TRAUMA CLINIC
a 7-week Course for Coaches, Therapists and Healers
Wednesdays from September 24th to November 5th - 11am to 1:30pm Pacific
- with David Bedrick, author of The Unshaming Way -
TRAUMA is subject of great interest in the world of healing. BUT there are huge gaps in current understanding and offerings.
First, there's a serious lack of definitional clarity and understanding about what the implications of trauma are in people's lives and how to address them.
Further, while the focus on the body, somatic experience is one of the great developments in trauma healing, there is also the possibility of great harm in accessing this tool when people are not ready to enter overwhelming traumatic events. Specifically, there are several key steps that need to be taken beforehand so that people are self aware and empowered enough for healing to actually result from making somatic experience. AND, there needs to be clear ethical guidelines and accompanying skills to ensure the care and safety of the client.
Otherwise the experience is re-traumatizing and the healing is unsustainable.
In addition, there is almost no one teaching about the most important part of trauma healing - what happens when a person shares their story in a world filled with denial, dismissal, neglect and simply a pervasive lack of capacity for people to bear witness. This hole in trauma education must be addressed. The lack of truly compassionate witnessing leads people to develop a self-awareness that is not curious, intelligent, loving or healing; instead people internalize a way of ’seeing’ themselves through shaming eyes for much of the rest of their lives. How important is this to the practice of trauma healing? It can leave people believing that their healing is a path of “getting rid” of parts of themselves - a path that mirrors the darkest shadow of their trauma.
As coaches, healers and therapists, we also much grapple with the fact that people don't know enough about themselves to even share their own story. Instead, they learn their narratives from others. For example, if you work with somebody and they begin saying, "This is what I need help with, this is what I need to stop doing, this is why I need to stop feeling certain ways,” that person is likely unable to tell you what they truly need help with and the background story related to that difficulty.
One part of trauma’s enormous impact is that people literally practice, unconsciously, how to distrust themselves by internalizing the outer opinions and narratives given by others. As a result, the way people work on themselves is often shaming and retraumatizing.
And…there’s so much more that needs to be understood and taught: How trauma unfolds from unaddressed abuse, the relationship between trauma and the capacity to make boundaries, the power and intelligence of dissociation, how to unlock the gifts hidden behind the trauma, and how to use the somatic skills of body movement and voice in addition to feeling experience.
And what about trauma ethics?
How can facilitators not be aware of the tendency of trauma victims to fawn or simply be unable to be direct about what their needs? Again, this is almost totally unspoken about, yet, for me, this is absolutely fundamental to the ethical orientation and skill set that we need. Facilitators must learn to become aware of the subtle forms of client communication that tell them whether their interventions and guidance is healing or not.
This Fall, I am going to teach you:
How to help clients engage in trauma healing in a way that uncovers their natural gifts, genius and life path.
Trauma Ethics: How to attend to those minimal communications that your client makes through the body, tones and pauses so that your relationship is whole and healing.
How to think about a person's inner criticism and internalized oppression in a way that is woven into an understanding about trauma.
How to help people recover boundaries, which is essential to not being re traumatized over and over.
How to work with somatic experience in a way that includes movement, voice and other areas of the body, so we're not asking people to be still and feel something that can be traumatic in itself.
How to integrate the intelligence of dissociation into your healing strategies and skills.
All of this is becoming part of a 7 week course that will be the most comprehensive, ethical, and research based teaching on trauma.
Ps: I have never put up a course page that is not complete, but I simply couldn't wait to begin sharing what’s on my mind and heart about a topic that I have wrestled with, consciously, for literally over 40 years. If you are here reading, then you already know me and my work. Register now and you can pay my 2023 program cost ($560, in 1 or 2 payments). I am making this offer only to those who are close to my work or those who have attended my recent trauma masterclass.
Can’t wait to be together and study the hell out of this topic!
Warmly,
CLASS DETAILS
Wednesdays from September 24th to November 5th - 11am to 1pm Pacific
All classes will be recorded and sent out to all regisitrants within 24 hours of the live class. You will have on-going access to the full course and recordings even after the course ends so that you can revisit the materials and/or go at your own pace.
