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Explore relationship patterns to shape a sturdier self, improve relationships, and gain a refreshing new outlook on life's challenges with this bestselling book!
To be human is to be in relationships. We can't survive without them but it's in relationships that we can so easily get unravelled. Some relationships just seem to do us in. Either we feel like we lose ourselves or feel burnt out from futile efforts to make things right for another. In our relationships we can experience the very best of ourselves and the very worst.
The message of Growing Yourself Up is that you can't separate understanding the individual from understanding relationships. All of life's relationships are integral to increasing self-awareness and maturity. And it's not necessarily the comfortable relationships that promote personal growth. In this 2nd edition of the bestselling book, Jenny examines how to help others without fostering dependency, and how to determine what kind of help you or others want from therapists. This is in response to the many lay and professional people who have found this book valuable personally and want to know how to help others grow.
Drawing from Bowen family systems theory, the book takes you on a journey through each stage of life to see predictable patterns of relationships and to show how to use this knowledge to make purposeful adjustments in yourself; as well as lending a mature helping hand to others. The result is a sturdier self, sturdier relationships and a refreshing new way to view life's challenges and opportunities.
- Naturally Australia
“This is a book I found really confronting and I love it.” - This Complex Life, with Marie Vakakis
“Brown addresses the opportunities for growing up at any stage of life, right up to and including the dying process. I like the way she looks at young adulthood, marriage, facing setbacks such as divorce, midlife, aging and the end of life. She uses engaging real-life examples of people responding to challenges throughout the life process.” - Margaret Marcuson, Leadership in Ministry workshops
“It is a very helpful read for anyone, as Jenny encourages us to reflect on the maturity levels in our relationships. This is a very useful challenge for us all.” - Engage Work Faith
"Jenny Brown's book, Growing Yourself Up, can be an invaluable resource. For you, for any mom, for anyone.”
- Homeschool Mom Wellness & Mindset Coach
Introduction
Who's willing to work at growing up?
Part 1: Understanding the relationship foundations of adult maturity
1. Becoming a self in our relationships
2. Real maturity or pretend maturity
3. Family ties that bind
Part 2: Maturity for the first half of adult life
4. Leaving home and growing up
5. The single young adult
6. How marriage can grow people
7. Sex for grown-ups
8. Grown-up parenting
Part 3: Being a grown-up beyond family
9. Off to work we go
10. Developing mature beliefs
Part 4: Nurturing maturity in the face of set backs
11. Separation and divorce
12. Symptoms and setbacks
Part 5: Maturity enhancement in the second half of life
13. Midlife
14. Ageing well
15. Old age and facing death
Part 6: Broadening the focus
16. The grown-up helper
17. Society and self
Epilogue
Appendix 1: Summary questions for reflection
Appendix 2: Mature connection and separateness
Appendix 3: What are guiding principles?
Appendix 4: Differentiation of self as a continuum
Appendix 5: How to construct your family diagram
Appendix 6: An overview of human development across the lifespan from a Bowen family systems perspective
Appendix 7: Some Biblical reflections on relationships
Notes
Bibliography and further reading
Acknowledgements
Index