendency of people who have suffered emotional hurt or abuse to take these experiences forward into their subsequent relationships.The author argues that typically these experiences manifest themselves in four destructive ways:* The inability to recognise both good and bad in people / situations* Attachment deficits - the inability to open up to people emotionally or to allow them to get close to you* Separation deficits - the inability to say "No" to certain people, to establish boundaries with people, always feeling the need to do what people say, to agree with people regardless of one's true feelings* Authority and adulthood deficitsThe author discusses in detail many things that may help to repair the deficits in these areas. I strongly recommend that people read the book for themselves. However here is a list of principles which I personally have found helpful:Recognising Good and Bad-----------------------------Give up the need for perfection both in ourselves and in the world around us. Stop striving for the ideal. Accept that "good enough" is good enough.Accept that both we ourselves and the people around us are not 100% good or bad but a mixture of good and bad.Think of the people that we admire and respect. Are we in danger of putting them on a pedestal? Dwell for a moment on their bad points. Notice how they are a mixture. Try not to idealise people; it will just make it more difficult when they do let us down. At the same time notice how despite their bad points, we can still appreciate the good in them.Recognise where we have been in denial about our own personal failings and errors. Accept responsibility for our mistakes. Confess our mistakes to other people and give them the opportunity to accept and forgive us; this could be the start of healing for them as well as for us.Think of some people that we have come to dislike - perhaps people that we try to avoid. What is it about them that made us start to dislike them? Can we think of any good points about them? Have we been fair in our judgement of them?Recognise that most days are a mixture of good and bad. Sometimes we say that a day (eg a day out or a holiday) has been "completely ruined" by one thing going wrong. Try to see that that is not true - one small problem should not cancel out a whole period of time when everything has been more or less OK.Make sadness our ally rather than our enemy. Most people recognise that grieving the death of a loved one is a normal part of the healing process and that suppressing one's emotions in such circumstances is not a healthy way of dealing with it. However this principle is also true in less traumatic situations; the grieving process can be a vital way to bring about recovery from any kind of disappointment. Sadness and grieving can be God's way of resolving past hurts.Attachment Deficits-------------------------------Don't allow the bad experiences with people in the past to drive us into a state of isolation. If we are prone to doing this, we need to find safe, warm relationships in which emotional needs will be accepted and not subjected to criticism and judgement. Healing comes from openness to people. Clearly this does require that we take risks with our needs, a great deal of patience and perseverance, and a determination not to retreat into hiding when people do let us down. We need always to bear in mind the principles above i.e. that everyone is a mixture of good and bad.Separation Deficits------------------------------If we have difficulty saying "No" to people, or feel a pressure always to agree with everyone, we may need consciously to "practice disagreement" i.e. go out of our way to disagree with people and to emphasise our own opinions.Ask God to help us to become truth tellers even of negative truthFind people who celebrate our separateness i.e. people who respect and accept our "No" as well as our "Yes"Learn to respect other people's separateness i.e. respect other people's 'no' as much as their 'yes'Authority and Adulthood-------------------------------Recognise if a particular person or people have an excessive or unhealthy degree of control over us. Do we relate to that person almost like a child towards a parent rather than as two adults? (This can include relationships between parents and their grown up children. "Good parenting should culminate in a relationship based on friendship and equality, not continued control").See authority as a positional not a personal issue - eg we should give a manager the respect and submission that his position demands, but that doesn't mean being blind to his faults. Also we need to remember that authority has limits and parameters. We need to recognise what these are.Take an inventory of our values and convictions. Ask ourselves, "what do I believe?", then find out "why do I believe it?"Develop your talents. Adulthood involves finding out what our passion is, what we really want to accomplish in our lives and what gifts we have to do it. This may be different from our family's expectations.

Highly recommend this book. Is very helpful for more family situations than the obvious.

I have so far worked through most of this book which is aimed specifically at those of us who, due to traumatic events in our past, find it impossible to trust others and to allow them to get close to us (Hiding from Love). The book takes you through the biblical text and examples of how God wants us to be and actually tells and shows us how to learn the skills and abilities within ourselves and in dealing correctly with others in a manner anyone can understand. If you are someone who is lonely and a loner 'by nature' then let this book set you free from that bondage. Within a month of starting to work through the question and answer sections of this book I found myself reaching out to people in a way I have never been capable of doing before. I have great hope for the future and in the knowledge that the way I am learning is the way God would have me be.Best of all about this book is that it does not beat you with the scriptures but leads you to freedom at your own pace and in a way that you can, if you don't want to make this journey alone, share with other people one-to-one or in groups if that is helpful to you.My best wishes to any other 'Hiders from Love' out there. God bless you.

Great read