Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions

309 Pages·2014·2.5 MB·English

by  Peter R. Breggin M.D.

Published 2014 by Prometheus Books
Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions. Copyright © 2014 by Peter
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Breggin, Peter Roger, 1936-
Guilt, shame, and anxiety : understanding and overcoming negative emotions / by Peter R. Breggin,
MD.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61614-149-3 (paperback) — ISBN 978-1-61614-721-1 (ebook)
1. Emotions. 2. Guilt. 3. Shame. 4. Anxiety. I. Title.
BF531.B735 2014
152.4—dc23
2014023875
Printed in the United States of America

Foreword
by Stanley Krippner
PART 1: UNDERSTANDING NEGATIVE LEGACY EMOTIONS
Introduction to Part 1
Chapter 1. The Most Violent and Most Loving Creature on Earth
Chapter 2. Our Human Legacy of Stone Age Emotions
Chapter 3. Our Brains Are Made Up of People
Chapter 4. The Social Carnivore Emerges from Africa
Chapter 5. Instincts for Language, Morality, and Spirituality
Chapter 6. We Are Born Helpless and Dependent
Chapter 7. Why None of Us Escape Emotionally Free from Childhood
Chapter 8. Nature's Anger Management
Chapter 9. When Abuse Overwhelms the Child
Chapter 10. Bullying, Domestic Violence, and Posttraumatic Stress
Chapter 11. Don't People Need Some Guilt and Shame?
PART 2: ACHIEVING EMOTIONAL FREEDOM
Introduction to Part 2
Chapter 12. Taking the Three Steps to Emotional Freedom
Chapter 13. Identifying Feelings of Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety
Chapter 14. Recognizing Feelings of Anger and Emotional Numbness
Chapter 15. Negative Things We Tell Ourselves
Chapter 16. How Our Bodies Tell Us about Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety
Chapter 17. Rejecting Guilt and Self-Destructive Feelings
Chapter 18. Overcoming Shame and Defensive Feelings
Chapter 19. Conquering Anxiety and Helpless Feelings
Chapter 20. Mastering Anger
Chapter 21. Breaking Out of Numbness
Chapter 22. How to Run Our Minds and Lives
Chapter 23. Facing Real-Life Challenges
PART 3. FREEDOM TO LOVE
Introduction to Part 3
Chapter 24. Love Is Joyful Awareness
Chapter 25. Let's Talk about Sex
Chapter 26. Love Is Not the Same as Relationship
Chapter 27. What to Do When Love Is Lost
Chapter 28. Guidelines for Maintaining a Loving Partnership
Chapter 29. Empathic Self-Transformation
Chapter 30. Where to Turn When All Seems Lost
Chapter 31. Last Resorts That Seldom Work Out
Chapter 32. Love as Our Highest Purpose
Appendix A. About Psychiatry and Psychiatric Drugs
Appendix B. Darwin Was No Darwinist
Afterword and Acknowledgments
About Peter R. Breggin, MD
Notes
Bibliography
Index
This is an important book. It introduces a new and convincing theory about the
origins of our most painful and self-destructive emotions and applies this insight
to how we can improve our lives. If you think that nothing new can be written
about the human condition, you have a surprise waiting for you. Guilt, Shame,
and Anxiety is a book of breathtaking originality. It is filled with unique insights
and innovative procedures that can transform our lives, relationships, and
worldviews.
In March 1887, Charles Darwin met with ornithologist John Gould, who had
been studying Darwin's bird specimens from his trip to the Galapagos Islands.
Darwin left the meeting convinced that transmutation was responsible for the
presence of similar but distinct species on the different islands. The dogma of
“species barrier” had been shattered; instead, he concluded that species are not
immutable. Nonetheless, Darwin waited several decades before he published his
theory of evolution and then did so because another naturalist, Alfred Russel
Wallace, was about to publish a similar theory. Darwin knew that his ideas
would meet with stiff resistance from many powerful groups. In fact, they still
do; many Americans, including prominent political figures, reject the theory of
evolution outright.
Even so, Darwinian evolution is seen as the cornerstone of contemporary
biology, and its influence cannot be overestimated. In the words of Michael
Shermer, “Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it
is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we
came from, and where we are going.”1 Peter Breggin has mined Darwin's
writings, and those who came after him, to propose a unique but crucial insight,
namely that humanity's “negative legacy emotions,” the residue of its
evolutionary past, are at the root of many if not most contemporary personal,
social, and political conflicts.
In this remarkable book, Peter Breggin takes his readers on a step-by-step
journey to help them identify and replace this negativity with life-affirming
