"Because for women who grew up in deeply unhappy homes, where the emotional burdens were too heavy and the responsibilities too great, for these for women what feels good and what hurts have become confused and intertwined and are ultimately the same thing." Robin Norwood is a therapist who identifies a certain pattern of thoughts and behaviors that some women develop as a response to problematic conditions during childhood -- "loving too much". The author traces the characteristics of this type of women, along with the role of men in this dysfunctional dynamic (usually drug addicts, alcoholics and damaged), the conditions of childhood that sculpt the psyche of these women and the culture (media, norms, values, etc.) that reinforces and reinforces this view of intense, unhealthy, obsessive love. Norwood uses Cass's studies of women in real life to examine the boundaries between healthy and unhealthy and childhood antecedents of these problematic conceptions of love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Outlines a 10-point self-help-style recovery plan for women who are addicted to "toxic love"—that is, those who measure the degree of their love by the depth of their torment. She advocates focusing on recovery, healing, and self-love to free yourself from destructive loving behaviors to build healthy, meaningful relationships. Norwood argues for Freudian underpinnings of childhood trauma (emotional abandonment, neglect, deprivation, etc.) to explain this maladaptive view of love (which often manifests as an "overwhelming obsession" in adulthood), as having roots in the love that was denied. by parents or primary caregivers in conditions of deficiency or abuse. The severe emotional hunger that comes from the loneliness of the inner child manifests as the desire to repeat and recreate the trauma in order to master it, thus seeking romantic partners who mirror the worst sides of their parents. To elaborate, if a young child has experienced trauma of some kind, it will “appear and reappear as a theme in their play activities until they feel like they have finally mastered the experience.” A child who undergoes surgery, for example, can “reenact the trip to the hospital using dolls or other toy figures, he can become the doctor in one of these dramas and the patient in another, as long as the fear linked to the event has not decreased sufficiently." Women who love too much do the same thing: recall and relive painful relationships to master them in a desperate attempt to master our wounds. However, the book also highlights the importance of shifting your focus from loving others (to the point of pain), to loving yourself, so that there is no toxicity attached to the concept of love. By courageously accepting, grieving, and forgiving the past, these women can move forward and create lasting relationships in which their nurturing needs are met in healthy ways, not through pain or abuse. Becoming more than what circumstances have made us – “Victor, not victim,” should be the pearl of wisdom we must extract from the burdens of our childhood. I could relate in particular to the case of Trudi, 23 years old, married to an emotionally distant alcoholic man. Trudi, coming from a dysfunctional childhood in which she had to take on enormous emotional responsibility and have to be the adult for the entire family, experienced a lack of warmth and emotional distance from her parents and therefore suffered from self-esteem. These were questions that resonated with me and.. "