PAY IN FULL - Early Bird Price
1 Payment of $560
PAYMENT PLAN - Early Bird Price
2 Monthly Payments of $280
Trauma's Impact on Identity &
Trauma doesn't just affect individuals; it’s passed on through generations and impacts families, communities, society, and countries. For instance, the pain around social identity for marginalized communities often stems from systemic violence and historical trauma related to gender, race, or other aspects of identity. This isn't always a direct, personal assault; it's the internalized collective experience of harm that creates "locked-in patterns" in our bodies and psyches.
This broader understanding of trauma helps us see how so many of our ‘personal’ struggles are often deeply intertwined with larger societal dynamics and highlights the importance of being truly trauma-informed as a facilitator by broadening our perspectives and understanding how different traumatic experiences can shape a person's life, even if it doesn’t fit the post prevalent view of ‘trauma.’
In fact, much of what we perceive as "personality" or "family traits" can actually be the survival strategies of unaddressed trauma.
Many people walk through life successfully, performing daily tasks, seemingly "fine," yet parts of them remain "offline" or "locked up" due to trauma. They are surviving with strategies that emerged from deeply painful experiences.
Understanding this expanded view of trauma is the first step towards true healing. It allows us to move beyond superficial ‘fixes’ and address the root causes of our struggles, leading to genuine transformation and wholeness.
The Crucial Role of the
in Trauma & Healing
While the perpetrator initiates harm, it's the witness—those who saw, didn't see, or to whom we disclosed—who holds the most profound power in the healing process. When a violence or painful experience is met with a loving witness, someone who believes, validates, and supports your pain without gaslighting or blaming, the injury, though painful, does not freeze or lock into trauma. The natural healing process begins, and the shame that corrodes one's sense of self is averted.
If, however, we don’t have a loving witness, then we internalize a shaming witness—a voice that tells us we are to blame, that we deserved what happened, and that our natural responses are inherently wrong.
This shame and lack of compassionate witnessing is the true root of trauma.
When an injury is denied, dismissed, or neglected, the healing process freezes. Our natural reactions, including pain, anger, and fear, are suppressed and shamed, becoming locked within us. This frozen state is trauma—a condition not solely caused by the initial harm, but by the absence of validating witnessing.
This is why unshaming, a skilled and aware form of witnessing, is the essence of trauma healing.
What past students have said:
“David Bedrick has created THE most powerfully compassionate process. And he, himself, is a wizard.”
“This has been life changing! THANK YOU, DAVID!”
“David has a skill for sharing profound knowledge and making it digestible.”
Why trauma-informed awareness is
for coaches, facilitators, & healers, not just therapists
As a dedicated coach, teacher, healer or facilitator who is not a therapist, you may feel that trauma falls outside your scope of practice and that ethically, it’s not something you should work with.
I appreciate and respect your commitment to ethics and recognizing your limits AND here’s a vital truth:
If you're working with people, you're already working with trauma, whether you realize it or not.
Many persistent human difficulties – the stuck patterns that resist easy change – are rooted in trauma. Think about:
Stubborn financial struggles: Often linked to intergenerational money trauma.
Recurring relationship challenges: Frequently stem from early, "locked-in" relational patterns.
Chronic procrastination or addictive behaviors: These are often deeply entrenched coping mechanisms.
Recurring feelings of unworthiness, imposter syndrome, or cycles of depression: These aren't just personality quirks; they are often the deeply embedded echoes of past experiences.
These aren't simply coaching issues but manifestations of trauma, even if they don't fit the traditional, narrow definition of trauma. If you're encountering these persistent patterns, you are, in effect, already touching upon trauma territory.
Given this reality, being informed and developing fundamental skills in trauma awareness isn't about becoming a trauma therapist, it's about enhancing your existing capacity and ensuring you do no harm.
Without this awareness, you could inadvertently reinforce negative self-beliefs or shame programming that originated from traumatic experiences.
This course provides vital insights and foundational skills to recognize the pervasive nature of trauma, understand how it shapes human behavior, and equip you to support your clients more effectively and ethically.
The trauma understanding, skills and awareness you will learn in this course are more thorough and complete than anything out there.
Here are the ways this training is on the cutting edge:
1. Empirical definition of trauma that tells us how it is formed and 6 specific elements that need to be addressed.
2. Understanding the profound role played by witnesses to the traumatic event (e.g. people who were told later, those who were never told). In addition, offering specific skills to bring healing to the internalized witness.
