The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness out of Blame Paperback – November 2, 2015

I have recommended this book to every one I meet. It is very easy to find relief in the reparenting idea. Knowing that most suffer trauma and very few ever try to overcome that puts us all in a similar situation.The author has a lot of great information that works for problem solving.Covering every possible question that would be asked in a moment of trauma. Or how to overcome every possible obstacle.This book should not be set aside by anyone who honestly wants to develop coping skills instead of avoidance skills.Drugs,alcohol, avoidance, isolation, can be set aside. There is hope.Any one who has recovery training would understand the language of the author .Literally. Any one can understand how to overcome the most desperate situation with the words of the author.Its the text needed to understand a step by step process of recovery!Don't miss this.

1. Pete writes from experience and well as a therapist. His is the only work I've ever read that didn't make me feel like something was wrong with me that needed fixing and he had all the answers. He clearly distinguishes between identity and traits, something that every person who has suffered trauma needs to understand first and foremost. So much of what I identified with as part of my personality I recognize is a very natural human response to trauma. That erased so much shame. I am in the process of discovering for the first time who I really am.2. I think every human being should be required to read it because it is the only book I've read that fully understands what a human is and gives full permission to wake up and be alive. So many people who don't need to recover from trauma still operate on a robotic level to varying degrees. They have no idea how to feel and listen and engage with themselves and thus others and the world. Because it is so balanced, every person will find what they are missing to recenter their heart. Regardless of race, gender, age, religion, what makes us human is emotion and this book is all about balancing emotions by using them for what they were intended.3. We've all heard of fight and flight. But he expands with two other F's (fawn and freeze) which explains in more reality reaction to abuse and neglect. I mostly fawn and freeze and needed to someone to point out to me my subconscious reactions. I didn't even know I was reacting.4. Understanding emotional flashbacks is key to the path of wholeness. I have very little memory of my childhood and what I do remember was not abusive or neglectful according to most people's definition. It was just life. I spent decades feeling like I couldn't handle life and everything that I struggled with was my own fault. Being aware of emotional flashbacks without visualization gave me tools to understand why I was feeling the way I did and helped me pull out of it.5. It is both insightful and transformative. So many books are about diagnosis but then fail to give the reader tools to change. This book does both. I understand why and I have tools to be who I want to be.I have given this book to several friends and they are saying the same things I am. Finally something that really understands what I went though and how I feel and how I can heal.Thank you Pete, for being brave enough to lead the way. You are changing lives. I can imagine what our world will be like when we allow ourselves and others to be human. It's beautiful.

This book is not only life changing it is world changing!I have been in some sort of therapy for 22 years - but I realize I was only maintaining a holding pattern and nothing I ever did would have a chance of really making a difference if I did not understand the truths covered in The The Tao of Fully Feeling. I have also read Pete Walkers Complex CPTSD which is equally life-changing. Each is so powerful. Pete's writing is gentle, thoughtful and deep while he never holds back from the truth - I really value the wonderful quotes that he has sprinkled throughout both books - acting as both capsules for complex ideas and springboards to allow you to dive deeper.Pete talks about things that society and often therapists are unsure of speaking about from a stance of both fear that the truth is too brutal together with lack of knowledge.Complex PTSD was only beginning to be written about in the mid-1990 - Judith Herman coined the phrase in her brutally honest book 'Trauma and Recovery'. The idea that emotional neglect, something so unseeable from the outside, could have such a devastating and ongoing effect on the lives of its victims is revelatory. In both Pete Walker's books, he maps out all the things I have struggled with all my life - thinking I must be really defective. The Toa of Fully Feeling in particular really uncovers why I am as I am and it is not the innate me that is this way - I have become this way as a result of the emotional trauma experienced in my early life, reinforced over and over by the patterns my inner parent invented to keep me safe. And now that I have seen the kind of hole I am in can I find a way out of it.During my years of therapy, I have done the sorts that "expected" you to forgive parents ...but I never could, leaving me in a sea of guilt, assuming I am a bad person. The Toa of Fully Feeling explains that forgiveness only occurs when one places blame where it is due and feels the anger and loss around that. It reminds me that "taking the blame", as victims are trained to do (and is often implied in premature forgiveness practices) exacerbates the trauma. I am learning to place the blame where it is due and not to take the blame for anything that was/is not mine to take - I see it as part of the idea Brene Brown talks about of owning my story completely... if you take the blame for something not yours to own, you make your story a lie! It seems one may well harvest forgiveness out of blame.Thank you, Pete Walker, for writing this and your other books - they have the capacity to heal the world one person at a time.

I am a more whole person for reading this book. I finished it this weekend and have spent 3 years reading it slowly. Some passages required many, many readings for me to absorb and integrate. I initially read Pete Walker’s primer on C-PTSD after I was diagnosed in 2020. It was also life changing. This corollary brings about a completeness to the first book, it adds layers of richness and personal vulnerability that makes me feel like I know Pete. We have walked a similar journey and even if it’s through a book, I feel I found a kindred spirit. Thank you, Pete.