Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions

In the podcast "The Dr Peter Breggin Hour," the author says that this book is the culmination of his life's work. It really is. The book is amazing and very interesting. The author explains how to take back your life, get rid of negative emotions, and follow your principles to find happiness. He explains what objective and subjective helplessness are, how we are helpless as babies but as adults, we must not be. With a good dose of Darwin mixed in, this book will get you thinking. The author has researched Darwin and he brings up some very interesting ideas which Darwin had. It's not at all what you'd expect! These new ideas, which actually were old ideas of Darwin's, are along the lines of evolution, blind chance, and free will. The author explains these ideas very scientifically and clearly, making for a really enjoyable book!

This book is really helping me understand why I have felt so shut down for most of my life. What he says really makes sense to me and fills in holes that I have lived with for a very long time. He helps me believe in myself, my intuition and the true impact of the many experiences that I have had. So, I guess I feel validated!!!. Often medical people talk over my head. He is an excellent writer. This book is written in a way that I totally understand what is being expressed. I recommend it for anyone with PTSD, childhood traumas, and especially if you grew up in a dysfunctional family.

In the first chapter alone, I learned so much, I feel like this book has been something I’ve been looking for for a while… Great insight, well written, and not so clinical, that you feel like you’re back in school.

"Guilt, Shame and Anxiety" is long winded and repetitive. It provides some useful checklists and scenarios for understanding which of these emotions you may need to work on, but it's not really worth reading through to the end as the proposed solutions are generic and facile. The book is broken into three parts. The first part explains the author's theory of why these emotions exist, as a mechanism for controlling human beings' aggressive impulses, by other members of that person's family and by the person's own innate instincts. The author refers to them as prehistoric emotions, because they come from our distant past and can be felt even when we are infants and have no consciousness. I found this section to have a few interesting factoids, but it was too detailed and not overly convincing. It relies on a mixture of evolutionary theory and the author's intuition. It could be safely skipped. The second part provides some checklists and scenarios for identifying which of the three negative emotions play a strong role in your life, and makes some useful distinctions between the negative and positive side of each emotion (eg remorse as compared to guilt). I found this section useful. In the third part of the book the author explains repetitively and somewhat tautologically that that the solution to all problems is love. While the first two parts of the book are consistent in discussing the differences between the three negative emotions, this section makes little differentiation and contains few practical suggestions for how to address each emotion. Instead it veers towards the self-sacrificial and seems to rely more on metaphysics than experience.

I've struggled with and through mental health issues since I was a kid, more than sixty years ago. Read a lot of self-help books when I was younger and been through years of counseling, therapy, and psychiatrists. I ended up having a very successful life, in some ways, and I'm a much happier person now than I was when I was younger. But depression, anxiety, anger, and loneliness have been lurking and occasionally recurring. So I picked up this book, among others. This book has helped me re-identify what appears to be the root of my, yes, suffering: Shame. Though I'm still not sure of the exact cause, I see that the shame I've felt at least since I was 5, when it first became conscious, had pushed me into almost debilitating shyness with the attendant loneliness. This book has calmed me down and shown me a way out of the shame. Will the improvement last? I don't know. But the insights I've gleaned from this book definitely enable me to put behind me some of those persistent negative feelings about myself.

Well written professional book by a very qualified author. Highly recommended for understanding emotions and the mechanisms that occur within our minds. The author has his own theory emotional development and how the three themes guilt shame and anxiety form a collaborative mechanism within each of us. Very informative and entertaining at the same time, it is well written and organize for both the professional and the layperson.

I love this man and his mind. He clearly explains his thesis and logically lays out the support. I am a survivor of childhood trauma and have never utilized medications, but instead have treated myself with love, family, community, spirituality, exercise, yoga, meditation , etc. This is a fantastic and fascinating read and I highly recommend it.

I love this author. His book helped me to identify the cause of a mental breakdown I had and gave me the courage to overcome it without resorting to medications (although I was advised to take meds). Awesome book!

If you’re on a journey of a self-discovery, then don’t miss this book. If you feel you have childhood wounds then don’t miss this book, and if you are a psychology student, don’t miss this book.

WOW!!!!! If it was possible I would give this book a 10. Why is this not taught in medical schools? There is only 1 reason, PROFIT. Start teaching this in med school and the drug companies will not make money. So many brilliant insights in this book. I have recommended this book to several people and will continue to do so. It should be mandatory that anyone involved in the medical profession READ this book.

Words cannot describe my deep gratitude. I have read countless guides and self-help books and this one is by far the best. I would say it's almost the only one you need. All too often, unworldly or superficial motivational slogans are thrown around or elsewhere just one study after another is quoted. But not here. This is the collected wisdom of a person who has dedicated himself to helping other people on their journey through life. To truly empower and enable them to free themselves from the clutches of destructive emotions and find a life full of love and fulfillment. It is a successful mixture of science and research, good knowledge of human nature, experience and empathy. I am infinitely happy to have found this book. It came at just the right time and I am confident that with this understanding of myself and being human in general, I can finally improve my life and leave my past behind me.

This is an extraordinary book. Dr Breggin describes how guilt shame and anxiety can destroy your life and the lives of those around you. He also explains how to handle these things. It is not an easy book, but it is a revolution about how to think about yourself and for practitioners how to think about psychiatry. A monumental work.

Must read before it's too late. Know yourself, love yourself, heal yourself and help others as much as you can.