For Coaches, Therapists and Healers

A Masterclass with David Bedrick

The root cause of trauma is actually shame.

When we are abused earlier in life, our systems experience a special kind of injury that requires someone who sees, cares about, and validates our experience. 

Now, if that abuse is witnessed by someone who sees it and has a compassionate or protective response, the violence injures the person, but it doesn't lead to freezing, fawning, or any traumatic reactions.

It begins healing itself, naturally and there is either no trauma or it recedes.

BUT, when there is no witness, a denying witness, or a gaslighting witness, the healing process freezes.  All of our reactions, including our pains, angers, resistance, and fears, are marginalized, suppressed, punished, and shamed. In short, they live in our shadow.

This frozen state is what we call trauma – a state not only caused by the perpetrating person or system, but by the lack of witnessing the person experiences

That's why UNSHAMING is the essence of trauma healing – unshaming is a skilled and aware form of witnessing, that DEFROSTS the frozen state. Unshaming includes witnessing somatic experience, inner dialogue, voice, movement, shaking–all the things that happen in the body and psyche that are locked in.

“Bedrick offers a deep, astute, accessible, & practice-based path to divesting from the most debilitating mind state - shame.”

—Gabor Maté, MD

To be trauma-informed, you need to know that the most powerful aspect of an abuse story is the perpetrator, but the most powerful aspect of healing the resulting trauma is directly related to how that story was witnessed.  As a result, to be trauma-informed, you will need to know how to guide your client through a witness inquiry.

To be trauma-informed:

You must learn about the etiology of trauma. 

Trauma is born of abuse that has been denied, gaslit, dismissed or neglected. 

To be trauma-informed, you need to understand how people and systems that denied, dismissed, neglected or gaslit your client’s story and experience live in their psyche, bypassing and marginalizing their feelings and self-trust.  

You must learn about what happens when trauma overwhelms the system. 

When trauma overwhelms the system, we respond, naturally and organically, by dissociating. 

To be trauma-informed, you need to become aware of dissociative states and how to honor the organic function of your client’s dissociation. 

You must learn how trauma impacts our personal development.

Trauma freezes our psychological development, leaving parts of the Self caught in earlier feelings, projections, and unmet needs. 

To be trauma-informed, you need to recognize how your client’s feelings and life patterns relate to their early stories.

You must learn how trauma disconnects people from their power and consent-making function.

To be trauma-informed, you must see how working with your client’s power and boundary-making capacity is actually a part of trauma healing.

You must learn about the use of somatic experience in healing trauma.

Because trauma leaves suppressed feelings in its wake, we need methods to access those feelings. Those methods must NOT ONLY access interoceptive or proprioceptive body experience, but also somatic experience that can be expressed in the body’s movement and voice.

You must learn how trauma perpetuates itself in the psyche by showing up as abusive inner criticism and internalized oppression. 

When inner criticism is unconscious and unwitnessed, it retraumatizes the person on a daily basis. Working with inner criticism is a significant part of trauma healing.

THE ESSENCE OF TRAUMA INFORMED ETHICS 

Because trauma disconnects people from their capacity to consent, clients are less able to say “yes” or “no” or “slow down” with you. However, they will still communicate this information in the form of tones, pauses, and body language. I call these "minimal cues.” In other words, their fawning and inability to set boundaries can unwittingly and unconsciously create a relationship WITH YOU that is abusive and retraumatizing unless you build an awareness of these minimal cues. 

Here’s what students have said:

"David Bedrick is a gentle warrior. His methodology is phenomenal. The most kind, soft, powerful vehicle I’ve ever encountered to heal trauma and release shame.”

 “David makes a safe space for a deep deep healing and expression.”

In this seminar, David will discuss each of the issues above, model them by telling stories from his own practice, and leave time for questions that you may have. 

Caveat: The goal of the seminar is to inform you about what trauma really is, where it comes from, and the kind of skills you need if you want to be more than trauma-informed, but be trauma-skilled. You will not be taught the requisite skills required to work with these issues. That education requires months of education. 

GET ACCESS TO THE CLASS:

The live class is now complete and the recording is available for purchase for $50

Don't miss this profound training!

“David's work is the most profound healing work I have experienced in my long lifetime! His insights and deeply present and caring approach are a revelation. I am changed, in the best of ways.”

“I had never heard someone talk about the impact of witnessing before!! It’s SO important and no one talks about it.”

MEET YOUR FACILITATOR:

David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he offers facilitation training to deepen the skills and awareness of healers as well as workshops for individuals to further their own personal development. David’s embodied way of teaching is far more than informational, students are often brought to tears and face to face with their beauty, power, life path and soul. 

David’s passion for studying shame arose from his childhood, growing up with a father who used fists and belts to express his rage and a mother who coped by denying and gaslighting his experience. Over thirty years of research, teaching, and working with individuals awakened his heart and mind to how the dominant healing paradigm pathologizes people—seeing our sufferings and ills as something to fix and cure instead of messages to be understood and invitations to deepen our relationships with ourselves and the world around us. In this way, David understands our difficulties as “dreams”—invitations to insight, soul, and the divine unfolding of our lives. 

David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.  

His fourth book, The Unshaming Way, was published by North Atlantic Books in November 2024.