So everybody thought these terrible things about me. And when folks happened to give me contrary evidence, some positive feedback, say, or appreciation of some kind, I just thought they did not see the real me. Because if they had seen the real me, they would find me ridiculous etc. I managed to fool them (just so that I could add dishonest to my list).

There is an obvious problem with this mindset: what I thought about what other people thought was irrefutable. If someone sent me negative feedback, I thought he was right. If someone sent me positive feedback, I thought he did not perceive me accurately and he was wrong. Talk about a no win situation.

The truth is: Everybody does not exist. There were folks who liked me, and folks who didn’t. People who found some things I did intelligent and appropriate, and others who did not appreciate them. Humankind is diverse, and not two people hold the exact same opinions on everything. Pleasing everybody is impossible. Plus, let’s face it : most people don’t especially care about what I do. And I shouldn’t especially care about what they think.

Everybody is in fact what psychologists call the generalized other. It’s a compilation of opinions from people you know. Sometimes this generalized other is benevolent. Sometimes it’s hostile, as in my  case. But in both instances, the number of people who are behind your everybody is extremely limited indeed.

Think about it: how many people did actually voice these negatives opinions about you ? Who really said or wrote or even implied you were stupid (or incompetent or hysterical or whatever) ? Please exclude generalizations (like everybody in my class), and people who only thought you were stupid (you really can’t know what others are thinking unless they tell you). 

If you abide by these conditions, you will find out Everybody basically boils down to a couple of folks, five at a maximum. My generalized other, for example, is composed mainly of my family of origin, so 3 persons. 

Who is in your Everybody committee ? Please take time to think about it, because next time your generalized other starts shouting abuse , you need to replace “Everybody” by the actual persons who composed your generalized other. I promise it will shift your perspective completely.

For example, what do you think is more painful: “Everybody thinks I’m a failure because I divorced my husband” or “My parents think I’m a failure because I divorced my husband”? 

So your parents don’t like what you did with your life. That’s unfortunate and sad. However, there probably are loads of people who would find it courageous and life affirming.

Drop Everybody from your judgments about what you did or who you are. Consciously, forcefully, repetitively if needs be. Don’t be tricked by your generalized other: it’s an illusion! Your parents are not everybody. Nor is your girlfriend. Or your teacher. Your circle of friends. Nobody is Everybody (even if they think they are).

Or another slightly different version “ I really don’t know why I am so depressed / anxious / in pain; I know my father had quite a temper (read he was physically abusive), or people in my family really knew how to party (read I was brought up in an alcoholic environment), or I’ve been to war, but I’m sure all of this has nothing to do with how terrible I feel; the problem is just me”.

I used to think the second version of this wonderful statement. And it really, truly breaks my heart, whenever I hear it coming from someone who is suffering. Because it cannot be true.

Psychological suffering is always caused by trauma

Here is what I think, and I’m certainly not the only one: there is no such thing as someone suffering from depression, or an addiction, or low self esteem, without a very good reason. And this good reason is emotional (and sometimes also physical or sexual) trauma.

This trauma can often be traced back to our childhood, but it can also happen later in life, for example exposure to war or to an abusive partner as an adult. It may have been caused by our families or origin, school, our society – strong racism or sexism for instance – , our workplace, or a violent stranger. Possibilities are unfortunately endless in terms of causes of trauma. The consequences though are strikingly similar: depression, addictions, low self esteem, repetitive relationship problems, panic attacks (and no you don’t need to suffer from all of these problems to qualify as a trauma survivor).

We tend to downplay both the incidence of trauma and its consequences

I’m amazed to see how our society tends to avoid the simple truth that psychological problems are responses to traumatic events. I was speechless the other day while reading an article pondering how come a few adolescents could go and kill a number of people including themselves, and wondering if the culprit is not video games.

Video Games?  You must be joking.

God knows what they had to endure to be so full of desperate hate for others and themselves. Understand me: a traumatic pas is never an excuse for perpetrating violence. But to think there has been no serious problem in the lives of these souls is, well, blind.

What is true for perpetrators of violence is also true for people who are “simply” suffering from enduring psychological problems: there is always a cause of our suffering in our past. If we are battling with depression, addictions, low self esteem, or anxiety, it has absolutely nothing to do with who we are, and everything to do with what happened to us.

Sometimes we don’t remember this past consciously. Sometimes we deny it. Sometimes we do remember, but we downplay its impact on the issues we are experiencing. But there is always a very difficult and painful cause of our problems to be found in our history.

