Healing the Shame that Binds You (Recovery Classics)

My counselor recommended this book and I have found it to be deeply insightful and thought-provoking. It helps explain how toxic shame can affect a person's identity, relationships, and emotional health. This book has offered me a great deal of hope and practical insight for healing and self-awareness.

Ah. So It has a name. That feeling that follows us through years and years, that keeps eating at us and deteriorating our life. At first you double the efforts to keep on functioning and achieving ("put your back into it!"). Some achievements come with that. But you feel increasingly drained, fearful of disasters and failure (which can lead you smack into some of them btw), and just so gd tired. And weirdly empty, disconnected and phony even to yourself. Soooo.... bit by bit you keep on trying to quench that nagging dissatisfied thirst with... well, just plain more. More work. More "fun" (a world of problems here, none of them fun at all). More money. More shoes. And always thinking "when I get that new (i) car (ii) job (iii) promotion (iv) title (v) ring etc etc etc, I'll feel better. More serene and real. I'll find "my" place, where I "belong"". One therapist once told me that this sounded like "when I grow up...". I never forgot that. This book is important. To me, it was an absolute revelation. If you identify with anything I wrote above, check this book out. It brings an almost immediate feeling of relief. What happens after the first eureka moment is up to each one of us and our individual stories. But, as a group, it's like realizing your symptons are documented and part of a disease that afflicts a lot of people and not just you - and which CAN be treated; which has nothing to do with your real identity. And that place? Where we belong? It's right there inside each of us, patiently waiting for us to come back. I'm trying to find my own way back, and this book was the most precise and clearest "guide" I found so far. For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm on my way. Using the right road and all. At the right pace. I do wish I had come across this before. But then again, time and place for everything, right?

Bradshaw's book is a fantastic one, second only to Alice Miller's book, "Prisoners of Childhood". When I realized that this was the same person who was on public television talking about healing the child within, I knew that I had to read this book. I could so relate to his stories about shame that the book made me want to cry. Anyone who is struggling with an addiction from alcohol, drugs, sex, food will be able to relate to this book. I am dealing now with a husband who is overly critical and I was searching for ways to deal with his difficult behaviours. I photocopied Bradshaw's seven tips for dealing with critical people. He states that these people are really shame based and deal with their own shame by shaming and judging others. This makes perfect sense to me. I used one of his strategies one time when my husband blew his top and started being negative and critical of me. I decided to use the "cofusing strategy" which involves using a word that you make up to throw your critic off the track and confuse them so they do not know how to respond. Instead of reacting in anger to his negative remarks, I replied calmly, " How perspicacious of you dear to understand me so well! He looked confounded and confused and then, with a defeated look on his face, he admitted, " You always use these big words that I don't understand." Ha, ha! I managed to avoid an argument because he didn't know whether he'd been complimented or insulted! It put me back in control!

This is a classic but still very applicable to today. Bradshaw covers toxic shame in depth from how it starts to how it can affect the rest of your life. He gives some decent tips for recovery and changing your mindset- as your subconscious beliefs are going to dictate so much of your life. I like that he pushes a 12 step mindset that not only helps if you are in recovery for another problem- but can give a life framework for healing from shame. The book is thorough and covers just about every aspect of shame that you may want to learn about. While I don't agree with everything he teaches-he gets a little too esoteric for me towards the end- there is enough that you can take what works for you and leave the rest. I also wish he gave more real life examples as opposed to quoting so many other sources. Overall, the book is an easy read and informative. Happy to recommend.

I had only learned the concept of toxic shame just this year online. The online source I learned it from was lacking in terms of solutions though. This book does both well in my opinion, it describes the problem, and solutions. I found it very ironic when I started reading this book because after learning about the existence of toxic shame I had started doing the first few steps to fix the problem that he suggested in this book. As you can imagine when I got to that point in the book and read about it I was greatly amazed :) I almost have the feeling that God was guiding me in my recent life to help me with my psychological issues. You don't have to be religious to do what this book says though, and in fact it will tell you that if you are built in toxic shame you CANNOT be religious, and his solutions do not require religion at any step of the process. I had taken medicine and had even gone to a therapist with my psychological concerns and never felt that any progress was made. Some of the things suggested as solutions in this book were suggested to me by the therapist but he didn't really explain things in a way that got me motivated like this book did. I think you have to have a basic understanding of the problem before you can start work to fix it. That's the thing with toxic shame: hearing what you are doing wrong won't help, it just reinforces it, makes it worse. You have to understand that the toxic shame is the SOURCE of the problem before you can take steps to solve it.

