Embracing Shame

How to Stop Resisting Shame and Turn It into a Powerful Ally

By: Bret Lyon PhD SEP, Sheila Rubin MA LMFT RDT/BCT

Narrated by: Carla Emmons

Discover a proven pathway for transforming shame from a self-punishing emotion into a powerful ally for your health and happiness.

Why do we feel shame? Given how painful and destructive shame can be, it’s easy to see this emotion as an inner demon that turns our own mind against us. Yet shame is a universal emotion—and it serves an important purpose. “While toxic shame can keep us stuck in a self-defeating vortex,” say Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin, “there is a healthy expression of shame designed to protect us, help us change, and actually build our self-esteem.”

With Embracing Shame, these expert teachers share an invaluable guide to an emotion so volatile that most of us—including therapists—avoid talking about it. Here this husband and wife team, cofounders of the Center for Healing Shame, examine the dynamics of shame, the reasons it arises, why it causes such harm, and how we can heal its negative effects. Through case studies, creative tools, and body-based practices, they invite you to explore:

• The purpose of shame—How it is meant to protect and guide us, and why it gets distorted into a self-sabotaging emotion

• How shame disguises itself by “binding” to other emotions—and methods for disentangling these complex feelings

• The ways shame forms in childhood, evolves as we grow, is impacted by trauma, and takes residence in the body

• Practical guidance for regulating common shame-based challenges—including the inner critic, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, intimacy in relationships, and much more

While no amount of self-talk, personal success, or therapy can eradicate shame, we can transform shame into the supportive, health-promoting force it was meant to be. Created as a go-to resource for laypersons and healing professionals alike, Embracing Shame offers an achievable path for reclaiming the true potential of this vital emotion to help us grow, connect, and find a new confidence in the way we move through life.

©2023 Bret Lyon, PhD, SEP and Sheila Rubin, MA, LMFT, RDT/BCT (P)2023 Sounds True

Critic reviews

“A few times in a lifetime a book comes along that opens up the dark recesses of our lives and illuminates the mysteries of human behavior, including why people act the way they do and why there is so much emotional suffering in the world. Embracing Shame by Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin is such a book. It is engaging, transformative, and eye opening!”—Ann Weiser Cornell, PhD, CEO of Focusing Resources and author of The Radical Acceptance of Everything

“Heartwarming, empowering, vulnerable, and brilliant. Every so often, a book comes along that will inspire your mind, touch your soul, and remind you that you are not alone. Embracing Shame by Sheila Rubin and Bret Lyon is a groundbreaking book that can help you break free of the chains of shame. Through stories, concrete practices, and research, Sheila and Bret bring us face-to-face with shame’s power to paralyze our lives while also offering a way out through embracing it.”—Albert Wong, PhD, director of the Trauma Certificate Program at Somatopia

“Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin have already transformed the trauma therapy field with their Healing Shame workshops. Now anybody who picks up this book can benefit from their radical healing approach to shame. They have written a gem of a book that anybody can read, understand, relate to, and apply to themselves, to clients, to loved ones. Expect to learn, expect to have ‘aha’ moments, expect to be moved, expect to be transformed.”—Diana Fosha, PhD, developer of AEDP, editor of Undoing Aloneness and the Transformation of Suffering into Flourishing, and author of The Transforming Power of Affect

Amazing Listen!

I'm so excited for this book, not only are Bret & Sheila's methods to help clients deal with their internalized toxic shame revolutionary, but emotional health and healthy shame are one of the foundational pieces to healing. This book will change how you view shame, as we tend to vilify it because it doesn't feel good, but shame as the social construct 'master' emotion helps us to reconnect in our bodies, heal from trauma and understand and attune to our needs on a fundamental level. Transforming toxic, pervasive shame into healthy shame bit by bit, is such a powerful, stunning experience!

Easy to understand and assimilate, well-written and beyond helpful in our journey, Embracing Shame is a must-listen if you are looking to live your fullest, most authentic life!

Get this audiobook

Very good and not to be missed. Understanding shame is so important. To heal yourself then you must deal with your shame.

A Transformational Book

This book gives the listener a pathway out of shame. It is written with Compassion and Heart, and has the power to set its listener free from the binds of shame. The reader captures the emotional tone (Acceptance, Empathy, Compassion) that Sheila and Brett bring to their trainings, which made it a joy to listen to. Personal and clinical stories make it engaging and relatable. Such an important book for anyone living with shame (all of us?) or helping others to work with theirs.

Masterful guidance for a difficult topic

I wish i had a book like this 10 years ago! It fills in blanks that really impacted my healing. And the stories make it very human. The reader did a great job - expressive and sensitive.

Only goes so far

Must admit I only listened to about half of this. I found all of the examples to be of the same variety--people who experience shame for reasons that are really no fault of their own, i.e., feeling ashamed about not getting over your grief quickly enough, shame about trauma, shame about not meeting unrealistic expectations of yourself, etc. I'm not trying to dismiss the experience of people who feel shame for such reasons. This book might be a good resource for you if you do. But what about people who have actually done bad things--parents who have neglected or maybe even mistreated their children, alcoholics and drug users whose addictions have left a wake of carnage, people who have betrayed friends and/or family members, people who have committed crimes, etc. What about them/us? How do we begin to address the shame we feel over our behavior? This book doesn't venture into these ethically ambiguous topics, at least not as far as I read, and not from what I could tell from the table of contents. These are really challenging issues, and I think it would be great if somebody wrote a book that helps people who are struggling to come to terms with objectively inappropriate behavior from the past.