I spent many years deeply angry at my parents and not really understanding why. When I found out about shame, and how it was passed down from generation to generation, I was finally able to crack the code. Their “permissiveness” was actually neglect. Without meaning to, they had put their shame on me and I was still suffering from not really being seen. I made it my mission to help others heal their shame so they can be better people and better parents, and live fuller lives. I am the co-director of the Center for Healing Shame and co-author of Embracing Shame.
I wrote...
Embracing Shame: How to Stop Resisting Shame and Turn It into a Powerful Ally
My book examines the dynamics of shame, the reasons we have it, and how we can heal its negative effects and actually transform it into a useful ally. While toxic shame can keep us stuck in a self-defeating vortex, there is actually a healthy expression of shame designed to protect us, help us change for the better, and actually build our self-esteem.
Through case studies, creative tools, and body-based practices, my book explains how shame disguises itself by “binding” to other emotions and the ways shame forms in childhood, evolves as we grow, is impacted by trauma, and takes residence in the body. It gives practical guidance for regulating common shame-based challenges, including the inner critic, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, intimacy in relationships, and much more.
Though it was written in the 1980s, I still found this the most personal, most accurate and most interesting book on shame.
Reading this book opened my eyes and launched me into my career as a teacher of how to heal shame. Kaufman is a true expert on shame and has written many other excellent books, including one about kids and one about alternative sexuality. I like this book best because it is his most personal. John Bradshaw based Healing the Shame that Binds You on this book.
All of us embrace a common humanity in which we search for meaning in living, for essential belonging with others, and for valuing of who we are as unique individuals. We need to feel that we are worthwhile in some special way, as well as whole inside. We yearn to feel that our lives are useful, that what we do and who we are, do matter. Yet times come upon us when doubt creeps inside, as if an inner voice whispers despair.
Above all else, shame reveals the self inside the person, thereby exposing it to view. To feel shame…
I discovered this book before almost anyone else in a New Age store that sold jewelry and cards and had a small selection of books. When I picked it up and saw two tigers on the cover, I had to buy it.
As soon as I read it, I thought, “This is the most useful way of thinking about and working with trauma that I have ever seen. When I called to try to join a training program, I was told there was no training program yet. I kept checking, then finally gave up.
It took several years before Peter Levine finally started a training program, and I signed up. Somatic Experiencing has deeply influenced my work.
Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed.
Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on…
Shame is the major factor in all depression, and when I substituted “shame” every time Real used the word “depression,” I realized I had found the definitive work on how shame operates on men. I have all my male clients read it, and it has changed many lives.
The book reads in many ways like a novel. Real frames the book with stories about his father: It starts with descriptions of how depressed his father was and how difficult it was to connect with him in his depression and isolation. And it ends with Real finally getting his father (and himself) to acknowledge the love between them.
A bestseller for over 20 years, I Don’t Want to Talk About It is a groundbreaking and hopeful guide to understanding and destigmatizing male depression, essential not only for men who may be suffering but for the people who love them.
Twenty years of experience treating men and their families has convinced psychotherapist Terrence Real that depression is a silent epidemic in men—that men hide their condition from family, friends, and themselves to avoid the stigma of depression’s “un-manliness.” Problems that we think of as typically male—difficulty with intimacy, workaholism, alcoholism, abusive behavior, and rage—are really attempts to escape depression.…
The original breakthrough in understanding shame was from Sylvan Tomkins, whose book Shame and Its Sisters is well worth reading. Gershen Kaufman and Donald Nathanson were his two main disciples.
This book is a vast volume, beautifully supplementing Kaufman’s book. It covers all the emotions. The section on shame is amazingly powerful and thorough. I am most in love with his section on the reactions to shame: attack self, attack others, deny, and withdraw. I have fleshed out his idea and use it in every workshop I teach and with every client I see.
Drawing on every theme of the modern life sciences, Donald Nathanson shows how nine basic affects-interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle, fear-terror, distress-anguish, anger-rage, dissmell, disgust, and shame-humiliation-not only determine how we feel but shape our very sense of self.
For too long those who explain emotional discomfort on the basis of lived experience and those who blame chemistry have been at loggerheads. As Dr. Nathanson shows, chemicals and illnesses can affect our mood just as surely as an uncomfortable memory or a stern rebuke. Linking for the first time the affect theory of the pioneering researcher Silvan S. Thomkins with the entire…
I lovethis book because it says that all conversations take place on 3 different levels.
There is the content level, the most obvious; the emotional level, how important the subject is and the emotions around it; and the internal level of “what does this conversation say about me,” which is the shame level. This level may be the most important and the most hidden.
The 10th-anniversary edition of the New York Times business bestseller-now updated with "Answers to Ten Questions People Ask"
We attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day-whether dealing with an underperforming employee, disagreeing with a spouse, or negotiating with a client. From the Harvard Negotiation Project, the organization that brought you Getting to Yes, Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. you'll learn how to:
· Decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversation · Start a conversation without defensiveness · Listen for the meaning of what is not said ·…
Trusted for more than three decades by family caregivers and professionals alike, this comprehensive and reassuring caregiving guide offers the crucial information you need to look after your elders and plan for the future.
Being a caregiver for aging parents, close friends and family, and other elders in your life is an overwhelming experience, whether you are one who has stepped into this role without warning or one who is also contemplating their own care plan. Now in its fourth edition, The Complete Eldercare Planner will help you navigate today’s complex caregiving landscape while addressing your unique needs.
Trusted for more than three decades by family caregivers and professionals alike, this comprehensive and reassuring caregiving guide offers the crucial information you need to look after your elders and plan for the future.
“The most complete resource between two covers.”—Woman’s Day
Being a caregiver for aging parents, close friends and family, and other elders in your life is an overwhelming experience, whether you are one who has stepped into this role without warning or one who is also contemplating their own care plan. Now in its fourth edition, The Complete Eldercare Planner will help you navigate today’s complex caregiving…
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