Shortly after the publication of Men Who Hate Women & the Women Who Love Them, a woman named Janet wrote to say that she had just read my book:

Even though the cast of characters may change, the repetitive cycle of toxic behavior can remain for generations on end. The family drama may look and sound different from generation to generation, but all toxic patterns are remarkably similar in their outcome: pain and suffering.

I recognized my husband and myself on every page, and what I realized was that not only was my husband abusive but that I had come from several generations of victimized women and abusive men. Your book gave me both the courage and the conviction to make it stop here. I'm not sure my husband is willing to change and I'm not sure whether I will stay with him. But I am sure that from now on, my children will see a mother who will no longer accept abuse of any kind and who will not allow them to be verbally abused either. My sons will not grow up believing that it's okay to be abusive to women and my daughter will not be programmed to be a victim. Thank you for leading the way.

The phrase "breaking the cycle" was originally coined in relation to child abuse -- preventing a battered child from growing up to beat his own children. But I've expanded the term to include all forms of abuse.

For me, breaking the cycle means to stop acting like a victim, or to stop acting like your abusive or inadequate parent. You no longer play the helpless, dependent child with your partners, children, friends, colleagues, authority figures, and parents. And you get help if you find yourself striking out at your spouse or children in ways that make you ashamed. Though the changes you make begin with yourself, you will find the effects to be much broader-reaching. By breaking the cycle, you are protecting your children from the toxic beliefs, rules, and experiences that colored so much of your childhood. You may be changing the nature of your family interactions for generations to come.

Janet was bravely confronting the long-established patterns of abuse and passivity in her family. By changing her behavior and setting limits on her husband's emotional abuse, Janet had taken a giant step to ensure that her children would be freed from the power of the family legacy. She was breaking the cycle.

One of the most effective ways of breaking the cycle is to make the commitment to be more emotionally available to your children than your parents were to you.

Melanie realized that just because she didn't get love and nurturing from her parents didn't mean she couldn't give it to her children. Even though it was a struggle for her to remain vigilant against old habits, her commitment was firm:

I was so scared to have children. I just didn't know what kind of mother I was going to be. It's been really hard. There were a lot of times I screamed at them and told them to go to their rooms and leave me alone. I mean how dare they be so damned needy and demanding. But since I've been in therapy, I realize that's exactly how my mother treated me. So when I'm feeling low, I really make an effort not to shut them out. I have to reach way deep inside myself, but I do it. I'm not perfect, but at least I'm doing something to be better. Dammit, the buck's got to stop here!

Melanie took specific steps to heal herself. After she confronted her mother, the two women were able to talk much more openly about their feelings and experiences. Melanie learned that she was the product of several generations of distant, helpless mothers. It was exciting to see her take personal responsibility for not repeating those patterns with her own children.

"I CAN BE THERE FOR MY CHILDREN"

Melanie also found new ways of taking better care of herself and of combating her inner emptiness. She made new friends, both from her parenting group and in a folk-dancing class that I suggested she join. She became much less vulnerable to her old pattern of attaching to troubled men and becoming their self-sacrificing caretaker.

In addition to her work in therapy, Melanie enrolled in a parents' support group. She had made a commitment to be a better parent, but because her only role models -- her parents -- were so inadequate, she wasn't sure what being a good parent entailed. She had never seen how a good parent acts. The parents' group helped ease many of her understandable fears and helped her deal with everyday domestic crises without either withdrawing or becoming panicked by her children's neediness.

We began this book with Gordon, the physician whose father had beaten him with a belt. After six months of therapy, he had fully accepted the fact that he had been an abused child. He had done his letter writing, his role playing, and his confrontation with his parents. As he gradually released much of the pain from his past, he began to see how he had perpetuated the cycle of abuse in his own marriage.

"I SWORE I WOULDN'T BE LIKE MY FATHER"

GORDON: I really thought I was different because I didn't physically abuse my wife. But I abused her with words and I punished her with my moods. It's like I left home but I took my father with me.

GORDON: I swore a hundred times over that I wouldn't be like my father, but when I look back, I guess I treated my wife just like he treated me. I had the same training and got the same results.

SUSAN: Love and abuse were linked for you as a child. Your father represented both, sometimes at the same time. It makes sense that you should get them mixed up.

Throughout Gordon's life, he had denied the fact that his father had been abusive; throughout Gordon's marriage, he had denied the fact that he himself was abusive. But in fact, Gordon had merely substituted one kind of abuse for another. Gordon's father had controlled him through physical violence and pain; Gordon had controlled his wife through verbal violence and emotional pain. Gordon had become a rationalizer, a victimizer, and a tyrant just like his father.

Glenn -- who made the mistake of taking his alcoholic father into business with him -- swore that he would never have anything to do with another alcoholic. Nonetheless, he found the cycle of alcoholism continuing in his own family. He had married an alcoholic, and his teenage children were in danger of becoming alcohol and drug abusers.

