Breaking the Spell: The Key to Recovering Self-esteem [Paperback]

Breaking the Spell will help the reader to understand how self-esteem operates through uncovering the negative and punitive thinking and behaviour by which we maintain low self-esteem. This book suggests ways of breaking these destructive behaviour patterns and provides ways to create a healthier and more loving sense of self. Positive self-esteem helps us to demand respect, it gives us the confidence to stand up for ourselves and to go out in the world. It enables us to take responsibility for our actions without wracking ourselves with needless guilt and shame. When we learn to stop hating ourselves, what has to replace it is Love.

This book has its own unique angle on a popular topic and aims to put its ideas across in a direct and accessible manner. Breaking the Spell is about understanding how self-esteem operates. It seeks to uncover the systems of negative and punitive thinking and behaviour, by which we maintain low self-esteem. It offers ways of breaking these destructive behaviour patterns and provides suggestions for creating a healthier and more loving sense of self. I believe that when we learn to stop hating ourselves, what has to replace it is Love.... Each chapter builds the journey, step by step, from low self-esteem to a sense of self worth that can be consolidated and can thrive. The chapters contain exercises for you to use and suggestions for rewarding yourself for having reached the end of the chapter. It is up to you whether or not you do the exercises, some people like to have things to do, others just like to read and take in the ideas.

Rachael Clyne is a psychotherapist and counsellor, author and artist, living in Glastonbury. She has had a long- term interest in what is commonly known as Addiction Recovery Work and in particular, recovery from co-dependence. Co-dependence concerns dysfunctional and addictive forms of relating and sufferers often have low self- esteem. She has worked in addiction recovery centres and in particular in a unit for women, where residents frequently suffered from chronic low esteem as a result of neglect, abuse and devastating loss. Rachael has run a wide range of personal development groups and counselling training courses, including groups based on the ideas presented in the book. She has had public exhibitions of her installation work in London and around the country. She is also a published poet and priestess of Avalon. Following her husband's illness with cancer in 1983, she left her career as a professional actress to become involved with counselling cancer patients and founded London's first cancer support group. Her first book called "Cancer Your Life -Your Choice" (Thorsons 1986), aimed to bridge the differences between alternative and orthodox approaches to cancer treatment. She then went on to train in Psychosynthesis, an approach to psychotherapy that emphasises the creative and the spiritual. In 1986 she established a private practice, and has worked with individuals and groups ever since