You might want to revisit it. She does provide a number of different ways to try dealing with them (including distancing yourself as one approach), and your own relationship tendencies. That’s what the last couple chapters are all about, actionable next steps. I personally walked away with a few new mental and behavioral approaches to try.

Nor does she characterize them (us?) into two groups, in fact she goes out of her way to explain that nearly every person this applies to has a mix of traits of differing degrees from internalizing and externalizing attributes. She also provides a number of exercises for helping to self-identify where you (and your parents) fall in the mix of various experiences, attributes, and behaviors. I didn’t take away any “good” / “bad” connotations, but rather various examples throughout the spectrum (including the extremes) of how abuse and reactions thereafter can vary greatly.

I interpreted it as her personal experience comes from her professional training, and treating many others. Granted she doesn’t say anything about her own parents, but honestly that would seem unprofessional to me if she had made it about herself.

I’m not sure what form it would take, in terms of sympathy from a psychology book, but she didn’t seem unsympathetic to me, just straightforward and sticking to facts.

Granted, I spent $0 on it since it was a library book. $35 does seem steep. I’d say like $15 would be appropriate.