We are not, in any way, abnormal. We are just normal people who are reacting to an abnormal situation, be it past or present.

What to do with our difficult past

I do not mean that we must spend years dissecting our childhoods with a shrink. In fact, for me, this method did not work very well.
What helped me more was to concentrate on the present, my way of thinking, feeling (or rather not feeling), relating, and all the patterns my difficult past had left me with.

We have to correct these patterns, and doing so doesn’t really need a close examination of what happened to us. What is necessary though is the help of someone who does not have these dysfunctional patterns and who can unmask them for what they are (dysfunctional patterns rather than The Way Things Are, or The Way Things Should Be).

Somewhere during our journey though, we have to look back, integrate and reframe our painful past in order to really get well. There is a lot of positive work that can be done without thinking about what happened to us, but complete healing cannot take place unless we view it in a different light, and unless we understand how much our history has shaped our being.

The main things we really need to understand is that:1/ we are not responsible if difficult things happened to us and 2/we are unfair with ourselves if we believe we “should” be happy and balanced nevertheless. We should not: we are reacting normally and appropriately considering what we lived through. It doesn’t prevent us from working on healing ourselves to get well, but it can prevent unecessary shame about how terrible we feel.

Two things happened. First, I started to get some of the things I used to dream about. I then realized that when I reached my goal, my life would basically stay the same. It’s very unfortunate, but when you have emotional problems (depression, say, or low self esteem), no goal reaching in the world will ever change this sad situation.

I also realized I was litterally addicted to daydreaming. I was turning down activities that were pleasurable, or should be pleasurable, just because I would prefer having time alone to daydream. I would not go out with friends in order to stay with my love fantasy of the day. Suddenly, I felt trapped in my own head, alone, and disconnected. I also was feeling powerless, because instead of doing things, I dreamed them.

I then refused to daydream at all, cold turkey.

Today, I realize that some daydreaming can be good. It is hard to know where we are going if we can’t imagine it or picture it. It helps to visualize where we want to go and who we want to be. I must admit that without daydreaming, my life had little direction. So it is definitely useful.

But like other useful things it can unfortunately turn into an addiction. When you have the choice between dreaming that you are winning a marathon and taking an hour to run, if you choose dreaming, you are definitely on the addicted side.

Don’t choose deams over real life. Don’t avoid life. It will not wait for you to wake up. Daydreaming is fine when we don’t have the choice, when we are little and powerless to change our circumstances for example. Or when we are stuck in the subway during peak hours. But don’t use your time daydreaming when you could be taking care of yourself in the real world instead. Be present in your life.

Undoing depression will help you in many ways:

• Understanding what depression is, and what its countless consequences are:

What I particularly like is the comprehensiveness of depression’s consequences, its impact on your body, your relationship, your thinking, your emotions, your addictions, your work, your parental skills .

As O’Connor states, most depressives do not understand they are suffering from this disease. They typically come for therapy because of a crisis in their relationships, an addiction being out of control, or an issue at work. It’s only when they are assessed by a mental health professional that they understand that they are truly depressed. Reading this book and recognizing yourself all over the descriptions can allow you to do the very same thing.

• Allowing you to overcome guilt or shame for being depressed

Most depressed people tend to believe they are somehow to blame for how they feel, that they should snap out of it with willpower, or that it is an imaginary disease.

Thanks to Undoing Depression, you will understand that depression has real physical characteristics. Depressed people experience higher levels of stress hormones than non-depressed people. Some parts of their brains shrink during a depressive episode (up to 20% decrease in the size of the hippocampus). They loose the ability to produce essential feel good hormones as well.

  In short, even if the root cause of depression is your past, the consequences of this disease are real, measurable, and very much in the present. You are not making up an illness, and you are absolutely not to blame either.

On top of being very real, depression is also very common: according to the author, 20% of the population is suffering from depression at any moment in time. You may find these figures exaggerated, but if you consider that 10% of Americans are currently taking meds against depression, well, 20% seems utterly plausible.

• Giving you tips and methods to overcome depression

Obviously, the importance of therapy and medication is outlined, even if O’Connor gives a mixed account on medication. He seems to think meds can be useful for massive depression but are prescribed far too often, with sometimes a “shut up and go away” attitudes from doctors.

