What invisible force might be holding you back from living your best life? Why do seemingly unrelated issues such as addiction, perfectionism, and toxic relationships keep showing up in your life?
John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame That Binds You, a book considered to be a groundbreaking classic, reveals how toxic shame can secretly control our lives. Bradshaw’s work explains how childhood experiences shape our relationship with shame and offers practical solutions for healing.
Read more for an overview of this book that can help you identify toxic shame, understand its origins, and finally break free from its grip on your life.
Healing the Shame That Binds You Book Overview
Some of the most devastating issues we face often seem impossible to overcome—addiction, perfectionism, self-loathing, repetitive toxic relationships, overwhelming negative emotions, and so on. According to John Bradshaw, this is because these issues are actually symptoms of a deeper and more severe problem—toxic shame.
John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame That Binds You, a book first published in 1988 and most recently updated in 2005, explains that shame—a natural and healthy human emotion—can be turned into something sinister when we internalize it. It eats at us from within, controlling our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions until it eventually destroys our lives. According to Bradshaw, the only way to overcome toxic shame and live a happy and healthy life is to understand toxic shame and consciously commit to the healing process.
Bradshaw was a psychologist, counselor, motivational speaker, and author who focused on topics like shame, addiction, recovery, and spirituality. He pioneered the self-help movement in the 1980s and is commonly known as the father of self-help. During his career, he wrote numerous best-selling books including Creating Love, Family Secrets, and Homecoming. Bradshaw was also the host of the PBS series BRADSHAW ON: THE FAMILY and the Emmy-nominated PBS workshop BRADSHAW ON: HOMECOMING.
In Part 1 of this overview, we’ll explain how toxic shame forms in childhood and how it manifests in our lives. Then in Part 2, we’ll walk through the processes of confronting and externalizing our shame so we can reach happiness and fulfillment in life.
Part 1: Toxic Shame and How It Develops
Bradshaw explains that shame is a natural and healthy emotion—it teaches us our boundaries as humans and gives us insight into what’s right and wrong. Having healthy shame entails acknowledging our shame and what it’s trying to tell us, learning from the experience, and moving on. For example, you may feel shame if you find out you’ve given someone incorrect directions. This teaches you humility—to question the limits of your knowledge before directing others—so you can grow as a person and avoid the same mistake in the future.
Our childhood experiences shape how we learn to process shame, writes Bradshaw—healthy caregivers teach us how to healthily process shame by forgiving our mistakes and dedicating time to lovingly teach us right from wrong. On the other hand, toxic caregivers teach us that our mistakes and sources of shame make us inherently bad or unworthy, and we learn to fear and internalize our shame rather than express it and learn from it.
When we internalize our shame, Bradshaw says it becomes part of our identity and controls our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions in ways that make us destructive toward ourselves and others. This is when shame becomes toxic and ultimately prevents us from reaching true fulfillment and happiness in life.
In Part 1.1, we’ll explore the childhood experiences that create toxic shame. Then, in Part 1.2, we’ll discuss the three ways toxic shame manifests in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Part 1.1: The Formation of Toxic Shame
According to Bradshaw, there are three types of childhood experiences that cause toxic shame. Toxic shame forms when all three of these experiences are not only present, but regularly reinforced during childhood—they’re part of your daily life growing up.
Experience 1: Toxic Role Models
Children learn how to think, feel, and behave by watching their caregivers—they teach us how to do crucial things like disagree, communicate our feelings and needs, cope with stress, form boundaries, and more. However, Bradshaw explains that toxically shamed adults are often unable to healthily do these things—instead, they model shame-based behaviors (we’ll discuss these manifestations of toxic shame in Part 1.2).
As a result, children of toxically shamed adults not only absorb their caregivers’ sources of shame, but their shame-based behaviors as well—they’re taught toxic methods of interacting with themselves, the world, and other people. For example, if a parent feels shame about their weight, their child will learn to feel shame regarding their weight or body image. If two parents only disagree by yelling at each other, their child will learn to handle contention with emotional outbursts.
Experience 2: Abandonment
Bradshaw explains that abandonment is any situation in which a child’s feelings, needs, and desires are neglected. This can come in many forms, including physical parental absence, abuse, or role reversal—for example, a parent relying on their child for emotional care instead of the other way around. Abandonment leads to toxic shame because it teaches children that their emotions are shameful and unworthy of attention.