attitudes and values that will enhance their well-being and happiness. Humans
may be both the most violent and the most social of all creatures. What other
species kills so many of their own kind? What other species reaches out to help
numerous others survive and prosper? Breggin describes how guilt, shame, and
anxiety serve an adaptive evolutionary function by inhibiting willfulness and
violence in personal and family relationships. These negative legacy emotions
make children compliant and are easily triggered in childhood, especially by
deprivation and abuse as well as by conflicts later in life.
Breggin recommends liberating oneself from this negative legacy by
identifying the emotion, rejecting its influence, and replacing it with common
sense, rational values, and empathic love. His emphasis on love is in accord with
an underappreciated aspect of Darwin's work. Darwin's book The Descent of
Man mentions “survival of the fittest” two times, once derisively. But David
Loye's computer search identified ninety-five instances of the word love.2
Natural selection favored those who were able to give aid to each other, as this
would give them an advantage over other tribal groups. Breggin has followed
this often-neglected aspect of Darwinian thought, emphasizing traits that can be
found in many nonhuman species that foster social support.
There are other ways in which the behavior of other animals can be
instructive. Breggin tells the story of his two dogs, Blue and Cavie, both of
whom were exposed outdoors to a lightning bolt that illuminated the
neighborhood. Cavie never recovered and ducked for shelter whenever there was
the merest rumble of thunder. Blue, however, was unfazed by the lightning and
had no hesitation in walking about during a thunderstorm. In my experience with
children and adults faced with trauma, I have seen similar differences. One war
veteran will return from a combat situation emotionally shattered, with all the
symptoms of posttraumatic stress, while his buddy will assimilate the horror and
return to the battlefield the next day. Both are examples of the difference
between an event and an experience. As Epictetus famously wrote, it is not what
happens to us that is as important as how we react to what happens, an aphorism
repeated over the ages by Marcus Aurelius, Alfred Korzybski, Aldous Huxley,
and Albert Ellis. Therefore, I have written about potentially “traumatizing
events” that often—but not always—lead to “traumatic experiences.”3 There
cannot be a “traumatic event” because events are psychologically neutral. But
many people's reactions trigger negative legacy emotions, often those that were
evoked during childhood and adolescence, laying the groundwork for what later
becomes posttraumatic stress with its accompanying panoply of repetitive
nightmares, emotional numbing, severe anxiety, and “flashbacks.” Oftentimes,
guilt is part of the matrix and can lead to suicide, just as shame, when it occurs,
can lead to antisocial acts. Breggin's self-help exercises can be especially useful
for posttraumatic stress survivors and their families.
Breggin is a well-known and respected psychiatric reformer who for decades
has taken on the “psychopharmaceutical complex” as well as the simplistic
explanations of human behavior proffered by “neuromania.” Instead of buying
into the proposition that one's neurology controls one's actions, he cites research
that demonstrates that human activity, especially spiritual practices, can alter
brain function.
I agree with Breggin's description of spirituality as a worldview that
encompasses something beyond oneself. This would include interaction with
God, the “higher self,” a noble cause, or the cosmos itself. In any event, the
importance of spirituality has long been emphasized by humanistic and
transpersonal psychotherapists and has finally been acknowledged by
mainstream mental-health care providers.
In this book, Breggin provides a developmental roadmap that begins with
self-examination, proceeds with self-determination, and concludes with self-
learning, a process that can keep his readers from relapsing into subjective
helplessness in all its forms. Indeed, Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety is a paean to the
human spirit and what it can accomplish in a world that is badly but not fatally
tattered. Most remarkably, he sheds light on the prehistoric origins of our most
punishing and disabling emotions, examines how they result from contradictions
within our human nature, and shows the way to overcome these negative legacy
emotions through knowledge, wisdom, and effort.
Stanley Krippner, PhD