Winner of the 2022 Gradiva® Award for Best Edited Book! Understanding shame as a relational problem, Shame Matters explores how people, with support, can gradually move away from the relentless cycle of shame and find new and more satisfying ways of relating. Orit Badouk Epstein brings together experts from across the world to explore different aspects of shame from an attachment perspective. The impact of racism and socio-economic factors on the development and experience of shame are discussed and illustrated with clinical narratives. Drawing upon the experience of infant researchers, trauma experts and therapists using somatic interventions, Shame Matters explores and develops understanding of the shameful deflations encountered in the consulting room and describes how new and empowered ways of relating can be nurtured. The book also details attachment-informed research into the experience of shame and outlines how it can be applied to clinical practice. Shame Matters will be an invaluable companion for psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, counsellors, social workers, nurses, and others in the helping professions.

This classic book, written 17 years ago but still selling more than 13,000 copies every year, has been completely updated and expanded by the author. "I used to drink," writes John Bradshaw,"to solve the problems caused by drinking. The more I drank to relieve my shame-based loneliness and hurt, the more I felt ashamed." Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: the compulsion, co-dependency, addiction and drive to superachieve that breaks down the family and destroys personal lives. This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address these root causes and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year for Nonfiction "...an essential and engaging look at recent disability history."— Buzzfeed One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism—from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington—Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann’s lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy’s struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a “fire hazard” to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher’s license because of her paralysis, Judy’s actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people. As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples’ rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.

Explore shame's revelatory and transformative potential within Christianity and the Church Learn to understand shame to allow for positive change in your clients and parishioners. This book explores psychological, spiritual, and theological aspects of shame and shame's transformative potential. It will help pastoral care givers and mental health workers to identify shame issues and become agents of healing. By examining shame in the gospel accounts of the life, ministry, and death of Jesus, it shows that shame is a vital part of what defines us as human, and how shame can draw us into the mystery of our relationship with God. From the author: “This book develops the thesis that shame is a necessary and ontological part of the human condition. Shame can become pathological, undergirding and dominating the entire personality, making it impossible to feel oneself either part of the collective or an individual in one's own right. Transformation of shame is a large part of the psychic meaning of the Christ event, what Christianity is about. Transformation of shame is the experience of grace. The great saints and icons of Christianity have used the Christ event to transform shame and experience grace. The more completely they have done this, the deeper their experience of unity with God.” With Transforming Shame: A Pastoral Response, you'll explore: the phenomenological meaning of shame the psychological meaning, implications, and etiology of shame shame in the context of scripture and Christian theology the methodology for contextualizing theories of depth psychology in theology and religious experience human defense mechanisms to shame shame's usefulness in coming to a deeper understanding of personal identity the role of the institutional church in helping its people find meaning in shame and experiencing the grace that comes from shame's transformation how to address the Church's role in fostering toxic shame With practical examples drawn from pastoral ministry and a thoughtful, interdisciplinary approach, this book will help you understand both the psychology and the spirituality of shame and make the essential connections between the two. Extensive references and a handy bibliography point the way to further reading on this fascinating subject.

This book uses the experiences and conversations of Black British women as a lens to examine the impact of discourses surrounding Black beauty shame. Black beauty shame exists within racialized societies which situate white beauty as iconic, and as a result produce Black ‘ugliness’ as a counterpoint. At the same time, Black Nationalist discourses present Black-white ‘mixed race’ women as bodies out of place within the Black community. In the examples analysed within the book, women disidentify from both the iconicities of white beauty and the discourses of Black Nationalist darker-skinned beauty, negating both ideals. This demonstration of Foucaldian counter-conduct can be read as a form of disalienation from the governmentality of Black beauty shame. This fascinating volume will be of interest to students and scholars of Black identity, Black beauty and discourse analysis.

Each essay in this volume provides a cultural perspective on shame. More specifically, each chapter focuses on the question of how culture can differentially affect experiences of shame for members of that culture. As a collection, this volume provides a cross-cultural perspective on shame, highlighting the various similarities and differences of experiences of shame across cultures. In Part 1, each contributor focuses primarily on how shame is theorized in a non-English-speaking culture, and address how the science of shame ought to be pursued, how it ought to identify its object of study, what methods are appropriate for a rigorous science of shame, and how a method of study can determine or influence a theory of shame. In Part 2, each contributor is primarily concerned with a cultural practice of shame, and addresses how shame is related to a normative understanding of our self as a person and an individual member of a community, how culture and politics affect the value and import of shame, and what the relationship between culture and politics is in the construction of shamed identities. Cultural Perspectives on Shame will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in cross-cultural philosophy, philosophy of emotion, moral psychology, and the social sciences.

Shame is a much misunderstood and often misdiagnosed problem that can cause significant issues in the church as in wider society. Indeed, there have been times when the church has even been the cause of shame. How, then, do we create a less shaming church? Shame and the Church presents a six fold typology of shame: personal, communal, relational, structural, theological and historical. Seeking to establish the causes and consequences of shame, chapters explore how theology and the Bible engage with shame, and consider personal firsthand accounts of shame in a church context. Wise, challenging, practical and underpinned by a rigorous theological foundation, this book is an important contribution to the conversation around shame and effacement in church contexts and at the same time a vital aid to practice.