Guilt, shame, and anxiety : understanding and overcoming negative emotions / Peter R. Breggin, MD.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Understanding negative legacy emotions. The most violent and most loving creature on Earth ; Our human legacy of Stone Age emotions ; Our brains are made up of people ; The social carnivore emerges from Africa ; Instincts for language, morality, and spirituality ; We are born helpless and dependent ; Why none of us escape emotionally free from childhood ; Nature's anger management ; When abuse overwhelms the child ; Bullying, domestic violence, and posttraumatic stress ; Don't people need some guilt and shame? -- Achieving emotional freedom. Taking the three steps to emotional freedom ; Identifying feelings of guilt, shame, and anxiety ; Recognizing feelings of anger and emotional numbness ; Negative things we tell ourselves ; How our bodies tell us about guilt, shame, and anxiety ; Rejecting guilt and self-destructive feelings ; Overcoming shame and defensive feelings ; Conquering anxiety and helpless feelings ; Mastering anger ; Breaking out of numbness ; How to run our minds and lives ; Facing real-live challenges -- Freedom to love. Love is joyful awareness ; Let's talk about sex ; Love is not the same as relationship ; What to do when love is lost ; Guidelines for maintaining a loving partnership ; Empathic self-transformation ; Where to turn when all seems lost ; Last resorts that seldom work out ; Love is our highest purpose -- Appendix A. About psychiatry and psychiatric drugs -- Appendix B. Darwin was no Darwinist.