Gordon was fortunate in that his hard work paid off. His wife, seeing the difference in him, recently agreed to a trial reconciliation. He has stopped intimidating and belittling her. He has dealt with his anger at the source instead of displacing it onto his wife. He is able to talk openly to her about his fears and abusive childhood. The cycle has been broken.

"MY KIDS WON'T HAVE TO GROW UP WITH AN ALCOHOLIC"

As long as Gordon denied that he was, in a way, repeating his father's abusive behavior, he was not aware that he had a choice to make. If you don't see the cycle, you can't choose to break it. It took Gordon's wife's departure to make him face the truth.

I didn't think my kids were going to have the same problems I did, because I don't drink. But their mother drinks a lot and she refuses to get help. It really scared the hell out of me when I came home from work one night and found Denise sharing a case of beer with our two teenage boys. The three of them were loaded. I found out this wasn't the first time. My God, Susan, I don't drink and I still can't get alcohol out of my life. This has got to stop!

If you are the adult child of an alcoholic, you are at significant risk to perpetuate the cycle of alcoholism in your own family. Even if, as in Glenn's case, you don't abuse alcohol yourself, you may very well gravitate toward a partner who does. When this happens, your children will grow up with the same alcoholic/enabler role models as you did. Unless you break the cycle, there is a strong likelihood that they in turn will become either alcoholics or enablers.

Glenn was no longer the timid, nervous man I had first met. He was willing to be far more confrontive with his wife, Denise, than he had ever been before. He knew he had to take forceful action if he was to break the cycle of alcoholism before it ensnared his children. He finally threatened to leave his wife -- a threat he was prepared to carry out -- unless she agreed to get help. As a result, Denise enrolled in Alcoholics Anonymous and their two children enrolled in Alateen, the Twelve Step program for young people.

"I DON'T WANT TO HURT MY CHILD"

I insisted that Holly attend weekly meetings of Parents Anonymous, an extremely supportive self-help group for abusive parents. At P. A., Holly found a "sponsor"-- someone to call if she felt she was in danger of hurting her son. The sponsor could then intervene by calming Holly, by offering advice, or even by coming over to help defuse the situation.

In chapter 6 I introduced Holly, who was referred to me by the courts after having been reported for physically abusing her young son. I knew that to truly break the cycle, Holly would have to work on two tracks: the past and the present. But in her first few sessions I focused almost exclusively on techniques that would enable her to achieve the impulse control she so desperately needed. She had to regain control of her day-to-day life, which meant gaining control of her anger, before she'd be ready to begin the lengthier process of dealing with the pain of her childhood.

As Holly worked with P. A. on controlling her tendency to strike out under stress, we took a different but parallel approach in her therapy sessions. The first thing I wanted Holly to learn was to identify those physical sensations that preceded her angry or abusive outbursts. Anger has a lot of physiological components. I told Holly that her body was a barometer that would tell her what was going on if only she'd pay attention. As Holly began to tune in to the body sensations that she typically experienced before she became violent, she was surprised to discover how many she could identify:

These physical sensations were Holly's storm warnings. I told her that it was her responsibility to heed the warnings and avoid the storm. In the past, she would either yell or hit her son to release the enormous tension inside her. She had to find alternatives to these automatic reactions if she was going to break her family cycle of abuse.

Once Holly learned to recognize the physical signs of her rising anger, it was time to come up with specific alternative responses to those feelings. We talked a lot about the difference between response and reaction, but Holly had been on automatic pilot for so long that she had a very tough time thinking up new behaviors. To help get her started, I asked her what she wished her parents would have done instead of acting out their violence against her. She replied:

I didn't believe you when you told me, Susan, but it's true! When I get mad, I can feel my neck and shoulders getting real tight. A lot of grinding and gurgling goes on in my stomach. My jaw clenches up. I breathe real fast. My heart pounds like a sledgehammer. And I get hot tears behind my eyes.

I wished they had just walked away until they were calm. Walked around the block or something.

I suggested she could do just that the next time she got angry. Then I asked her what other things she wished her parents had done that she could apply to herself.

I could count to ten… knowing me, I'd better make that fifty. I could tell my son I don't want to hurt him and tell him to go to another room for a while. Or I could call my sponsor and talk to her until I got it together.

I congratulated Holly on coming up with some excellent behavioral strategies. Over the next several months she was very excited about the changes she was making in managing her feelings and impulsive behavior. Once she saw that she could control herself, that she wasn't doomed to behave like her mother, she was ready to tackle the difficult task of dealing with her own pain as an abused child.

