Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety

Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions

By Peter R. Breggin

Prometheus Books

Copyright © 2014 Peter R. Breggin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61614-149-3

Contents

Foreword by Stanley Krippner, 9,
PART 1: UNDERSTANDING NEGATIVE LEGACY EMOTIONS,
Introduction to Part 1, 15,
Chapter 1. The Most Violent and Most Loving Creature on Earth, 17,
Chapter 2. Our Human Legacy of Stone Age Emotions, 27,
Chapter 3. Our Brains Are Made Up of People, 37,
Chapter 4. The Social Carnivore Emerges from Africa, 45,
Chapter 5. Instincts for Language, Morality, and Spirituality, 51,
Chapter 6. We Are Born Helpless and Dependent, 65,
Chapter 7. Why None of Us Escape Emotionally Free from Childhood, 71,
Chapter 8. Nature's Anger Management, 77,
Chapter 9. When Abuse Overwhelms the Child, 83,
Chapter 10. Bullying, Domestic Violence, and Posttraumatic Stress, 99,
Chapter 11. Don't People Need Some Guilt and Shame?, 107,
PART 2: ACHIEVING EMOTIONAL FREEDOM,
Introduction to Part 2, 121,
Chapter 12. Taking the Three Steps to Emotional Freedom, 123,
Chapter 13. Identifying Feelings of Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety, 131,
Chapter 14. Recognizing Feelings of Anger and Emotional Numbness, 135,
Chapter 15. Negative Things We Tell Ourselves, 137,
Chapter 16. How Our Bodies Tell Us about Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety, 141,
Chapter 17. Rejecting Guilt and Self-Destructive Feelings, 155,
Chapter 18. Overcoming Shame and Defensive Feelings, 163,
Chapter 19. Conquering Anxiety and Helpless Feelings, 175,
Chapter 20. Mastering Anger, 185,
Chapter 21. Breaking Out of Numbness, 193,
Chapter 22. How to Run Our Minds and Lives, 201,
Chapter 23. Facing Real-Life Challenges, 211,
PART 3. FREEDOM TO LOVE,
Introduction to Part 3, 219,
Chapter 24. Love Is Joyful Awareness, 221,
Chapter 25. Let's Talk about Sex, 225,
Chapter 26. Love Is Not the Same as Relationship, 227,
Chapter 27. What to Do When Love Is Lost, 233,
Chapter 28. Guidelines for Maintaining a Loving Partnership, 237,
Chapter 29. Empathic Self-Transformation, 241,
Chapter 30. Where to Turn When All Seems Lost, 243,
Chapter 31. Last Resorts That Seldom Work Out, 251,
Chapter 32. Love as Our Highest Purpose, 255,
Appendix A. About Psychiatry and Psychiatric Drugs, 261,
Appendix B. Darwin Was No Darwinist, 265,
Afterword and Acknowledgments, 271,
About Peter R. Breggin, MD, 273,
Notes, 275,
Bibliography, 287,
Index, 299,

CHAPTER 1

THE MOST VIOLENT AND MOST LOVING CREATURE ON EARTH

A life-changing birth occurred on the planet about 190 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Beneath their pounding feet, huddled close to the ground, the first tiny shrewlike creature brought forth an infant and began suckling her young. Her body was no larger than a child's pinkie, but this furry little mammal embodied a huge leap in biological evolution that would eventually result in our remarkable human capacities for emotional intimacy and social life—and for emotional suffering.

That early ancestor of ours was a pioneer in intimate relationships. As the original mammalian mother, she was the first to participate in the most remarkable and life-sustaining relationship ever created—nursing a helpless, dependent infant toward eventual independence and maturity. Birds, for example, may sit on their offspring to keep them warm, fuss over them to keep them clean, chirp at them to stimulate receptivity for food, and nourish them with regurgitated food. Much more intimate, this new mammalian relationship involved the mother manufacturing nourishment and feeding it to her offspring directly from her own body in the closest possible physical proximity for an extended period. This put into motion a new branch of biological evolution that would eventually lead to our unique craving to relate to each other despite the uncertainty and emotional pain that our relationships so often cause.

All that began with a finger-sized animal nursing its young? Yes, all that and more, including the capacity for painful emotions that is implanted in every human being. That relationship brought about an emotional closeness never before known on Earth, a closeness that would culminate in human nature and human relationships. It would eventually expand beyond cooperation and empathy within the family and come to include our moral and spiritual values.

SO VIOLENT AND YET SO LOVING

From fossil records nearly half a million years old, we know that our ancestors were able to band together in small groups to attack ancient elephants many times the size of the modern version of this great animal. Like us, our ancestors were relatively thin-skinned and thin-skulled. They lacked fangs, claws, tusks, or hooves with which to tear apart or bash in their prey. They could not rip jugular arteries and crush bones with their jaws, nor could they sprint with the speed of a cheetah. Yet these physically puny creatures attacked behemoths with pointed sticks—a feat that must have required ferocity and tenacity unmatched in the animal kingdom.

Assaulting great beasts in small hunting parties also required cooperation and subtle communication. It demanded self-sacrifice and courageous commitment to each other and to the survival of family and clan. Meanwhile, women, children, and the infirm back home had to defend themselves from predators and marauders. Then, as now, adults of both genders readily gave their lives to serve the community, once again confirming our enormous innate capacities for both aggression and love.

Our ancestors had the capacity to cooperate in unleashing violence on giant prey. That exemplifies what every child brought into the world at that prehistoric time—and what every child continues to bring into the modern world. Since long before we evolved into Homo sapiens, every humanlike and human child has been born with enormously conflicted capacities for close-knit social relationships and for incredible aggression.

Built-in aggression in combination with built-in social cooperation was necessary for hunting and for defending ourselves and our families from predatory animals. There is also compelling evidence that, much like today, we were warriors against our own kind, but necessarily on a smaller scale. Our capacity for aggression may explain why Homo sapiens became the only group from among many humanlike relatives to survive the evolutionary process.

We humans have always been both predator and prey. We have hunted other creatures, and other creatures have hunted us. Our capacity for aggression gave us prehistoric advantages as both predator and prey. As predator, our ability to unleash violence enabled us to slay giant animals for meat and to defeat human and animal competitors for scarce resources, such as large game and territories in which to gather food and find shelter. As prey, our aggressiveness enabled us to defend our families and ourselves from animal predators and other humans.

No other social creature is as violent as we are. No other violent creature is as social as we are. This innate and seemingly impossible conflict continues to affect the lives of every one of us.

BEING SO SOCIAL HAS ITS HAZARDS

We evolved biologically as social creatures with innate urges to be cooperative, empathic, and loving. This knowledge has become...