Hello
I am 25 and just finished therapy recently because I can’t afford it. But I have to deal with this, I can’t be a grown man and still revert to childhood in my head every day.
I’m looking for something self-help or memoir/autobio about healing from being a “glass child.” I grew up with a disabled younger sibling whose dangerous illnesses made me invisible. I still deal with the medical issues this caused. I love my parents deeply though and I forgive them, I just need to fix my head. I need to stop devaluing myself. But I specifically want to read authors who’ve personally dealt with this or studied those who did.
Thank you!
by gospelofrage
3 Comments
I’m not sure if that specific scenario is addressed because I haven’t started the book yet, but Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson might be of interest in addition to something that specifically focuses on healing the “glass child.”
Edit: I linked some books specific to your situation below.
Little William by Mark Moir
At five years old, William already knew how to hold his breath—under bathwater, under fists, under the weight of adults who should have cared. Growing up in Fife, he became the boy who wouldn’t break: stubborn, sharp-tongued, forever scanning for exits. Little William follows that child through care homes, classrooms, and cold nights on friends’ floors, into the bewildering freedoms of adulthood. With dark humor and unflinching honesty, Mark Moir shows how survival skills forged in chaos don’t simply disappear when you turn eighteen—sometimes they’re all you have. This is a memoir about bruises that don’t show, the families we build when blood fails us, and the slow, ordinary work of learning to be loved. Raw, propulsive, and unexpectedly tender, Little William asks: when the world writes your story for you, how do you take the pen back?
Running on Empty by Jonice Webb. My husband was freaked out because he felt like someone was writing about his own childhood