He also gives methods and tools to enhance the effects of therapy and / or medication, and take charge of your recovery. Unlike a lot of mental health professionals, he thinks there a a lot of things we can do to reprogram our mind: mindfulness, exercise, understanding and tracking our emotions, detachment…In fact it is even the subtitle of his book – What Therapy Doesn’t Teach You and Medication Can’t Give You: information, understanding, tools and advice. 

• What is missing: the link between our depression and our past

If there is one aspect of depression that is lacking, it is the root cause of it: your past. O’Connor touches on it very briefly, only to make it clear that it is always the root cause of your depression. But unfortunately he does not expand on the topic.

I personally think that somewhere in our recovery we have to understand and reframe our past in order to get permanently well. It was my own experience, at least. O’Connor does not make it clear: either it is not true for him, or it is, but he thinks the priority is addressing the now.

 All in all, I see this book as extremely useful, and I advise you to buy it if you have the slightest suspicion you are suffering from depression. In fact I’m not advising you, I’m begging you to buy it if you want to take charge of your emotional health !

After considerable analysis though, I understood there was a particular red flag always present in each failed attempt, besides the obvious not Available / Abusive / Addicted (my own personal AAA, also known as “Run!”). This one is not obvious, so we don’t try to find out, but we definitely should because its predictive value is strong.  

What a failed relationship is:

I don’t know about you, but I have lived through spectacular relationship failures. By that, I don’t mean a relationship that goes well for a while, but then comes to an end because we grew appart, or one of us fell in love with someone else, or whatever. This can be qualified as a relationship success even if the success is temporary.

No, by failure, I mean the relationship which never went well. Its start was bizarre, the middle was unpleasant, and the end was harrowing. I sure felt very intense feelings, and I definitely had high hopes for the love story throughout. But hope is the operative word here: it was never replaced by reality. I had the distinct impression that my partner was completely unable to attain some sense of intimacy and trust (so was I, but that’s another story).

So what did these guys all have in common ? They had no friend.

The importance of having friends

If you meet a potential partner who’s got no friend, it tells you two important things about your future relationship with him / her:

1- He, or she, does not know how to connect with anyone. Connection is essential for human beings. So everybody who knows how to do it, actually does it. Someone who entertains the fantasy that he or she is a loner and does not need friendship is in denial: the reality is that she would, if she could. She just doesn’t know how.

And guess what: if your potential mate doesn’t know how to trust and be close to friends, he or she doesn’t know how to trust and be close to anyone. Be warned. It’s not going to be easy.

2- A partner who has no friend will rely on you to fulfill all of his or her emotional needs, and may be dangerously close to relationship addiction because of this. These needs are probably bottomless, because there hasn’t been anyone to fulfill them for ages.  The task is close to impossible. Even if you somehow manage, it will drive you to exhaustion.

Plus, remember, your partner is unable to connect in the first place, so even if you never stop giving, he or she will never start receiving. He will never be satisfied anyway and your attempts to fulfill his needs will be futile. So on top of feeling exhaused, you will feel crazy. Sounds tempting ?

So my advice is: at the very beginning of a relationship, and yes even if you’ve got the very strong feeling that this is the one, please still check thorougly if your potential partner is available, addicted, or abusive. But on top of it, ask her or him clearly about their friends. For most of them, not having close friends is actually not a problem so they will be open about it.

If the answer is no, be kind to yourself and run.

This type of unverified, negative interpretation of events is a hallmark of depression. It’s sad, because it is a consequence of being unwell, but it also fuels depression or anxiety further. It’s difficult to feel peaceful if you think your friend hates you, your skills sucks, and you are stupid. What to do, then?

One tip that does not work :

I often read things like “see life on the bright side!”, or “think positively!”. Thank you for the advice, but I am sometimes utterly unable to do this. It’s a bit like asking me to converse in Russian all of the sudden. I know it’s cool, but I can’t do it.

One tip that does work:

Gratitude. Research has shown that gratitude does wonders for your well being and your life. The experience of countless people, including me, shows that gratitude does wonders for your wellbeing and your life. It can truly break the negative spiral you are stuck into.

So why don’t you give it a try ?

How to practice gratitude ?

The way I practice gratitude is to think about three things I am grateful for when I wake up in the morning, and three additional things in the evening before falling asleep. It takes approximately two minutes each day.

Some items come up pretty regularly: the presence of my partner and my son in my life, the comfort of my bed, my good health. Some items are specific to the current day: the phone call I received, my new hair cut, the really good book I have started. Nothing is too big or too small for gratitude.

