Liberating the Adult Within: How to Be a Grown-Up For Good

by Helen Kramer

Psychotherapist Helen Kramer has developed a pioneering method that provides long-term solutions for people who generally function well, but have difficulty ridding their behavior of unpredictable childlike responses such as rigidity, blame, impatience, and melodrama.

Whether the stress factor is created by your boss, spouse, or parent, Liberating the Adult Within will teach you how to deal with any situation without feeling threatened or confined.

Genres: Self Help

235 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1995

Reviews

[Diane in Australia]

3 Stars = I'm glad I read it.

[Rachel]

Not all pop psychology self-help books are created equal - and this is one of the better ones. It sounds a bit gimmicky at first, but it's sensible, realistic, easy to relate to, and clearly written. I don't think it's a very well-known book, but it could help a lot of people.

[Georgi]

Doesn't everyone aspire to be liberated?....and yet on what level? What is so liberating to one is nought to another..How to get there is another pondering and deep study of life. I think this book delved into important aspects of (stunted, shunted or stymied) personal development, and much needed emotional education...indeed a valuable guiding tool addressing the personal and social dilemmas of a world running rampant with misbehaved adult children and out of control childish grown ups. (Even one adult really trying to pass go and managing to collect 200 rupies along the way, can be challenged by what life has to offer at any given stage.) Just imagine if parents understood these theories and applied them in raising future generations. This kind of understanding needs to be seeded as personal development beginning in first grade, and taught to teachers imparting a 21st century curriculum. Those not blinded by the chaos, still have hope, if we read and apply this book’s theories and methods.

For everything and everyone there is a season of growth and healing in life, as long as we are open and willing to face our own sufferings.....and there are reasons to assume grown up status at five, and times when child like spirit at eighty (notice not childish) is a direct connect to the divine source. Choosing innocence without naivety and awakened wisdom in tandem with the highest aspirations, well this is the unfolding of layers of deep spiritual practice and perspective. A conversation to be had with Maitrea, the future Buddha of enlightenment, who will appear as a cluster of grownup aspirants, with child like hearts prolonging their own liberation in a willingness to understand and heal the suffering of others--- this is a leap into the next level of harmonic earthly and intergalactic relations and expanded consciousness.

Trusting in the culminated experience of the old soul, I happen to be one of those people that do not relate age to maturity. Being grown up can come from the most inconspicuous places, as this unknown quote reveals, "Dear Anne Frank: there is more truth in your girlish ramblings than the whole of war” ...Isn’t it the governmental authority figures and political grown ups that continually press the red buttons of war through the ages? Perhaps they too were all afflicted with some form of ED, making decisions of destruction in the face of such potential,…still loading their toy guns, or playing dress up assuming perilous cloaked consequence at the head of a kingdom. Part of the progressive future electorate and ranking process would be to include how grown up one acts given a set of life altering problems to solve. To thrive or be killed? To live fully in right relation with all the realities of humanhood, or to live in a fog of despair amongst the sadness of the ruling few. In coming of age some tribal girls are left in the bush to fend for themselves against wild bores and to their surprise they physically survive..yet soon after walk into a nearby village where they may be ravaged by the adult men who now consider them a full fledged woman prize, become forever psychologically damaged. What denotes appropriate adulthood behavior in the game of life, an ever changing right time, right place, right circumstance to slip through the eye of the needle where the meek or the mighty shall inherit the earth?


As I understand it, the aim of the author's professional work as a healer and therapist, is to elevate human consciousness and right relations with self and others. What does it mean today to be an actualized human? In a world that is not always grown up, chaotically ruled by hierarchical powers that continue to diminish the potential empowerment and glory of its populace, causing repercussive recurring global nightmares, incessant poverty, suffering and debilitating cyclical systems. Each of us as individuals must take responsibility for our own decisions and choices that lead to personal peace and growth within our own circle of the lives that we touch and that touch us in return. I feel comforted by the author shares compassion in describing ED as a neurological disturbance and claim that it is not really our fault, but the slow development of a brain that has not yet gone into basic training. Yet, I don't agree entirely. How is it that some of us choose to practice overcoming this effect and others don't? Perhaps it is easier for some to go through life pretending not to fully see its horrors and subsequently do not participate in its full emotional enrichment either? While others indeed see it all and say “I am not going there!.” And thus, incremental development eeks our brain into a slow resistant evolution and dna transformation. It is no accident that primates are known to show more compassion to each other than human adults do. They have come to accept that suffering is a part of life and if it doesn't kill you, it will inevitably make you a stronger survivor. Perhaps this is why children sometimes seem more grownup than parents themselves, not yet jaded enough nor numb enough to shrink back into an unaware childish state of fear nor refusing to see the half truths adults choose to live by, their fresh and brash approach can cut through …

Everyone could benefit by the transforming effects of this theory on emotional dyslexia in one way or another and I am grateful to have it cross my path. Just now, I have watched the six o’clock news, something I try to take in a simulated adult dose, (without a spoon full of sugar) while all the youth under 25 at the theatre nearest you, have blinked in the last scene of The Hunger Games. I have finished reading the final chapter of this book and crane my neck towards the very worthwhile sunshine streaking across my desk…(notice the photo on my fb page) I am the optimistic plant that refuses to give up my wish for environmental and spiritual stewardship and a flourishing future for all sentient beings. Tomorrow is another day I say, and another great opportunity to be more grownup than ever before.

[Mimi]

A book that tackles how to be an adult, a topic rarely touched on these days, aside from jokes about "adulting". I found it helpful. The author outlines a clear framework for analyzing and improving one's behavior. Some of the analysis of example situations seemed a bit dated, suggesting that if a man in a relationship is doing something immature, the woman should learn to deal with rather than get upset, but other than that it was refreshing to see someone to attempt to give some guidance to the jungle out there that is the world of adults.

[Ro]

This book is a practical how to guide. I loved it bc instead if simply identifying the problem, it gives clear solutions. Should have read this ages ago.