Since abandoned children are taught that their authentic selves—their feelings, needs, and desires—are unworthy, they end up taking on certain relational roles to either avoid shame or gain acceptance from their family. For example, a child who is abused may learn to take on the role of a ghost—they’ll minimize themselves and keep their thoughts and feelings quiet to avoid drawing attention and causing problems.
Experience 3: Imprinted Shame Experiences
Imprinted shame experiences are memories of shame that become ingrained into your brain and form triggers for shame in the future. They’re created when a child has a shameful experience that causes them pain and suffering which goes unresolved. The unresolved pain then “imprints” the experience into their memory by connecting it to certain auditory or visual elements that were present during the experience—for example a word, certain tone of voice, facial expression, or symbol.
Moving forward, experiences of shame that involve common elements from the initial shame experience will trigger the original memory and pain. The new experience will then be linked to the initial experience through the common elements. Once this happens, it’ll be stored in a collective “folder” in their brain where all shameful experiences that share any of those elements are stored. The bigger that folder gets, the more impact toxic shame will have on their life.
For example, imagine a child is at a doctor’s appointment and feels ashamed of her size—the doctor calls her a “big girl” and her mother says she needs to lose weight to be more girly. Moving forward, the child will feel shame anytime someone calls her “big” or mentions her appetite or femininity, because these elements will be linked to the original shame experience.
Part 1.2: Manifestations of Toxic Shame
Bradshaw explains that, once shame becomes part of our identity, our brain has to work overtime to avoid it. It does this by altering our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors so we can avoid experiencing and addressing our shame, giving shame ultimate control over our lives. Shame’s covert control over our mind manifests in three primary ways.
Manifestation 1: Shame Barriers
First, internalized shame causes us to develop shame barriers, or “ego defenses” as Bradshaw calls them. These barriers are behaviors that allow us to ignore or block out situations that might induce shame. Bradshaw says that because our subconscious mind drives us to engage in these behaviors, we often don’t realize we’re doing them, or we don’t realize that they’re abnormal or harmful. Think of shame barriers as an autopilot mode that your brain turns on in certain situations to ensure you avoid experiencing or remembering shame.
Bradshaw explains that detachment is a common shame barrier that comes in many forms. For instance, you might detach from your feelings so they don’t cause you shame. Or you might detach from your mind or body so that the person experiencing the shameful thoughts or emotions isn’t you—for example, if someone is yelling at you, you might retreat into your head and tune them out so that they’re not yelling at you, they’re just yelling at your body.
Another common shame barrier is altering your feelings. According to Bradshaw, one way your brain might alter shameful feelings is by making you perceive them as something more tolerable—for example, if you’re ashamed of having romantic feelings toward someone, you might turn those feelings into curiosity or resentment instead. In a situation where you’re abused, you might alter your feelings by identifying with your abuser—this allows you to avoid the shame of being the victim.
One of the most common and detrimental shame barriers is addiction. Bradshaw explains that toxic shame is the root cause of all addictions and compulsions, such as substance addiction, food addiction, gambling, and sex addiction. Addiction is a form of detachment and altering your feelings—when you’re engaged in your addiction, you’re able to distract yourself from your shame and the pain it causes you.
Manifestation 2: False Self
Second, internalized shame manifests by forcing us to develop a false self. Bradshaw explains that, when toxic shame becomes part of our identity, it convinces us that our authentic self is shameful and unworthy; therefore, we disown our true self. As a result, we lose touch with our authentic needs and desires, and we must mold a false identity to guide our actions in different scenarios since we don’t have an authentic self to do so.
There are three “selves” that people with toxic shame build. First is the cultural self—our role in society. According to Bradshaw, this self is dictated by our “sex roles.” We strive to be the perfect embodiment of society’s concept of a man or woman.
Second is our self trajectory—the life path we plan out for ourselves. According to Bradshaw, this includes our career aspirations, values, and self-image. Since toxically shamed people are unable to connect to their authentic needs and desires, they must shape their goals and values based on external influences like parents, friends, or media.
