Healing the Shame that Binds You is the most enduring work of family relationship expert and New York Times bestselling author John Bradshaw. In it, he shows how unhealthy toxic shame, often learned young and maintained into adulthood, is the core component in our compulsions, co-dependencies, addictions and drive to superachieve. While positive shame empowers us and sustains the fabric of our social system, inappropriate or misdirected shame results in the breakdown of our self-esteem, the destruction of the family system, and an inability to move forward with our lives.In an honest and emotionally revealing style based largely on his personal experience with addiction and his decades as a counselor, John Bradshaw moves from the source and manifestation of toxic shame to the practical tools-affirmations, visualizations, inner voice and feeling work, guided meditations, and other healing techniques-that will release the shame that binds us to our past.
For All Those Living In the Shadow of Shame… Many suffer from the damaging effects of Toxic Shame. A little-explored subject, it causes one to feel defective from the core of one’s being. The roots of shame come from abuse and dysfunctionality in the family and early socialization in school. People then tend to measure their worth against external standards and feedback and when it is negative or lacking, can feel a devasting loss of self. Whether perpetrated on an overt or covert level, the damaging effects can last a lifetime, leading people into mental illness, addiction, and crippling disfunctionality.
retrieve your soul from hell It is no exaggeration to say this was the most helpful self-help book i’ve ever encountered. For a long time I was always a seeker but could never get to the bottom of the “soul sickness” I felt within my deepest sense of self. I was operating under the general theory my soul had been stolen from me in my early childhood. [I was raised by a brutal Amish preacher father who was very abusive physically and emotionally] I could never feel right about who and what I was as a person. This book truly opened my inner eye and gave me the insights and tools to take that mythical inner journey into my own “underworld” and find and retrieve my soul. After many years of depression, divorces, alcoholism, feeling absolutely defective as a human being, this wonderful book brought tears to my eyes, light to my mind, and true healing to my heart. I feel now I am a completely different person than I was during those years of toxic shame hell. While the healing is still ongoing, the light and growth of…