Breaking the Cycle
A Guide to Reparenting Yourself in Adulthood
An intimate and supportive self-help book, Breaking the Cycle illustrates self-compassion as a step toward personal growth and healing.
Andrale D. Jeanlouis’s empathetic self-help book Breaking the Cycle is about healing from early trauma through self-directed compassion.
This guide for understanding and reframing childhood wounds examines how early trauma shapes adult thought patterns and behaviors. It encourages movement beyond blame toward rebuilding a sense of inner security through self-awareness. Its early chapters invite self-nurturing through identifying one’s emotional triggers, recognizing one’s unmet needs, and acknowledging the protective habits that hinder one’s growth. Common cognitive distortions that perpetuate pain are named, including personalization, overgeneralization, and catastrophizing, alongside brief explanations of how such habits distort reality.
Its prose intimate and supportive, the book proves too informal at times. Its empathetic sentences are quite unfocused, blending advice with reassurances to the detriment of both, such as the book’s frequent reminders that all people are worthy of love. Further, its advice is quite repetitive, as with its guidance to seek counseling, forgive one’s parents, and practice self-compassion. These encouragements appear across multiple chapters, sometimes with near-identical phrasing. As it progresses, the book becomes quite circular, with ideas for developing healthier attachment styles and rebuilding trust remaining at the level of assertion, with no detailed practical steps used to flesh them out.
In the book’s third part, its guidance becomes clearer and more applicable, if still in amorphous terms. Here, limited but illustrative case studies put the book’s theoretical advice into lived context. In one tale, a woman overcomes self-doubt and external obstacles to become a published author, demonstrating how self-affirmation and goal setting can have tangible results. In another, a woman experiences anxiety and isolation but finds that active listening and affirmations help her toward gradual recovery. Such narratives show what “reparenting” might look like in practice. And still later, the book addresses the importance of recognizing milestones and acknowledging small achievements to complement its ideas of incremental progress.
Still, the book’s brief, therapeutic reflections don’t often translate into concrete recommendations. Further, its section breaks sometimes appear mid-discussion, as when a discussion on reframing negative thoughts is disrupted. Indeed, there’s a lack of transitional logic between ideas throughout. Further, though the book gestures to a range of therapeutic models, it treats each in passing, evading persuasiveness. Concepts like SMART goals are referenced sans examples or instructions, and mentions of growth mindsets and cognitive-behavioral methods appear without being sufficiently fleshed out. Other experts in the field are also gestured to without sufficient context being provided too.
A comforting self-help book, Breaking the Cycle is about healing through self-recognition, forgiveness, and growth.
Reviewed by
pine breaks
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
