Showing results by author "Shelley Stokes" in All Categories

Shame influences more of our thoughts and actions than many other emotions. Used as a punishment for bad behavior, shame acts as an incentive for us to behave in socially acceptable ways. As a common method used to regulate children’s behavior, shame is by far one of the most pervasive socializing agents. Many of our more persistent, punitive, and critical feelings about ourselves stem from humiliations in early childhood even if we don’t remember the specific events that prompted them.

Sit Down and Dialogue with Yourself is about finding, listening to, and giving voice to the many internal thoughts, feelings, and emotions that come to form the various self-states we all experience as comprising that vital subjective core of who we are.

In this book, Shelley Stokes, PhD, and Sherron Lewis, LMFT, explore the struggles we all face in communicating with the deeper realms of consciousness within us in our efforts to grow into a self that is more and more "authentic" and "real". Real-Self Expression addresses issues of internal reflection, the role of intuition, the effects of past trauma, the fear of being real, and many other aspects of our internal and interpersonal functioning. It also addresses ways to bring greater aspects of real-self expression into our relationships with others and with ourselves.