"I WON'T LEAVE MY KIDS ALONE WITH MY FATHER"

Janine -- who was molested by her father and spent the next twenty years trying to recapture his love -- came out of her confrontation with a new sense of confidence. One of the members of her group asked her how she was handling her parents' relationship with her eight-year-old daughter, Rachel. Janine told the group that she had set very strict ground rules for how her parents could spend time with their granddaughter.

Janine recognized what many incest victims do not -- that breaking the cycle also means protecting other children from the abuser. Incest is a mysterious compulsion. The aggressor who molests his own daughter often goes on to molest his grandchildren or any other children who are available to him. Janine had no way of predicting whether her father would repeat his incestuous behavior, so she wisely chose to be cautious.

I told them that there was no way I would leave Rachel alone with them. I said, "You know, Dad, nothing's changed. You haven't gotten any therapy. You're still the same person who abused me. Why should I trust you with my daughter?" Then I told my mother I had no faith in her ability to guarantee Rachel's safety. After all, she was in the house when he molested me.

Janine also went to her local bookstore and bought her daughter a number of books written to help children learn the difference between healthy affection and inappropriate sexual behavior. There are also videotapes available on this subject. The object of these materials is not to scare the child but to calmly teach him or her about a subject that most parents find uncomfortable but that all children need to be aware of.

At my insistence, Janine took one more brave and healing step:

I'm telling everybody in the family. You convinced me that I'm not only responsible for protecting Rachel, but all the other kids in the family, too. I mean, my father has access to all of them. Not everybody's thrilled with my decision, especially my parents. But they're going to have to deal with that. For years I kept my mouth shut because I thought I was protecting the family when I was really protecting my father. But by not telling, I was endangering the kids in the family.

Even though Janine acted responsibly and courageously, not everyone was grateful for the information. In a typical incest family, some of your relatives will thank you for telling, others flat-out won't believe you, while others may become enraged and accuse you of lying or of betraying your parents. As with confrontation, the response of other family members determines to a large extent the nature of your future relationship with them. Some of your family relationships may suffer, but sometimes that's the price you have to pay to protect children. Incest can exist only in a conspiracy of silence. Breaking that silence is a vital part of breaking the cycle.

One of the hallmarks of toxic parents is that they rarely, if ever, apologize for their destructive behavior. That's why apologizing to the people you may have hurt -- especially your own children -- is an important part of breaking the cycle. You may find this embarrassing or may see it as a sign of weakness. You may even be afraid that apologies will diminish your authority, but I've found that children will respect you all the more for it. Even a child can sense that a volunteered apology is a sign of character and courage. A heartfelt apology is one of the most healing, cycle-breaking actions you will ever take.

"I'M SORRY I HURT YOU"

As Holly worked through the pain of her abusive childhood, she realized that she wanted to apologize to her son. But she was afraid to. She couldn't figure out what to say. I used role playing to help her. In our next session, I moved my chair close to hers and took both her hands in mine. I asked her to imagine that she was her son, Stuart. I would play the role of Holly. I asked "Stuart" to tell me how the abuse made him feel.

HOLLY (as Stuart): Mom, I really love you, but I'm really scared of you, too. When you get crazy and start hitting me, I feel like you must really hate me. Half the time I don't even know what I did. I try to be good, but… Mom, please don't hit me anymore…

Holly stopped, fighting off tears. She was experiencing her son's pain as well as her own. She would have liked to have said to her mother the things she imagined her son saying to her. She determined to go home and apologize to Stuart that night.

The following week, she came in glowing. Apologizing to Stuart hadn't been nearly as hard as she had expected. She just thought of the things she had always longed to hear from her own parents. She explained:

I told him: "Baby, I've done some things that hurt you a lot and I'm really ashamed. I had no right to hit you. I had no right to call you bad names. You didn't do anything to deserve that. You are a terrific kid. It was me, honey, all me, but I'm finally getting the help I should have gotten a long time ago. See, my parents beat up on me real bad and I never knew how much anger I had inside of me. I've learned a lot of new ways to behave when I get mad and you've probably noticed that I don't lose it so bad anymore. So I honestly don't think I'm going to hit you anymore. But if I do, I want you to go next door and get help. I don't ever want to hurt you again. It's bad for both of us. I really love you, honey. I'm really sorry."

You have within you the power to change your children's destiny. When you free yourself from the legacy of guilt, self-hatred, and anger, you also free your children. When you interrupt family patterns and break the cycle, you give a priceless gift to your children, and to their children, and to the children who will follow. You are molding the future.

When you apologize to your children, you are teaching them to trust their feelings and perceptions. You are saying, "The things I did that you thought were unfair were unfair. You were right to feel that way." You also show them that even you can make mistakes, but that you are willing to take responsibility for them. The message there is that it's okay for your children to make mistakes, too, as long as they take responsibility as well. By apologizing, you are truly modeling loving behavior.