Whose life is it anyway?

Psychologist and author Nina Brown helps readers who are over-involved with loved ones shield themselves against their emotional needs and start to focus on their own.

Does your mother's desire to complain about how thoughtless your father was last night override your need to get to work on time?

Do you really have nothing better to do on Saturday night than to ferry your little brother home from the movies, or help your sister debug her relationship with her boyfriend?

If you tend to drop everything in your own life whenever a family member needs you, then you join the ranks of the millions others who are over-involved with their families.

Over-involved family members get so swallowed by their loved ones' problems that they often lose sight of who they are and what they really want.

This kind of excessive empathy becomes a problem when the needs of others determine every move you make and inhibit your ability to take care of yourself and get on with your own life.

In Whose Life Is It Anyway? psychologist and author Nina Brown starts by helping readers evaluate their own family ties and decide if they are too caught up in other's needs. She goes on to provide a variety of techniques to help readers shield themselves from the needs of others, build strong boundaries, strengthen parts of their personalities against a tendency toward excessive empathy, and stay free of dominating or manipulative relationships.