Third is our relational self—the role we fill in our romantic and familial relationships. The role toxically shamed people play in adult relationships is usually the role they were taught to play as children due to their abandonment.
For example, a child who was abused and played the ghost role in their family will likely play a passive or submissive role in their adult relationships, failing to express their thoughts and feelings. They may also end up seeking a partner who abuses them in the same way they were abused as a child because that’s how they were taught to receive attention.
Manifestation 3: Shamelessness
Third, internalized shame causes us to develop behaviors that make us feel shameless. These behaviors are strategies that allow us to either a) feel we’re “correcting” our sources of shame, or b) rid ourselves of the shame by “transferring” it to other people. There are many types of shamelessness.
Bradshaw writes that many shameless behaviors stem from the effort to be impenetrable—a form of “correcting” our shame. Perfectionism is one example of this—if we’re perfect, we don’t have to worry about not being enough, and we can avoid shame. Another example is striving for power—if we’re more powerful than others, they can’t shame us. These behaviors often lead to the tendency to brag or remind others of our superiority—this ensures that everyone sees us as impenetrable and is distracted from anything that might be shameful about us.
Shamelessness as an attempt to correct shame may also manifest as being obsessively “moral” and “good.” For example, you might compulsively put others before yourself to cancel out shameful feelings of selfishness, or you might try to gain moral superiority over others.
Finally, shamelessness as an attempt to transfer shame to others often comes in the form of anger, blame, and acting out toward others. For instance, if we’re having shameful thoughts or feelings, we may offload them by accusing others of having those thoughts and feelings even if they don’t. For example, if we’re annoyed at someone, we might convince ourselves that they’re annoyed at us. Another form of shamelessness is outwardly accusing or getting angry at others for exhibiting thoughts, feelings, or behaviors we’re ashamed of.
Part 2: Overcoming Toxic Shame
Bradshaw explains that since toxic shame subconsciously controls us and manifests itself covertly, the key to overcoming it is being consciously aware of it, expressing it openly, and gaining connection with and autonomy over our true self. When you acknowledge and express your toxic shame, you dismantle its hiding place inside you, forcing it to evacuate. Once shame is externalized rather than internalized, it loses its power over you and you’re able to make changes that will allow you to live a happy and fulfilling life.
We’ll discuss Bradshaw’s three phases of healing toxic shame and achieving fulfillment in life.
Phase 1: Externalizing Shame
According to Bradshaw, the first phase of healing shame is confronting it and sharing it with others. When we do so, we overcome the two biggest factors that allow shame to control us—the urge to hide it and the belief that it makes us inherently flawed.
Bradshaw explains that the first step of this phase is expressing your shame in your closest intimate relationships—sharing your shame with your partner, friends, and family members who love you unconditionally. This step is essential because your toxic shame was formed by your closest intimate relationships (with your caregivers), and therefore it must be healed by relationships of the same intimacy level. This will teach you that you are a worthy, lovable person regardless of your shame—there’s no need to hide it anymore.
The second step of this phase is forming a connection with a higher power—this can be God, the universe, or any force you believe in. Bradshaw says that forming a loving relationship with your higher power teaches you that only God is perfect—as a human, you make mistakes that are natural and forgivable by God. This shows you that mistakes don’t make you bad, they make you human.
The third step of this phase is connecting with a non-shaming support group of people who have experienced toxic shame. Bradshaw explains that for many people, joining Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step program is highly effective. The program heals addiction, and since toxic shame is the root of addiction, says Bradshaw, the steps heal toxic shame as well.
Phase 2: Healing Your Wounds
Bradshaw explains that the second phase of overcoming toxic shame is to heal the wounds of your past that caused your toxic shame to form. There are three steps to doing so.
Step 1: Identify and Grieve Your Childhood Trauma
The first step in healing your wounds is to identify and grieve the childhood trauma that formed your toxic shame and gave rise to your shame-based behaviors—your shame barriers, false selves, and shamelessness tactics. Revisiting these traumas and feeling the pain they caused allows you to mentally process them and release their grief—they will continue to produce toxic shame as long as your grief remains internalized and unprocessed.
Bradshaw says the following factors must be present to process your grief: 1) validation that the trauma was real, 2) support, 3) emotional expression of trauma-related feelings like anger or loneliness, and 4) corrective experiences that fulfill the childhood needs which your trauma denied you. We’ll discuss how to do that in the next step.
