Shame is perhaps the most painful of all emotions. It is at the root of both the inner critic and perfectionism. It binds with other emotions, such as anger and fear, so it is often hard to detect. Also, revealing shame can be in itself shameful. For many clients who don’t get better in therapy, shame — unacknowledged and not worked through — is the primary factor.

2 Saturdays: February 15 & 22, 2025, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific Time

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In this advanced workshop, you will learn to help yourselves and your clients shift the shame, transforming it from toxic freeze to helpful change agent. How do we learn from and modify our words and behaviors without going into the toxic freeze state of shame? Even when we have been shamed or abused, how do we take responsibility for the part of what happened that is ours, even if it is quite small, and learn from it? We will cover the shame produced in many situations in which we feel we have let someone down or broken some important rules, including affairs.

4 Fridays, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm Pacific Time (February 21 & March 7, 14, 21, 2025). No class on February 28.

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Shame and trauma are both states of freeze. Shame, like trauma, puts the body in a freeze state and lowers the ability to think and act clearly. Shame almost always accompanies trauma—and being shamed can have a traumatic effect. In this intermediate workshop, we will explore the connection between shame and trauma and look at ways to unlock somatic and imaginal resources to work with both effectively.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have taken at least one previous Healing Shame workshop with us or have significant training in working with trauma.

2 Saturdays: April 19 & 26, 2025 10:00 am - 6:00 pm Pacific Time

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Working with shame cognitively can only get us so far. When clients get stuck in shame, the most powerful way to help them get unstuck is to activate their imagination. In this workshop, we will utilize techniques from Drama Therapy, Focusing, Expressive Arts Therapy, Jungian active imagination processing and Hakomi to explore the critical voices and/or the childhood scenes that are still driving the internal shame dynamic in the client.

2 Saturdays: May 31 & June 7, 2025, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific Time

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In many studies of the effectiveness of therapy, a strong connection between therapist and client has been noted as the clearest predictor of success. And yet our own fear and shame of doing the wrong thing can get in the way of that connection. In this workshop, you will discover powerful tools to connect with a client quickly and deeply. We will provide demonstrations to help you decide when to hold back and when to bring yourself forward, both emotionally and physically, and we will examine ways to level the playing field that shame distorts—and combine the seemingly contradictory roles of caring friend and trusted expert.

2 Saturdays: July 12 & 19, 2025 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific Time

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Shame is designed to keep us safe by binding with the other primary emotions, lower their intensity, and keep them from completing in an action, such as grieving, reaching out, or setting a boundary. When shame binds with anger, fear, joy, curiosity, or grief, those emotions cannot finish. We get caught in a maze of feelings, with no end. In this workshop, we will learn how to help clients untangle shame from the other primary emotions so that they can complete. And we will learn techniques to untangle the binds so the client can live their life in a fuller, more productive, and more joyful way.

2 Saturdays: September 20 & 27, 2025 10:00 am – 6:00 pm Pacific Time

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Shame is an embodied belief that "something is wrong with me." Because shame exists in the body as well as in the mind, it is helpful for therapists to work with shame somatically. In this workshop, you will explore how to utilize somatic techniques to connect more quickly with the client and forge a strong therapeutic alliance. You will learn how to prevent somatic counter-transference and avoid taking on the client's physical shame patterns, explore how to keep your clients more present in the room with you, and counter over-verbalization, dissociation and freezing.

2 Saturdays: October 18 & 25, 2025, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific Time

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Though we may develop adult bodies and think our childhood is long behind us, somewhere inside the child is still alive, deeply influencing our thoughts, words and actions. In this workshop, we will teach you how to help your clients reestablish a healthy relationship with their inner child—so that they can both listen and talk to that sensitive, creative and essential part of us.

2 Saturdays: November 15 & 22, 2025, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific Time

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