Setting Boundaries with Difficult People: Six Steps to SANITY for Challenging Relationships by Allison Bottke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Setting Boundaries with Difficult People in 140 characters or less: “sanity=analysis, introspection, support, trusting God. Practice!”
If you find spiritual self-help books to be trite and preachy, Allison Bottke’s “Setting Boundaries with Difficult People: Six Steps to SANITY for Challenging Relationships” is the opposite.
While the book uses the anagram + numbered steps formula to self-improvement characteristic of a lot of self-help books, it does it well. Foundation building, goal setting, personal anecdotes and scripture provide the foundation upon which Bottke contends will help the reader conquer the difficulties of a challenging relationship. The advice is useful, practical, and tried-and-true by Bottke herself. I don’t like to be taught at, but taught to. She does that well.
It is the third book in her “Setting Boundaries” series (I have not read the other two), and I have to assume that Bottke does not “preach from the mountain” in the other books as well. That makes the hard-to-do activities (analyzing your character and temperament, setting boundaries within family and friend relationships and sticking to them less impersonal. I’m a proponent of many of her techniques, namely a support group for accountability and yielding to God. Great job!