3. Focus on the way inner work becomes retraumatizing.
4. Awareness of feedback as trauma ethics that deals with the consent violation and fawning in the therapeutic space.
5. Clear connection with boundaries that addresses the freezing of consent in outer relationships.
6. Understanding and set of skills to address inner criticism as a perpetuation of trauma.
7. Skills and awareness of the use of movement and voice in addition to feeling experience.
8. Understanding and specific use of the intelligence of dissociation, especially as it’s related to our re-connection with the Earth.
9. The teleology of the wound - the wounded healer and the gift in the wound.
Course
This course provides essential awareness and skills for anyone working with others. We'll move beyond conventional understandings of trauma to equip you with the tools and awarenesses to navigate its subtle, yet profound, impact.
Class 1: Trauma, Abuse & The Power of Unseen Communication
Class Date & Time: Wednesday, September 24th - 11am to 1:30pm Pacific
Understanding Trauma's Broad Reach: We'll expand the definition of trauma beyond major life events, exploring how seemingly minor or unwitnessed experiences can create deeply ingrained patterns.
Understanding Abuse: We'll define abuse not just by obvious acts of violence, but by even seemingly small acts with abuse defined by these four key qualities, each of which require a skill to work on:
An injury or hurt (this is subjective and based on personal experience i.e. what injures one person may not hurt another)
Power differential
An inability to defend oneself
Lack of consent
Understanding these qualities is critical because unwitnessed abuse becomes trauma.
The Problem of Consent in Trauma: Learn why individuals with unresolved trauma may struggle to consciously say "yes" or "no" or “slow down” and how to navigate these complexities ethically and effectively in your work.
Decoding Micro-Communication Signals and Minimal Feedback: Develop critical skills to read subtle, non-verbal cues (somatic signals, body language beyond the obvious) that indicate consent, discomfort, or unspoken needs, ensuring your interventions are truly supportive and non-harming.
Class 2: The Role of the Witness & the Intelligence of Dissociation
Class Date & Time: Wednesday, October 1st - 11am to 1:30pm Pacific
The Critical Role of the Witness: Explore the profound impact of how abuse or difficult experiences were witnessed (or not witnessed) by others. Understand how the absence or presence of a "loving witness" fundamentally shapes the development and perpetuation of trauma.
Internalizing the Narrative: Discover how external witnessing, or the lack thereof, becomes internalized, influencing self-perception ("I am a burden," "My needs are too much") and creating the lens through which you view the world.
Unshaming Dissociation: Learn to view dissociation not as a problem to be fixed, but as a natural, organic intelligence. Dissociation is the system's way of creating distance from an overwhelming event, a critical "medicine" that allows for survival. By approaching dissociation with high respect and without the intention to pathologize it, you can begin to work with it as an ally in the healing process.
Class 3: Recovering Your Natural Powers & Setting Boundaries
Class Date & Time: Wednesday, October 8th - 11am to 1:30pm Pacific
Reclaiming Your Innate Strengths: Learn how trauma can "freeze" access to our natural protective instincts and inherent powers. This class will provide insights and initial practices for helping yourself and others begin to recover these vital capacities to feel empowered.
Boundaries as Essential Healing Tools: Discover the critical link between trauma and boundary issues. When the ability to consent (saying "yes," "no," or "maybe") is compromised, it manifests as difficulty setting healthy boundaries in the outer world, perpetuating cycles of harm. Learn how to support yourself and clients in establishing clear, protective boundaries.
The Cycle of Re-Injury: Explore how unaddressed inner criticism and porous boundaries create an ongoing cycle of re-injury, both internally and externally, hindering sustained healing.
Class 4: Working with Inner Criticism
**NO LIVE CLASS THIS WEEK - Please watch the provided class recording of David’s ‘Working with Inner Criticism’ Seminar.
Inner Criticism as Perpetuated Trauma: Understand how relentless inner criticism isn't just a negative thought pattern, but a continuous re-enactment of past relational violence, keeping trauma alive internally. We'll explore strategies to interrupt this cycle.
We’ll go through these four key practices to effectively work with inner criticism:
Externalize the Critic: Encourage clients to speak the critic’s words out loud so they can be witnessed and heard.
Connect to the Body/Soma: Help clients connect with the physical sensations and feelings that arise in response to the criticism.
Interview the Critic: Engage in a dialogue with the critical viewpoint to understand its potential underlying value or intent.
Integrate the Energy: Go deeper by helping clients integrate the energy of the critic, rather than its negative content or opinion.