Step 2: Discover and Support Your Inner Child
Step two in healing your wounds is to identify your unfulfilled childhood needs and determine how to fulfill them as an adult. This often requires you to build relationships with people who can help you fulfill these needs. For example, if you had a caregiver who never showed interest in you, you would benefit from having a relationship with someone who asks you about yourself and your interests and shows their interest in hearing your answers. These practices can also happen in support groups.
According to Bradshaw, one of the best ways to support your inner child is to rewrite shameful childhood experiences using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP is a system of tools that help you understand how your brain works so you can rewrite past memories (like trauma) in order to alter your brain function and affect positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in the present. Essentially, Bradshaw’s use of this practice is to change how you perceive past traumas so they don’t produce shame and cause you to engage in shame-based behaviors.
Step 3: Nurture Your Self and Lose Your Shame
The final step to healing your wounds is reintegrating the shame-based parts of your identity that you’ve hidden and overcoming your shame-based behaviors.
Bradshaw says that to do so, you must first identify the internalized parts of your personality that you feel shame over—the parts that cause your shame-based behaviors—and learn to accept these selves. First, embracing these selves lessens their ability to control you because their control comes from your desire to hide them. Second, familiarizing yourself with these hidden selves allows you to recognize when they’re being triggered so you can gain control over yourself and your behavior before they do.
Next, you must help these shamed hidden selves become rational by de-escalating the shame-based thoughts, feelings, and behaviors they spark when triggered. One way to do this is to say the thoughts or urges of the hidden self out loud—saying a thought out loud often releases it from your mind. You can also replace these shame-based thoughts with positive ones using affirmations. For example, if your body-conscious hidden part is telling you not to eat, you can use an affirmation like “my body is strong and food is fuel.”
Finally, love yourself, including your flaws, and forgive yourself for your mistakes. One way Bradshaw says to practice self-love is to tap into the love you feel for someone else, then direct that love toward yourself and hold it there for a few minutes of concentrated focus. A method you can use for self-forgiveness is to think of your mistakes as lessons for the future rather than calamities—consider what you can learn, what you can do differently, and so on.
Phase 3: Achieve Fulfillment
According to Bradshaw, the final part of healing from toxic shame is connecting with your authentic self and higher purpose in life—what he refers to as having a spiritual awakening. Connecting with your authentic self facilitates a spiritual awakening because it allows you to receive guidance toward your destiny from a higher power. Bradshaw says that this happens because your authentic self is directly created by the higher power—when you’re in touch with yourself, you’re in touch with your higher power by default.
Undergoing your spiritual awakening leads to a life of fulfillment and happiness because it ultimately allows you to go with the flow, without resistance or the need for control, and love yourself unconditionally. It also enhances your connection to the external world—you’ll be more fit to help others and able to form healthy and mutually nourishing relationships. Further, your lack of resistance will enable you to embrace the beauty of the world without negative feelings—this allows you to be more in tune with opportunities and signs from the universe (or higher power) that are meant for you.
Ultimately, the combination of these factors brings you happiness and guides you toward your higher purpose in life, which brings fulfillment. Living in this way is akin to swimming with the current rather than against it, nourishing your soul in the process.
Connect to Your Authentic Self
To achieve spiritual awakening, you must first connect to your authentic self; however, Bradshaw explains that our “self” isn’t just one thing. There are many different and sometimes opposing parts of us making this feat difficult to achieve. Truly connecting to your self requires you to acknowledge and embrace all of your parts—even the ones you dislike.
To do so, Bradshaw recommends exploring a mental exercise where you create an imaginary room tailored to your specific taste—decorations, music, and so on. In this room, you also include all your favorite versions of yourself—for example, the version that wants to be an astronaut, the version who loves to cook, and the version who’s a mother. Finally, envision the disliked versions of yourself and imagine they’re requesting access to the room—forgive them and let them inside. This room is a sanctuary for all parts of yourself to exist and be loved.
Bradshaw also recommends connecting to your purpose by reflecting on the following factors: the people that bring out your best self and make you happiest, the activities that energize you, your life dreams, the passions you feel in your heart, and the places where you feel like you belong most.
