Letting Go of Shame: Understanding How Shame Affects Your Life [Paperback]

Ronald Potter-Efron (Author), Patricia Potter-Efron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1989

As we identify shame and use recovery skills to work through it, this book helps to explain the emotion of shame and its impact on our self-image and relationships. The authors offer us a way that we can personalize a plan of action to help build our self-esteem, and they suggest exercises to help us identify our feelings of shame.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Ronald T. Potter-Efron is a clinical psychotherapist. He has a M.S.W from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in sociology from Purdue University. A former university professor, he specializes in the treatment of addictive disorders and anger and resentment counseling. He also is active in training professional counselors. He taught at an experimental college for eight years, and has trained in gestalt therapy techniques. Ronald is the author of Shame, Guilt and Alcoholism: Treatment Issues in Clinical Practice.

Patricia S. Potter-Efron is a family systems therapist and an individual and group therapist working mainly with families affected by chemical dependency. A graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, she now directs Professional Growth Services, a program for adult children with dysfunctional families and does group work with recovering chemically dependent women. The Potter-Efrons are co-editors of and contributors to The Treatment of Shame and Guilt in Alcoholism Counseling and Aggression, Family Violence, and Chemical Dependency.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Hazelden; 1 edition (October 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0894866354
• ISBN-13: 978-0894866357
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

124 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical Guide to Resolving Shame, March 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Letting Go of Shame: Understanding How Shame Affects Your Life (Paperback)

Letting Go of Shame is an excellent self help guide. Each chapter ends with practical excercises. The material is presented in an orderly fasion, working through the issues one by one. The positive role that shame plays is covered, but the focal issue is toxic shame. It is easy for the reader to identify with symptomatic consequences of shame as each source of shame is presented. It is complementary to Bradshaw's classic book on the subject and in many ways is a simpler presentation for the novice. Complex and technical language is avoided. This is a practical self help guide for anyone dealing with the self inflicting pain caused by shame.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye-Opener, July 14, 2009

By 

Brikl (Louisville, KY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letting Go of Shame: Understanding How Shame Affects Your Life (Paperback)

I wish everyone could read this book so we could all talk about this underrated subject! When this book was recommended to me, I didn't read it because I couldn't comprehend properly what the subject of shame entailed. It's fascinating how much it affects us all and how we aren't even aware of it. A wonderful book!

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointing, April 10, 2011

By 

hairballz "hairballz" (Down South) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Letting Go of Shame (Kindle Edition)

I wanted to like this book - really. I ordered the sample for my Kindle, which was just most of the introduction and about a page of the first chapter, and based on that it looked promising, though I was concerned that the sample wouldn't let me access the Table of Contents at all. Hmmmm.. Should have been my first clue. My primary objection to this book is that it is just so repetitive. I have to believe this was an essay someone wrote that got "developed" into a book. Every chapter starts with the author spending a lot of time telling you what he's going to talk about in this chapter - VERY little time actually talking about it - followed by a tedious REVIEW of what he just talked about, just in case you missed it.

The "exercises" at the end of each chapter are then - unbelieveable - a FURTHER re-hashing of ideas from the chapter. But to even call them "ideas" is being generous. There is nothing particularly new or even helpful here. A lot of interesting statements that then never get fully developed. I read the whole book thinking surely at some point the authors are going to start fleshing some of this stuff out, right? But it just never happened.

Hugely disappointing. If it hadn't taken me a full week to plow through this, forcing myself to the end, I would have just returned the Kindle edition, but I believe I'm past the Amazon deadline for that.

Lesson learned - if a sample won't let you see the Table of Contents, there's probably a reason for that.