Mild trigger warning in this post.
Stick at it. It's definitely not all childhood related although the book is heavy about it. But I felt like that the first time I read it. Part 1 is hard going. What I did was read about half of part 1, felt meh about it, put the book away for 6 months, decided to try again, went through part 1, tried to do the exercises, got frustrated with it because I was finding the exercises too hard and irrelevant (they kept asking things like "Why do you think your child did X" and my answer was I DON'T KNOW. BECAUSE HE WANTS TO HURT AND ANNOY ME BECAUSE HE'S A MINIATURE PSYCHOPATH WHO THINKS THAT IS REALLY FUN?? I REALLY DON'T KNOW.
I found I had to read through all of part 1 and gather my thoughts on it first and so I made my own kind of exercise - I listed all of the behaviours which "push my buttons" and then tried to categorise them. I think I ended up with four categories -
-feeling like I can't get him to do something that I need him to do
-demanding my attention when I can't/don't want to give attention, not letting me have space
-walking all over my (physical) boundaries, e.g. touching my bum/boobs when I've asked him a million times not to
-(and another one I forget)
So, with these categories in mind I started to do each exercise in turn, using one "category" of button pushing behaviour for each one rather than repeating a lot of the stuff. In actual fact I only ever did one or two of the exercises. The one I remember, using the "fear" exercise, was the touching one - I went into this thinking this is stupid and hopeless, I don't know what the reason is behind it, it doesn't make sense, and I'd got to the point of lashing out and slapping at his hand or pushing him away because it just made me feel so horrible and I could not understand why even this - which I felt guilty about - wasn't deterring him. In fact he decided it was a game and used to laugh and do it more.
I wrote that my fear was he would become a rapist because he didn't understand that other people have boundaries. (This part, for those who haven't read the book, asks you to think what really is your worst fear about this behaviour, even if it sounds silly or extreme written down - the example in the book is a woman whose daughter will not eat, and her fear is that the child will starve or become ill and malnourished)
I then thought - no, what is my fear about me, (I can't remember if this was a question or not) - and I realised that my own fear was what was getting in the way. The thing that was coming back to me is that I have been sexually abused in the past, including by DS' father, and it wasn't so much that DS was intending to make me feel intimidated, of course he wasn't, he was four, but that my fear was "I have no boundaries. I can't even stop my own four year old child from crossing my boundaries. I can't protect myself from the same thing happening again."
This was a really, really big and emotional moment for me. It made me realise that everything is connected. No, this particular issue was nothing to do with my childhood but it was about a fear that was still affecting my life now, although it wasn't something I was consciously aware of and it wasn't something I was "in danger" of at that time. Parenting is not a task so much as a relationship and whatever is going on for you is going to come through and colour how you experience that relationship. Once I separated out the two issues, I realised that I had had a very attachment-y parenting style when DS was little and was always carrying him or holding him and feeding on demand etc. He'd stopped breastfeeding and was too heavy and wriggly to carry or hold most of the time so he was probably missing that closeness, and trying to tell me that he needed to be close to me. And I was responding to that by hitting him and pushing him away! :( Then I thought, wow, he must be feeling so rejected by that, and then I realised that the reason he was probably laughing and treating the whole thing as a game was because the idea that I was rejecting him just didn't enter his head at all, like that was so ridiculous the only possibility was it was a joke, or a game. Which made me feel quite humbled that he had so much faith in me.
OK - hard going. It is and I think you need to be able to take a critical look at yourself. It can help you figure out why your fuse is short (especially if that's only in certain situations) or you need to be in control but the answers probably won't be nice easy "oh I dealt with that years ago" answers, it will be something that's ongoing, perhaps something you're sort of aware of but you don't want to look in the face. As a positive story, mine ended up that I was able to give myself a new perspective, I could understand DS was trying in his own way to reach out, I consciously tried to encourage positive/appropriate ways to touch and be close, I was able to more calmly redirect him if he did and I made much more effort not to be naked around him (whereas before I was feeling almost indignant, like I shouldn't have to hide away from my own son - to make the boundary more clear it seemed appropriate to use clothing to make a physical statement and that wasn't taking away any of my power to say no.)
I didn't end up going to the root of any of the others (or, I haven't yet) because that was quite hard work in itself so I didn't feel ready to, but I read the rest of the book anyway. Part two was very helpful to me because it outlines all of the different buttons. I think if you're struggling, start with this part, as it doesn't really require anything from you except to identify which parts you see in yourself. Then move back to part one but you can always skip a chapter if it's not speaking to you. I'd definitely read part 3 last and read all of it - it starts out quite depressing but is really uplifting, encouraging and positive towards the end.
I think if you decide not to keep going with the book, keep it around. It might be that in six months, a year, two years, you feel like you're in the right place to pick it up again.