Self esteem is absolutely essential in dealing with the challenges of life. Feeling good about yourself because of who you are rather than who your friends think you should be is what will help your child (and you) deal with peer pressure and making positive decisions. This book offers examples and suggestions that will help you develop a healthy and secure sense of yourself and your world. I bought it for my kids, but found it a great read for myself and a great resource for helping my children feel good about themselves and easing the pressure they often feel from their peers. It tells you not only how to take responsibility for your feelings, needs, and behaviors, it explains why that's important. A great find. Our whole family will benefit from this book.

I bought this for my 12-year old daughter, but once I glanced through it, I couldn't put it down! Especially helpful for women with stoic upbringings, martyre complexes, or rescue tendencies. This book actually lists, describes and illustrates the emotions and needs we all possess. Yet, being written for 9 to 12 year olds, can be quickly and easily read, understood and put into practice.

Fro anyone who is struggling with coming out issues, or for anyone who has a gay or lesbian friend or family member this is an ESSENTIAL read. The book deals with the issue of shame that is tied to the coming out of many gay and lesbian people and offers help in getting rid of that shame. Written with compassion, this book gives the reader a sense of freedom and is a gret help in the coming-out process. Highly recommended!

As a young man coming out, my journey of self-discovery started with quiet months of reading. I read everything I could get my hands on about homosexuality and being gay. This book stands out as the single greatest influence during and since that time. The authors have taken a careful and thorough examination of the sociology and psychology of shame as it relates to being gay. The reading is thick, but worth the time to slowly wade through and internalize the material. I found myself saying, "Finally, someone who understands my whole mindset!" I began to change my thinking as I read it. Congratulations to the authors for writing a book so important to the lives of many.

I'm not eloquent enough to tell you about why this book is so good or how it helped me so much, but I do want people who are reading the customer reviews for this book to know that this book made a HUGE and POSITIVE impact on my life--it really helped me combat my inner turmoil over self-esteem and coming/being out. Coming out is one of the hardest things I think any human being has to do--and there are a lot of emotional issues tied up into it, one being this guilt or shame of existing. ("I feel guilt/shameful that I'm gay.") Society burns this feeling into gay and lesbian people's brains. This book will help you repair some of that damage and find your true, whole self. I am so thankful to Drs. Kaufman and Raphael for writing this book--it is truly an important contribution to the literature about coming out and an honest-to-God lifesafer. I recommend this book with all my heart.

Kaufman's book isn't the newest one on the block, but it *is* an excellent study of how shame occurs, develops, and takes hold of a life. He proceeds through the stages of shame development, from external shaming experiences to the internalization of shame, the development of defense mechanisms, and the disowning of self. His descriptions and examples of how it happens seem right-on and fairly in-depth... a few of them triggered new understandings, and many put together things I'd observed but not yet connected. His tying addiction and shame, with shame causing the addiction (as a means of escape) and the addiction causing more shame explains the vicious-spiral effect of both shame and addiction extremely well. I like to know *why* things happen, and Kaufman gives an excellent explanation of WHY.

If you seek understanding, it's an excellent book and I'd recommend it. However, there are a few caveats. While this is an excellent study of how shame works, it does NOT describe how to fix it. The section on recovery is fairly general and gives examples of recovery in a client-therapist situation, but doesn't really give steps or suggestions to fix it yourself. Kaufman's writing style seems a little indirect, theoretical rather than forceful. If you want to be hit square-on in the face with very basic facts without absorbing how it all works and just told, quickly and simply, how to *fix it*, you may be disappointed or bored by this book.

I can't count how many people I've met over the years, who like me, think this book changed their lives. It offers major, dazzling insight into human experience that's clear, humane, and just plain brilliant. Everyone, famous or not, writing about shame in the last 2 decades owes a debt to this book whether they admit it or not. And when you hear a character like the heroine of "Clueless" talk about having a major shame spiral--this is where the term originated. That's how significant this book is--it's influenced popular culture, and the author's still alive. I highly recommend the author's other books on shame, and his children's book, Stick Up For Yourself!

Finding this book profoundly changed my life, by illuminating for me an aspect of human experience that had never been addressed (or even idendtified accurately!) in all my years of exploring various forms of psychotherapy. Indeed, 14 years later, I find that the field of psychotherapy is still largely uninformed/underinformed about the effects of shame dynamics on therapy itself - and I believe that the misreading of MOST therapists of this vitally important affect is the cause of most therapy failure. I totally agree with Donald Nathanson: this is the book with which to begin exploring shame. If you decide to explore further, Kaufman's more therapist-oriented "THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHAME" is excellent, as are Nathanson's books.