Sheila Rubin, a master therapist with over 30 years of experience, is an internationally sought-after keynote speaker, author, teacher, and director.
Sheila is the therapist individuals, couples, and other therapists come to for support after they’ve tried everyone else. She’s helped thousands of people and saved hundreds of relationships.
Through her private therapy sessions, therapist training programs, Embodied Life Story workshops and Healing Shame workshops, she helps people of all walks of life heal their self doubt, discover their creativity and access their true voice.
Sheila is a leading authority on Healing Shame. She developed Healing Shame Therapy work over the last two decades and is the co-director, with Bret Lyon, of the Center for Healing Shame. in Berkeley, California, a continuing education provider that offers Healing Shame workshops and a full certification and training program to therapists and helping professionals.
Sheila has delivered talks, presentations and workshops across the country and around the world, at conferences from Canada to Romania. She is a Board Certified Trainer through NADTA and past adjunct faculty for the CIIS Drama Therapy Program and JFK University’s Somatic Psychology Department.
Sheila's expertise, teaching, and writing contributions have been featured in numerous publications, including seven books. Her writings on shame include the chapter “Women, Food and Feelings: Drama Therapy with Women Who Have Eating Disorders” in the book The Creative Therapies and Eating Disorders, the chapter “Almost Magic: Working with the Shame that Underlies Depression: Using Drama Therapy in the Imaginal Realm” in the book The Use of Creative Therapies in Treating Depression, and the chapter “Unpacking Shame and Healthy Shame: Therapy on the Phone or Internet” in Combining the Creative Therapies with Technology: Using Social Media and Online Counseling to Treat Clients (all books edited by Stephanie L. Brooke).
Sheila is also the creator of the Embodied Life Story Workshops, a theater for shy people and form of drama therapy she developed 20 years ago that weaves writing, Jungian dreamwork, imagination, and improvisation into embodied storytelling. She has directed over 25 self-revelatory performances for CIIS drama therapy students as their capstone projects as well as hundreds of Life Stories performances in her Embodied Life Story classes and at conferences.
Sheila offers therapy through her private practice in Berkeley and online via Zoom. She also provides consultations to therapists via Skype and leads workshops in Berkeley, internationally, and online. When she’s not transforming lives, you can find her hiking, swimming, dancing, and painting.
Sheila has served as adjunct faculty at these accredited graduate schools:
She has contributed her expertise and writing to several books. See the Shop page for links to purchase them.
My chapter is called “Healing Shame and Developing Healthy Shame in the Imaginal Realm.”
My chapter is called “Myth, Mask and Movement: Ritual Theater in a Community Setting” and that is my photo of the mask.
My chapter is called “Unpacking Shame and Healthy Shame: Therapy on the Phone or Internet.”
My chapter is called “Women, Food and Feelings: Drama Therapy with Women Who Have Eating Disorders.”
My chapter is called “Embodied Life Stories: Transforming Shame Through Self-Revelatory Performance.”
My chapter is called “Self-Revelatory Performance.” This was my first chapter!
My chapter is called “Almost Magic: Working with the Shame that Underlies Depression; Using Drama Therapy in the Imaginal Realm.”