Class 5: The Radical Somatic Experience of Trauma
Class Date & Time: Wednesday, October 22nd - 11am to 1:30pm Pacific
Understanding the Body's Intelligence: This class goes beyond conventional somatic work to explore the Radical Soma, a holistic approach that honors the body’s full intelligence. We'll delve into the somatic experience of trauma by focusing on the body's natural impulses for feelings, movement, and voice.
Entering Your Story with Care: We will use the foundational skills from previous classes—including working with dissociation, witnessing, and micro-communication cues/feedback—to ensure we approach your trauma story safely and ethically. This is crucial to avoid re-traumatizing a client and to modulate their experience, allowing for a gentle back-and-forth between entering the story and creating distance as needed.
Giving Expression to the Body's Voice: You will learn to access the full range of the body's expressions, including movements like pushing and shaking, as well as vocalizations like screaming, groaning, and crying. These are not merely releases, but intelligent and meaningful expressions of parts of yourself that long to be integrated and heard.
Integrating, Not Just Releasing: Next we want to integrate what arises from these somatic experiences. We will focus on weaving the parts of yourself that were frozen in the past from trauma but are now freer to express into your current life, transforming them into new sources of personal power. Healing means moving toward wholeness and freeing what was once inaccessible.
Class 6: The Teleology of Trauma - Finding the Gold
Class Date & Time: Wednesday, October 29th - 11am to 1:30pm Pacific
"It turns out the wound and the gifts are in the same place. Every time we touch the wounds, we are closer to our own gifts.” -Micheal Meade
The "Wounded Healer" and Hidden Gifts: By attending to trauma with care and compassion, we can shift our perspective from simply "getting over" wounds to discovering the powerful gifts and medicine that have been "cooking" within them. This will expand on what we worked on in the last class regarding integration and wholeness. Through the lens of unshaming, learn to see struggles not as something that is ‘wrong with you’, but as a chamber of alchemy where the most potent medicine has been alchemizing. We'll honor the unique process and the intelligence that has been rising up from within, liberating the parts that have been hidden.
From Wounds to Purpose: This process helps clients move beyond the pain and patterns of the past to become more fully themselves.
What deep feelings, inner experiences, and fears are hiding within?
What wisdom and intelligence is there to glean?
What patterns are waiting to heal?
What path of heart emerges out of your client’s story?
When your relationship with trauma changes, pain and suffering transmute into medicine that brings your most authentic self into the world.
Class 7: Questions, Practice & Live Modeling
Class Date & Time: Wednesday, November 5th - 11am to 1:30pm Pacific
This class is an opportunity to wrap our course by answering your questions, practicing the skills we’ve learned over the last 6 weeks, and David will model working with students on real life examples.
CLASS DETAILS
Wednesdays from September 24th to November 5th - 11am to 1pm Pacific
All classes will be recorded and sent out to all regisitrants within 24 hours of the live class. You will have on-going access to the full course and recordings even after the course ends so that you can revisit the materials and/or go at your own pace.
PAY IN FULL - Early Bird Price
1 Payment of $560
PAYMENT PLAN - Early Bird Price
2 Monthly Payments of $280
“Your way of teaching shame is so beautiful, so important and so bone-fucking-true. I feel so blessed to be able to learn and grow with you. This is so important and you're doing the soul work my man, as a true elder in my life and also for the collective.”
– Emily
“David, thank you for such a truly life-altering experience. Even two days later, I don't fully have words for the depth of what you offered us.”
– Samantha
“David bears gifts that our world in suffering desperately needs. His way of staying curious and listening deeply to what's unfolding has shifted so much of the way I understand my own trauma and the collective trauma we are all being asked to face.”
– Nilaya Sabnis
“Every once a decade or so, I come across a teacher so inspiring, healing so profound, insight so transformative that it instantly becomes a part of my own ‘canon.’”
– Steven
MEET YOUR FACILITATOR:
David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix for 8 years as well as the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland David 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. His 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. Forty years of research, teaching, and working with individuals awakened his heart and mind to how the dominant healing paradigm pathologizes people—sees our sufferings and symptoms 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. 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 four 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.
About his fourth book, The Unshaming Way ( North Atlantic Books, 2024) Gabor Mate wrote, '“In this astute work, David Bedrick provides a deep investigation of shame, the most debilitating of our mind states, and offers a workable, practice-based, and accessible path to divesting ourselves from it.” David’s 5th book will also be published by North Atlantic Books and available early in 2026.