This is an excellent starter book on a spiritual journey

I read this decades ago and it has a whole new meaning today. This time I sourced his sources mentioned in first few pages & they are hard work to read so I’m even more grateful for Bradshaw’s perspective on how to be your best self for yourself and nobody else.

To be honest I read this book because I had come across a neat excerpt from it explaining the Adam and Eve story and how it related to being 'shamed' or 'ashamed' of yourself, because you found yourself unacceptable in some way - and suddenly like Adam and Eve, your garden of Eden crumbled - and you discovered you were naked etc - and I was curious to read the context of this excerpt. This story was only a small part of this book, but as you can tell by the title, it was relevant to the idea of shame. This is not an excuse to plug my own book Life Happiness, but I was interested to see where John Bradshaw's analysis went. Bradshaw couches his analysis in some pretty harrowing stories - which highlight points - but I had to wonder whether the reader might be distracted by empathy or sympathy, from the core message - namely the role of this concept called 'shame' in people's lives. Positive and negative 'shame' were interesting, since most of us would probably just see shame as negative. As Bradshaw points out many elite minds have discussed this human condition of shame in centuries past. Bradshaw advised he removed the NLP process discussion on self image, claiming that readers had not found it particularly useful - but I think he could have left it in anyway - just to compare and contrast with his preferred narrative. Personally I have found 'self image' to be a critical concept to be aware of. Bradshaw provides a number of steps people can take to dissolve 'negative ' (as in 'harmful') shame - and appears to like the AA 12 Steps style approach. Not being familiar with this process (other than its existance),I'll accept the appropriateness of it as explained. So where did Bradshaw's book take me? Well I found myself understanding his point of how being shamed (in a negtive way) would undermine your ability to enjoy living a happy life - regardless of what you achieved (and as he points out 'over-achievement' can be indicative of someone who has unresolved negative shame). The question arose in my mind, 'What could you expect to experience once you had applied Bradshaw's techniques and hopefully resolved your (negative) shame? The answer was, 'I wasn't sure'. Presumably you would feel happier - and you might. In my book on Life Happiness, I essentially look at Happiness as being innate - the issue being how we learn to experience it. Conditioning, including learning shame, would obviously affect the way in which you experience Happiness. The thing about individual psychology is that everyone is different. So while certain traits can be identified which appear to have elements in common - everyone is going to have circumstances which are unique. There is no one size fits all. Taking ownership of your own life is a critical step which everyone must take to move forward (as Bradshaw notes) - something which actually should be a natural part of learning and conditioning - but often is not - as we learn to hand our lives over to some notionally higher authority - and then never grow out of it, because it becomes habitual, and we are not even aware of it. And part of that is 'the shame that binds you' - hidden and identified with, at a subconsious level, and which needs to be brought to the surface in a type of mind catharsis, and resolved. Anyway, that's my two bob's worth. Worth a read.

Loved every bit of this book. John Bradshaw has been to bottom of rock bottoms and back again . He knows

If you are on a journey of inner healing, seeking to better understand your emotional history and the experiences that shaped you in childhood and beyond, this book is an incredible resource. It helps uncover the roots of present day struggles and shines a light on patterns that often go unnoticed. What I appreciated most is how it gives language to subtle yet profoundly important concepts that are essential for genuine healing, self awareness, and personal growth. Time and again, I found myself recognizing truths that I had felt but never been able to fully articulate. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is insightful, compassionate, and truly transformative.

Great book learned lots

This book stands on special place in my heart. It has helped me to be courageous and make those first steps and the healthy side of shame.

Illuminating book