the courage to heal

At the time I read the book, I knew people who were working with it and felt it helped them greatly. They loved it so much, it was constantly being recommended and the first therapist I ever saw gave me a copy to read. The experiences and attitudes in CTH that were related just simply were not close enough to mine to be useful to me and I disliked the insistence that my memories of the situation as different was because I was repressing or whatever, rather than I simply had a different experience. Which is why the Clancy book was like a light for me - it helped me not be a complete alone freak about my experience and reaction. I also liked the Hermann book.

I find like with any book you have to try it out and see if you can relate to it or get anything out of it... I ordered 3 books on a different subject altogether but they all have personal experiences in it.... one book I started to read but I couldn't relate to the personal experiences... the 2nd book I could relate to some of the personal experiences but I couldn't stand how the author seemed to be trying to tell me how to "feel" about them... the 3rd book was good... I could relate to parts of most of the personal experiences and it was written in a way that helped me see how others felt and explore how I felt... not telling me how to "feel"

In my experience it is trial and error to find the right approach to a book for you...

Back to the side topic..... its been my experience that the fear of "planting memories" lives on.. I do not remember any time period from age 5 to 11 while in my house..(I remember school... even sunday school but not my bedroom...what my parents look like...eating dinner..toys..books..nothing). My xT when he figured this out gave a lecture on not "filling in the memories".... He would not comment on any experiences that I shared...etc...

he had me so freaked out about it...that I would never share anything I remembered because I was afraid he thought I "made them up"... and they weren't all bad memories either...

Thank you all for the replies. I am willing to read any book and tend not to listen to others and make up my own mind about books but I wanted to ask about this one as I didn't want to traumatise myself with memories or graphic descriptions.
As far as I am concerned it is in the past and I have dealt with it so I don't want to go back there. T asked if it would help if we talked about it and I said no and she thinks I have a lot of anger inside. She asked if I had read the book and said a lot of people founf the book very helpful.

The Betrayal Bond by Patrick J. Carnes, PhD has been very helpful to me. The subtitle Breaking Free of Exploitative Relationships is misleading. It really speaks of the impact of abuse and how difficult it is to overcome because of the bond with the abuser. It was hard for me to accept that I had a bond with my abuser but the author was spot on. He goes more in depth about the impact of abuse and what can be done. He filled in a lot of gaps for me that either therapy or other books were unable to fill. The book contains exercises as does the CTH but The Betrayal Bond is shorter in length and easier to get through.

I couldn't relate to CTH, at least at the time I read it. My experience was much different from anyone in the book, so I felt like a fraud - like my abuse wasn't "bad enough" to justify any of the feelings and issues I had.

I know others have gotten a good deal out of it, though, so it's a really personal choice.