Your Shame Certification Training Schedule
Day 1: January 11, 2027 — 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central
Shame as a Core Clinical Process
- Shame vs. guilt: clinical distinctions and implications
- Shame as identity-based (“I am bad”) vs. behavior-based distress
- Shame as a transdiagnostic driver of psychopathology
Childhood Attachment Injury, Trauma and the Origin of Shame
- Early attachment injury and internalized shame schemas
- Intergenerational and cultural transmission of shame
- Trauma, dissociation, and shame-based identity formation
- Relational survival strategies (compliance, perfectionism, avoidance, oppositionality, people-pleasing)
Shame, the Nervous System and Emotional Dysregulation
- Shame and autonomic nervous system states (collapse, shutdown, hypervigilance)
- Links between shame, emotional dysregulation, and maladaptive coping
- Attunement as the key to therapeutic change
- Co-regulating safety and equal power in the therapeutic relationship
- Therapists as attachment figures
Strategies to Build Emotional Literacy and Agency
- Teach clients to tolerate discomfort and bridge paradox
- Productive ways to express anger
- Emotional regulation tools and exercises
Day 2: January 12, 2027 — 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central
The Shame Treatment Toolbox: Narrative Therapy, Somatic, Mindfulness and Complementary Approaches
- Narrative therapy techniques to externalize clients’ feelings of shame
- Imagery rescripting and trauma reprocessing techniques
- Self-compassion and mindfulness-based approaches
- Breathing techniques to bring emotional and physical calm
- The role of yoga, dance, and movement in mediating shame
- Therapeutic art techniques – how clients can process pain outside of themselves
- Reconnect to the self with nature therapy strategies
- Research, risks and limitations
Experiential and Parts Work Interventions to Create Corrective Emotional Experiences
- Therapist stance: reduce reenactments of shame in the therapy relationship
- Use attunement, validation, and empathy to restore dignity
- Repair ruptures and build secure attachment experiences
- Chair work as a tool to confront the internalized shame voice
- Role plays to rewrite the “not enough” story in real time
- Work with protective parts that developed to hide, manage, and survive shame
- Research, risks and limitations
Build Shame Resilience and Authentic Identity
- Transform shame into self-compassion and agency
- The role of social support and connection in reducing shame
- Support clients in developing authentic self-expression and boundaries
- Identify how shame functions as a transdiagnostic emotion, influencing various mental health conditions.
- Analyze factors correlated with the frequent experience of shame, including parental care, expectations, and attachment styles.
- Analyze the role of shame proneness as it relates to posttraumatic cognitions and posttraumatic stress symptoms.
- Examine the relevance of Polyvagal theory and the neurobiology of shame and trauma to treatment.
- Develop a safe co-regulating therapeutic environment to process shame and trauma.
- Apply empathic attunement strategies to strengthen the therapeutic alliance and create the relational safety necessary for clients to explore shame-based material.
- Analyze family systems dynamics and the development of the false self to help clients dismantle shame-based protective identities.
- Use mindfulness exercises to help clients regulate emotional arousal in shame processing.
- Apply somatic practices to reduce perceived internal shame and increase self-compassion.
- Identify perfectionism, co-dependency, and other behavioral patterns as shame-based defenses.
- Apply emotional regulation and literacy tools to help clients interrupt shame-driven responses and internalize a stable sense of worthiness.
- Analyze the intersection of sexual culture, gender, and shame to better assess and treat clients impacted by shame-based sexual narratives.
- Identify the clinical relationship between shame, body image disturbance, and disordered eating and apply targeted interventions.
- Utilize self-compassion practices to help shame-prone clients build capacity for self-forgiveness and reduce shame-driven psychological distress.