You can also use your journal, if the written world appeals to you. The way you do it really does not matter. What matters is to thank the universe, or God, or your higher power, for good things that are present in your life, and to do it daily.

What to do if you don’t feel grateful for anything?

You may not see anything you should be grateful for. Your boyfriend has left you, you have been fired from your job, you have no friends, you are broke, and your fridge has just stopped working. Everything, and everybody including yourself, sucks.  

But that’s because you take some things  for granted; your good health, for example. Your youth. Your favorite blue sweater. Your cat. Your knowledge of medieval history. Your new nail polish. You could lose all of this, you know? Don’t wait until it disappears, to realize how sweet it was. Thank the universe for it now. It does not really matter if you don’t feel grateful. Just go through the motions.

What will happen ?

Your mind will start focusing more on the good stuff, and less on the bad stuff. Your mood will improve, you will start to see things on the brighter side, and you will think more positively.

Here we go.

In short, we are emotionnally challenged.

I know what it feels like to be cut off from one’s emotions. In my case, it amounted to seeing life passing me by without my active participation. I hated it. But I still couldn’t feel much.

I tried to think my way into feelings, as if I could concoct them from the only place inside myself which felt safe: my head. It’s a little bit like digging your way out of a pit: it cannot be done, my friend.

But there was hope: even if I didn’t know what I was feeling, my body knew, and my therapist knew that he knew.

One day, I casually mentionned during a session that sometimes at work or with friends, my belly ballooned to alarming proportions with no reason at all. It was so bad that I had to unbutton my clothes to breathe, which could be a bit awkward, to say the least. I had tried a number of physical remedies, with absolutely no success.

My therapist was sharp: he immediatly understood. “Your belly expresses your anger”, he said. “When you feel angry and you don’t act on it, your anger goes directly there”.

I found it weird. I mean, how could my belly feel ? Besides, I was never angry.

But over the following months, I looked closely at what was happening before each ballooning episode. Eventually I noticed that it was taking place each time someone was asking me to do something. That’s why it was happening so often at work.

Then I conducted little experiments, like agreeing to do what I was asked and see what happens, or saying no and see what happens. Guess what: of course my waistline was suddently swelling each time I agreed to do something I really didn’t want to do. My body was signaling my anger which was signaling a boundary violation. My waistline was in fact my barometer for anger.

After a while of experiencing this connection, here it came: my first puff of real, conscious, clear anger. It was truly frightening at first, but with practice I learned to appreciate its energy. Anger is what allows me, amongst other things, to hold my boundaries.  And it truly changed my life.  

Today, my little ballooning reaction has almost completely disappeared. But  when it happens, I don’t see it as a problem anymore: it is a clue that something I did not like just happened, and I need to bring it into my consciousness.

I ran an informal survey with friends: some of them can identify a bodily barometer for their emotions, but it’s not the same as mine. For my friend Joe, it’s a headache. For Lizz, it’s sudden tension in her back. I suppose there are all sorts of repressed feelings, and all sorts of physical ways to express these repressed feelings.

But if you start looking for your emotions because you have lost sight of them long ago, this is where you should look first: your body. He knows how you feel and he will tell you if you listen. You may have a bit of detective work to do, but eventually you will get it. Have fun!

Projection is the tendency we all have, to varying degrees, to use other people like blank screens so that we can deflect our own issues onto them .

We do this when we have difficulties integrating a feeling or an personal issue we are experiencing . So the feeling or the issue is here, nagging us, but we don’t want them to be ours; we can’t accept them; they frighten us, or we feel guilty, or it does not fit with our ideal view of ouselves. So we just conveniently think it’s the other person’s feeling or issue, so we can just inflate with righteous indignation.

Projection can be a deadly weapon, especially used by crazy people on children. It explains why an abuser, for example, is almost always conviced his / her victim is wicked and bad – guess who they are really talking about.

Without going to these extremes, you can have lots of fun reading other’s people thinking using the projection concept. At work for example, you can be sure that someone who always moans people are just lazy is either 1/ the laziest person of the lot or 2/ full of frustrated envy and dreaming of doing absolutely nothing.

I personnaly had a lover who adamantly insisted I didn’t love him, while I was head over heels in love with him. I felt confused and crazy until I understood, to my sorrow, what was happening: he was really talking about himself, using me as a stand-in. Needless to say, our relationship did not end well.

Another perfect exemple is one of my relative’s favorite mantra (I swear it’s true): “People are stupid” . Well, you know Uncle Stan, you should really read about projection…

But Martha Beck is right, we can also use our own projections to grow. I used it a few times to understand myself better and it worked with flawless accuracy.

