Unlearning Shame

LoveReading Says

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.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
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About Unlearning Shame

How many times a day do you feel shame? Struggling to pay the bills; buying a top made in a sweatshop; reading the news and feeling - yet again - a powerlessness to the point of apathy?

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