This class will present an emotion-focused approach to resolving two different types of emotional problems often encountered in therapy- intra-psychic shame and interpersonal emotional injuries.

Shame is one of the most painful and debilitating human emotions while emotional injuries are burdens we can carry with us for many years. It is remarkable how many of us struggle with carrying the burden of unresolved bad feelings, either feeling bad about ourselves or towards others.

In relation to the self, people feel the shame of being not good enough, feel flawed or worthless from abuse, or from the internalization of experiences of criticism and humiliation. Towards other’s, often towards people in close relationships like parents, siblings, ex-spouses or even current partners people carry corrosive unresolved anger and the sadness of abandonment or neglect. Both of these types of emotional wounds block people from engaging fully in life and often are at the root of much emotional pain and psychological dysfunction.

In this workshop we will look at how to work with different types of shame and injuries.

We will look at the difference between shame and guilt and between healthy and unhealthy anger and sadness. We also will distinguish different processes of resolution of the underlying core painful feelings by, acceptance, forgiveness or letting go. Finally we will give clinicians practical and specific interventions to help clients deal with feelings of shame and to help them resolve their anger and hurt from interpersonal emotional injuries.

Educational Objectives:

Participant will:

• Gain a differentiated understanding of different shame processes.
• Learn when to regulate and when to access emotion.
• Identify how to intervene differentially with emotion
• Learn how to access adaptive emotions to produce change.
• Identify emotional processing phases in resolving  emotional injuries