For example, while I was working my *** off for a management consulting company, I was feeling irrationnally angry at my banking clients who didn’t do much and left early every day. After years of this, I grew sick and tired of my anger, resigned from the management consulting company, entered the banking workforce, and started leaving work happily at 6 every day.  

I’m not angry anymore. I’m just content I embraced my “lazy” side. Initially I didn’t want this side of me. I wanted to be a super executive who works hard and climbs the corporate ladder with enthusiasm. But the fact is: I didn’t really care about promotions, the corporate ladder, the power, and all of this. Deep down, my real self was finding all this perfectly ridiculous. What I really care about is having time for myself and my loved ones. That’s what my projection was telling me.

So projection, this most primitive ego defense mechanism, can wreack havoc in your life, and can also be a tremendous help to your emotional growth. Your choice.

Observe your current psychological “surroundings”: are you constantly ruminating about someone else’s issue? Something you think they should really, really change even though it has no direct impact on you ? Do you sometimes wonder why it’s so important for you? Then take a hard look at yourself: you may be talking about yourself here. Your projection may be an important message you need to hear and incorporate in your life.

I had a look on the web to see how other folks define relationship addictions. It seems like there are as many definitions and nuances as shrinks on earth: codependent love addicts, relationship addicts, ambivalent love addicts, torch bearers, narcissistic love addicts, codependents, the list goes on.

My definition is simpler, and it’s the same as for any other addiction: you think you cannot live without a particular relationship. Since you are dependent on it, you cannot let go even when the relationship gets painful or destructive; and, that’s the catch: it will. Always. Exactly like alcohol or drugs.

I have suffered from relationship addiction from as long as I can remember. As a little girl, I used to obsess continuously about a tennis player seen on television, a boy met briefly at school, my ski teacher, or whoever. I was too young to enter real romantic relationships, but I sure wanted to.

Adolescent, I pursued ardently a boy who was in love with someone else for a year. When it became obvious that he would never reciprocate, I entered a clinically diagnosed depression. In order to get out of my depression, I became involved with a guy I knew was interested in me, but without me feeling any sort of attraction or warm feeling towards him. After a year I dumped him to start obsessing about a boy I barely knew. And on and on it went.

I knew two types of relationships: the ones when I fell in love with someone who didn’t care, and the ones when someone was willing to love me but I didn’t care.

I thought that what I really, really wanted was to be in a mutually loving relationship. It took me a considerable time in therapy and a lot of thinking over good books to understand that what I really needed was to learn how to not be in any relationship. Because as long as I was addicted to relationships, a mutually loving one was not a possibility.

So now how about you ? Can you see if you are also a relationship addict ? Here are five signs that should raise a red flag:

1. You tend to fall in love with people who are not available

They are married, in love with someone else,  live far away, are addicted to a substance or an activity, are narcissists, or simply don’t want to be involved in a relationship with you.

I personnally had a strong preference for the latter, since it precluded any possibility of (gasp!) actual intimacy.

Alternatively, I could “fall in love” with a combination of other problems, like a married narcissist for example. Boy, how much fun I had on that one.

2. If you start a romantic relationship nevertheless, you spend enormous amount of your energy to change him or her

You try  to make him or her more available, more loving, to divorce their partner, to drop their addiction, to stop abusing you, or whatever. You try to make them see how unhealthy / unloving / addicted / abusive they are, to make them see the light. You try to control their behavior, to manipulate them into sanity or availability. You try to make them suitable partners.

Of course some people prefer chosing an adequate partner from day one, rather than choosing an inadequate one, then desperately trying to change him or her for years. To these people I say: where’s the challenge ?  Where is your ambition?

3. You are more concerned about what pleases your partner than what makes you happy.

You spend months or years spending all your time, energy and money to ensure your partner’s needs are met. You organize your schedule around him or her, you take charge of unpleasant tasks, you walk on eggshells when he or she is in a bad mood, you make sure that he or she never feels abandonned.

Then one day you realize that you are deeply unhappy, that your partner takes you for granted, and that while you are exhausting yourself he for the sake of the relationship or she does absolutely nothing . You now feel resentful you are the only one giving in this relationship.

4. Even a disastrous relationship is difficult to end

You have finally understood that the relationship is bad for you, and that it will never change. Despite your hard earned knowledge, you still find it horrendously difficult to end the relationship. It triggers fears of abandonment in you, and in your partner as well. That’s when things can turn mighty ugly indeed.

