Janina Fisher, PhD
Hello
I am frequently contacted by therapists for help treating their traumatized clients. When I talk with them — and these are well-trained trauma therapists — the same roadblock keeps coming up over and over again.
Shame creates an immovable obstacle to successful treatment for nearly every therapist I know.
I, too, see the damage caused by shame in my own clients, preventing them from healing fully from trauma.
So, as I often do, I took this therapeutic dilemma and dissected it, deconstructing it until I figured out the complex relationship between shame and a history of trauma.
And here’s what I discovered:
We therapists frequently confuse shame with low self-esteem, often assuming that it results from the degradation of being abused.
But shame and low self-esteem are very different things.
This is why trying to increase clients’ self-esteem doesn’t touch their deep-seated shame. And why working with trauma without understanding how to address shame can stop treatment in its tracks.
And that is what inspired me to create this new course, Shame and Self-Loathing in the Treatment of Trauma.
Here’s what you will learn in this unique online course:
- Session 1: Shame and Trauma: Understanding Shame as a Survival Response
- Session 2: How Experiences of Shame Become Cognitive Schemas –
- Session 3: The Vicious Circles of Shame –
- Session 4: Working with Shame as a Reflection of Fragmented Parts
- Session 5: A Relational Approach to Shame
In these five sessions, Shame and Self-Loathing in the Treatment of Trauma will show you how to integrate various techniques that help clients transform shame-based actions and reactions. You’ll be able to help clients fight the power of shame and not let it determine the course of their lives.
You will understand shame from a neurobiological perspective and see how it differs from low self-esteem.
You will learn how to address shame as a trauma response and develop a toolkit of effective strategies for clients who struggle with shame.
You’ll be able to build your repertoire with sensorimotor interventions emphasizing posture, movement, and gesture and develop parts-related techniques that increase self-compassion.
The shame your clients are dealing with will feel less overwhelming. You will gain confidence in your ability to gradually lead them out of the shame spiral.
Join us in changing the lives of those suffering from trauma-based shame.
FIVE SHAME AND SELF-LOATHING IN THE TREATMENT OF TRAUMA 2-HOUR TRAINING MODULES WITH JANINA
Access to the Academy of Therapy Wisdom private membership site
Downloadable course materials
Here’s everything that’s included: Shame and Self-Loathing in the Treatment of Trauma
Transforming the Shape of Shame - with De West, C-IAYT, RYT, RPYT
Shame as an Attachment Wound
Plus, these special bonuses:
Shame and Trauma: Understanding Shame as a Survival Response
For people experiencing trauma, the effects of shame are ‘protective’ in a time of threat. For trauma survivors, shame remains as a response to both negative and positive contexts. Mistakes, criticism, and poor performance trigger shame, but so does success, validation, and positive feedback. Learn how shame is used to navigate both success and failure so you understand the complexity of addressing shame.
In this session, you will learn about:
- Shame as an automatic survival response
- How shame helps regulate risk for trauma survivors
- Re-interpreting shame to evoke curiosity
- The danger of thinking success is going to cure shame
How Experiences of Shame Become Cognitive Schemas
Shame is a physical and emotional response without words. After a shame attack, we try to make meaning of what we feel. But, of course, the words and meaning reflect just how awful shame feels: degrading, humiliating, overwhelming, small, and powerless. When this cycle is repeated, the beliefs become a lens through which all subsequent experience is interpreted.
In this session, you will learn about:
- The belief systems that are created by shame
- How shame beliefs result in physical responses
- Disrupting shame-related patterns
- Challenges to breaking the schema
The Vicious Circles of Shame
Beliefs have the power to stimulate a shame response each time the client repeats, “I’m worthless,” “I’m stupid,” or “I’m a failure.” In turn, the physical/emotional response to these words reinforces the beliefs, creating a vicious circle of increasing shame. You can help clients differentiate between the feelings and the words, so they notice the impact of each. Then, learn new mindfulness-based somatic interventions that address both shame responses and beliefs so your clients don’t remain stuck in the cycle of shame.
In this session, you will learn about:
- The development of shame-based beliefs
- The destructiveness of shame-based responses
- How to interpret shame so it informs your treatment interventions
- Three interventions to break the cycle of shame
Working with Shame as a Reflection of Fragmented Parts
Beyond the destructive cycle of shame is its tendency to result in dissociation and fragmentation. Learn how shame reflects a relationship between two parts of the individual: a part that judges, criticizes, or humiliates, and a part that feels attacked, mortified, and ashamed. Explore how to interrupt the vicious circles of shame and protect your client from the critical part that keeps the client feeling small and invisible.
In this session, you will learn about:
- Addressing shame as a parts issue
- How to challenge client’s unconditional acceptance of shame-based beliefs
- Helping clients develop compassion for the ‘ashamed part’
- Employing empathy as a therapist’s powerful intervention for shame
A Relational Approach to Shame
The therapist’s own relationship with shame can be a powerful intervention. While simply empathizing with shame, or exploring the traumatic events that caused it, does not transform shame, using ourselves to regulate and shift experiences of shame opens up new therapeutic opportunities. This workshop provides the added benefit of helping therapists work with their own shame.
In this session, you will learn about:
How to use our right-brain-to-right-brain communication as a tool
Capitalizing on an understanding of mirror neurons
Treating shame from the “bottom up”
- Non-verbal as well as verbal interventions
- Challenging the negativity bias
HERE’S WHAT YOU WILL LEARN INSIDE: Shame and Self-Loathing in the Treatment of Trauma
Meet Your Presenter
Janina Fisher, Ph.D.
Janina Fisher, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and a former instructor at Harvard Medical School. An international expert on the treatment of trauma, she is an Advisory Board member of the Trauma Research Foundation. Dr. Fisher is the author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017), Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021), and The Living Legacy Instructional Flip Chart (2022). She is best known for her work on integrating mindfulness-based and somatic interventions into trauma treatment.
CE Information:
This program has been approved for 10 distance learning CEs via the following organizations: NASW MA Chapter, CAMFT, NBCC.
Complete CE info can be found by clicking here.
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