"Informed by personal experience and social psychology, this empowering analysis of self-blame culture is a valuable toolkit for shirking the shackles of shame to live a more satisfying life."
Absorbing and enlightening, in Unlearning Shame Dr Devon Price presents a wholesomely helpful manifesto for understanding the inhibiting — and debilitating — role shame plays in our lives. Sharing how we might overcome the grip of shame — and societal self-blame culture — through clearer understanding, shifts in perspective, and utilising the practical exercises shared throughout the book, it’s thorough, informed by social psychology, and delivered in a lucid, empowering style.
Opening with a powerful personal example of the author’s experience of “Systemic Shame”, along with their “consuming self-hatred and hopelessness”, we read a run-down of indicators that a person might be suffering from systemic shame, from “constantly looking at yourself through the eyes of people who disapprove of you”, to finding it “hard to believe that anyone might really appreciate and care for ‘real’ you.”
After exploring the history of shame, why societies shame, and why shame doesn’t work, Price shifts to cover ways we might overcome self-shame and come to a state of “radical self-acceptance” through finding opportunities for hope, and mobilising a range of implementable behaviours and ways of thinking.
Well-placed to offer readers a renewed sense of optimism and agency in the face of crushing, internalised societal pressures, Unlearning Shame is a butterfly of a book — delicately detailed, fluttery with hope, and we’re all aware of the power of the butterfly effect.
| Primary Genre | Self Help and Personal Development |
| Other Genres: |
Learn to identify-and combat-Systemic Shame, the feeling of self-hatred and disempowerment that comes from living in a society that blames individuals for systemic problems, with this invaluable resource from the social psychologist and author of Unmasking Autism.
"Stop doomscrolling and read this book. You'll feel better, I promise."-Celeste Headlee, journalist and bestselling author
Systemic Shame is the socially engineered self-loathing that says we are solely to blame for our circumstances. It tells us that poverty is remedied by hard-working people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, that marginalized people are personally responsible for solving the problem of their own oppression, and that massive global crises like climate change can be solved with individual action. Feeling overwhelmed? That's your problem, too. The more we try and ultimately fail to live up to impossible societal standards of moral goodness, the more shame we feel-and the more we retreat into isolation and despair.
Social psychologist Dr. Devon Price knows firsthand the destructive effects of Systemic Shame; he experienced shame and self-hatred as he grappled with his transgender identity, feeling as if his suffering was caused by his own actions rather than systems like cissexism. And it doesn't just end with internal feelings of anguish. It causes us to judge other people the same way we fear being judged, which blocks us from seeking out the acceptance and support we need and discourages us from trying to improve our communities and our relationships.
In Unlearning Shame, Dr. Price explores how we can deal with those hard emotions more effectively, tackling the societal shame we've absorbed and directed at ourselves. He introduces the antidote to Systemic Shame: expansive recognition, an awareness of one's position in the larger social world and the knowledge that our battles are only won when they are shared. He provides a suite of exercises and resources designed to combat Systemic Shame on a personal, interpersonal, and global level through rebuilding trust in yourself, in others, and in our shared future.
By offering a roadmap to healing and a toolkit of actionable items, Unlearning Shame helps us reject hopelessness and achieve sustainable change and personal growth.
Unlearning Shame features in the following genres: Self Help and Personal Development, Health & Fitness, Popular psychology, Social, group or collective psychology, Society and culture: general, Society and Social Sciences, Psychology
Unlearning Shame is available in Paperback, Hardback
Unlearning Shame was written by Devon Price and published by Harmony an imprint of Harmony/Rodale/Convergent
Unlearning Shame has 368 pages