5. You have never been without a relationship for a significant amount of time.

Your current relationship is now truly horrible. But that’s ok, because you already have another one in sight. This one will surely provide you with all you lacked in your previous love stories. Most of us started our first serious relationship the day we left the parental home, and never stopped being in a relationship since. 

Healthy people wait until someone suitable appears in their life. We don’t. We don’t need to: we’ll take whoever is around and transform him or her into a delightful partner by the force of our love and dedication. Of course we will.

Now how about you? Can you see if you are a relationship addict? If you are, don’t despair: there is hope !

If you truly take charge of your problem, it will stop eventually. The secret is to stop focusing on others and start focusing on yourself.  Simple, but not easy, that’s why I would advise  to get into a specific support group, or in therapy.

As for books, those 2 recovery classics can help your understanding of the problem and its solutions (they can help a lot; just look at the reviews and you’ll understand what I mean)

Women Who Love Too Much, from Robin Norwood  Codependent No More   from Melody Beattie

Unhealthy shame, as Bradshaw defines it, is basically thinking you are flawed and defective as a human being. Nothing you can do, be it extraordinarily impressive or terrible, will change that fact. The problem is who you are.

As such, it is different from guilt, which allows you to recognize you have done something wrong and pushes you to make amends.

With shame, there is nothing you can do to remedy the situation.  The best you can hope for is managing to hide your terrible self from the scrutiny of others, so that they never find you out.You end up presenting a false self to the world and sometimes even to yourself, a false self who is designed to embody everything you think you should be (and that you are not). You are cornered into a life of dishonesty.

All of this leads to disastrous consequences, the main one being that you feel completely isolated from others and even from yourself. We are social animals. Being completely alone is the most painful thing that can happen to us.

When I bought Healing the Shame that Binds You, I was basically reading any self help book I could put my hands on, without trying to see if it fitted my problems. To be frank, I had no idea what my problems were. All I knew was that my life was painful and difficult, and I seemed to be different from everybody else.

But as is often the case, even when we are not able to name our psychological issues, we recognize them when they are described and named for us. While I was reading John’s Bradshaw’s book, I had the impression he was talking about me all along.

Up until then, I dind’nt know I was not the only one feeling all this painful stuff: the constant inner criticism, the self sabotaging, the shame spirals, the hiding with the help of a false self, the perfectionism, the difficulties with relationships, and I could go on and on for hours.

The really good thing is that Healing the Shame that Binds Youcovered all aspects of the problem:

• A precise description of shame and its consequences in our lives,
• An explanation of what actually happened for us to feel that way,
• And a lot of advice on how to get out of this problematic situation. He gives very important pieces of advice, like coming out of your isolation with the help of a group of with individual therapy, but also some practical advice, for example how to stop a shame spiral.

I benefited a lot from all this. But at the end of the day, what helped me most was to realize that I was not alone. It was a tremendous relief to understand that I was not a unique occurrence of a strange disease no one coule understand or treat. Given how the book sold, we are even probably a sizeable part of the world population !

Even more important, it helped to understand that this problem was not linked to who I was, even if it felt this way. Shame had nothing to do with who I was, and everything to do with what happened to me, namely abuse.

It took me years to understand to what extent it was true, but it was the first time I started to consider this possibility. And it felt good.

I think Bradshaw did everyone a favor by talking openly about shame, giving examples about him and his clients.

As he Bradshaw states, we feel  shame about shame. We will readily admit our anger or our sadness. We may relunctantly share our inadequacies and our mistakes. But admitting our shame is probably the most difficult thing to do. So a lot of people live their whole life wallowing in shame, never sharing this fact, and never realising it is to an certain extent a collective problem.

To be completely honest, there are also aspects of Healing the Shame that Binds You that made me slightly uneasy: his constant references to religion (I’m an atheist, I really don’t care about the Fall and the Apple), and his fervor about 12 steps meetings (I never went to one and recovered all the same).

There is also no doubt about the fact that Bradshaw is not a gifted writer.

But given the quality of the content, enduring these not-so-great aspects was really a small price to pay.

All in all if shame is a problem in your life, or if your self esteem is very, very low (for me it’s basically the same thing), you can hugely benefit from reading Healing the Shame that Binds You if you haven’t done so already.

If you have read it, don’t hesitate to share here your opinion on the book and how it helped (or not).