The Unavailable Father

Seven Ways Women Can Understand, Heal, and Cope with a Broken Father-Daughter Relationship

By: Sarah S. Rosenthal

Narrated by: Cris Dukehart

Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

Strategies for overcoming a damaged father/daughter relationship

Problems between fathers and daughters can damage a young girl's identity, convince her she's unloveable or without worth, and send her into unhealthy adult relationships. This groundbreaking book includes in-depth stories and case histories of a broad spectrum of women over 25 who have recovered and flourished in their professional and personal lives despite the lack of a father's recognition and affection. While the legacy of pain that these fathers leave is deep, there is much that can be done to alleviate and even conquer it. Using these women's stories as well as her insights from her private practice, the author outlines basic strategies to overcome the void left by an abusive, absent, alcoholic, mentally ill, irresponsible, selfish, or unloving father.

• Written by Sarah Simms Rosenthal who has a thriving practice in New York City
• Reveals how to understand the truth about your childhood
• Includes strategies for discovering and analyzing past adult relationship mistakes—both personal and professional
• Offers successful techniques for establishing new patterns of behavior

The women whose stories are told in The Unavailable Father have learned to recognize and change the patterns instigated by their dysfunctional fathers and have moved forward, fulfilled.

©2010 Sarah Simms Rosenthal (P)2012 Tantor Audio

I needed this 😊

I've been going thru therapy undergoing PTSD treatment due to my abusive father. loved the self assessment. Thank you.

Good book, not a fan of the narrators voice.

I didn’t enjoy listening to this as an audiobook because the voice is somewhat robotic . However the book itself is very informative in the way it narrated the stories of women who have “unavailable fathers”. I learned a good deal of behaviors as well as pointers in dealing with a traumatic past. It helps to know that as woman we are not alone and many of us deal with this type of trauma from all backgrounds. I wouldn’t jump to recommend this book , but it was a decent read.

Specific audience

I think this would be beneficial to help people determine if they had an unavailable father or if they want to feel less alone, But only the last chapter talks about the actual method, and it doesn’t go in depth enough to get much out of it.

Extremely valuable!

This book really helped me understand my issues with my unavailable father. I highly recommend it :-)

Full of stories but vague on strategies

If you’re looking for a book that talks about female childhood traumas, this may help you relate to the women’s stories. I was looking forward to the 7 strategies but it was pretty vague. I’m not sure how to use the strategies: look at old childhood habits, replace them with better ones. But I don’t know how or what to replace. Kinda confusing to me.

The worst book I ever read

Shallow analysis and misleading contents. The authors spends whole chapters describing pathological behavior probably disclosed to her during therapy sessions. The problem is that the father behavior she describes is utterly irrelevant, unless your father was a schizophrenic, bipolar or a drug user. At the end, don't worry dear, marry a good man and he will "validate you"
The narrator is so out of touch with the contents of the book that some times she sounds like a TV commercial, all cutesy and fun. This book is poorly written and poorly produced.