Reviews

The Tao of fully feeling: Harvesting forgiveness out of blame by Pete Walker

ecn's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

4.0

dr_feline's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.25

waterbear0821's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

I enjoyed this book and it gave me a lot to think about. The big caveat is that it’s extremely dated. Some of the ideas about therapy, pharmacology, and treatment have been shown to be limited or wrong and some of the terms are offensive and cringe-worthy. However, most of the basic tenets hold up and it provides a lot of actionable ideas, not to mention a lot of valuable references and inspiring quotes. The premise is the very ‘90s notion that a lot of our current suffering comes from what we might have called then “bad parenting” but now we more commonly call generational trauma. It contains a new-to-me redemptive idea that “blame” can be valuable and therapeutic when it’s not a blanket justification but is used to move into forgiveness, particularly self-forgiveness. I hesitate to give this book a hearty endorsement because so many of the side commentaries are wrong or unhelpful (e.g. SSRI’s prevent recovery. Yikes) but the main themes still had value for me. Proceed with awareness. 

tendiebun's review

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challenging emotional informative reflective

5.0

sarajain's review

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.5

morganmou's review against another edition

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4.0

Sometimes hard to get through, but I recommend it often for those who are seeking healing from childhood injuries from parenting.

vivian_munich's review against another edition

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5.0

This book took me forever to finish, because my mind drifted away after every few pages. A lot of feelings reawoke together with unprocessed anger and grief hidden in some dark corners. The thing with having an emotionally unhealthy childhood is that you could never completely dissect all the aspects and be done with it. Every few months I discover a new angle and learn things in my past I never thought about.

The Tao of Fully Feeling is a kind and calm voice that guides you to discover feelings you buried deep down and legitimize these feelings. I find the contents well-written and highly relatable. We have to walk down the path of anger, blame, grief, self-forgiveness, and maybe eventual forgiveness.

This book was recommended by a friend and I was initially skeptical - I’m not a person who’s shy with expressing non-positive feelings but didn’t find it helpful to unburden past traumas. When I was reading this book, I realized that I may never get rid of certain baggages by understanding them better, but I do get more clarity in myself and can pursue things that are desired by the real me and not the external voices I’ve internalized over the years.

It is difficult and painful to evoke buried feelings and past traumas. And I understand that not everyone wants to go down that path; most people don’t. But I do believe unprocessed feelings haunt us and affect our life choices, knowingly or unknowingly.

dommdy's review against another edition

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5.0

I very rarely assign 5 stars. I can’t recommend this highly enough for people in recovery from addictions, and survivors of all kinds of child abuse.

rixx's review against another edition

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Nonfiction, feelings