Shame Specialist Certification Training
Tools for Attachment Trauma, Identity Wounds and the "Not Enough" Story
- Speaker:
- Patti Ashley, PhD, LPC
- Duration:
- Approx 12 hrs
- Copyright:
-
Nov 12, 2026
- Product Code:
- POS150998
- Media Type:
- Digital Seminar - Also available: Live Webinar
Description
- Your clients have carried “not enough” for long enough
- Help them become who they were always meant to be as a certified shame specialist
Shame isn’t just a feeling – it’s the hidden engine driving your most complex, stuck, and hard-to-reach clients.
Behind the perfectionism, the people-pleasing, the rage, the shutdown, and the self-sabotage is a story your clients have carried since childhood: I am not enough.
In this powerful certification training, Dr. Patti Ashley guides you through a comprehensive approach that goes beyond symptom management to address the attachment injuries, identify wounds, and nervous system patterns that keep clients locked in shame-based survival.
Whether shame shows up as depression, anxiety, addiction, disordered eating, relationship dysfunction, or chronic self-doubt …
… this training gives you a full clinical toolbox to guide clients toward hearing with narrative therapy, somatic interventions, parts work, mindfulness, imagery rescripting, chair work, and experiential techniques.
As a Certified Shame Specialist you’ll be able to:
- Identify shame as a transdiagnostic driver across your entire caseload
- Work with the nervous system to co-regulate shame states in session
- Rewrite the “not enough” story with clients in real time
- Create corrective experiences that interrupt shame’s oldest, deepest patterns
- Help clients move from shame and survival to authentic identity and agency
This training will turn you into the therapist who finally helps clients believe: I am enough.”
Purchase now!
P.S. Upon completion, you can earn your certification, a digital badge and inclusion in an online directory for FREE!
Credit
Speaker
Patti Ashley, PhD, LPC Related seminars and products
Patti Ashley, PhD, LPC, is a psychotherapist, international speaker and best-selling author of Living in the Shadow of the Too-Good Mother Archetype (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, 2014)
With over 20 years of experience as a licensed counselor, Dr. Ashley brings unique insights into the identification and treatment of trauma, shame, grief and dysfunctional family patterns. She has counseled individuals, couples, families and groups in mental health agencies, psychiatric hospitals, and private practice settings. She currently maintains a private practice in Colorado where her Authenticity Architecture model helps clients break through unconscious barriers and rediscover a sense of self-love, belong, and connection.
Dr. Ashley is also the author of Shame-Informed Therapy: Treatment Strategies to Overcome Core Shame and Reconstruct the Authentic Self (PESI Publishing, 2020) and Letters to Freedom (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, 2019). In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Ashley develops and teaches continuing education courses for psychotherapists, physicians, hospital wellness programs, universities, and several private organizations.
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Patti Ashley has an employment relationship with Authenticity Architects. She receives royalties as a published author. Dr. Ashley receives a speaking honorarium, recording, and book royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Patti Ashley has no relevant non-financial relationships.
Additional Info
Access for Self-Study (Non-Interactive)Access never expires for this product.
For a more detailed outline that includes times or durations of time, if needed, please contact cepesi@pesi.com.
Questions?
Visit our FAQ page at www.pesi.com/faq or contact us at www.pesi.com/info
Objectives
- Examine 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.
- Utilize self-compassion practices to help shame-prone clients build capacity for self-forgiveness and reduce shame-driven psychological distress.
Outline
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
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
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Marriage and Family Therapists
- Psychologists
- Registered Psychotherapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Nurse Practitioners
Reviews
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