How to Stop Your Relatives from Driving You Crazy: Strategies for Coping With

Book excerpt: "How to Stop Your Relatives from Driving You Crazy" will help you keep your sanity when dealing with family frictions ranging from the trivial to the catastrophic. With candor, empathy, and a healthy dose of humor, Denise Lang offers clear-eyed solutions to the problems that ignite family explosions. Focusing on every important "family matter", including money, religion, adult sibling rivalry, divorce, blended families, serious illness, and death, Lang describes effective mechanisms for coping with irritating and destructive behavior. The book features tests designed to help you determine your role in the family-- from Dictator to Goat-- and helpful advice on employing periodic "reality checks" and planned communications. For those truly at the end of their ropes, there are even suggestions for creating a surrogate family!