My UnShaming journey began while healing my own childhood trauma.

I grew up in a violent and oppressive home. My father’s brutality was physical and verbal, but the denial and dismissal by my mother has its own covert power.

Because I didn’t have a loving witness during my childhood – someone who saw, named, or acted to protect and care for my injuries – I didn’t learn how to create a sense of safety and security within myself.

Within my private practice and my classroom as a teacher of psychology, I saw this reflected back to me. I met thousands of people who were caught in the painful traps of trying to “heal” themselves based on the belief that something was wrong with them.

I knew there had to be a better way – one that could be more loving, powerful, and healing.

So I developed UnShaming, a radical approach to alleviating the pain of all manner of physical and emotional difficulties, including addiction, trauma, and abuse.

I founded the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-Based Studies to teach therapists, coaches, and healers how to facilitate therapeutic healing with their clients through UnShaming interventions.

UnShaming has transformed what I once saw as “problems” into gifts, allies, and sources of wisdom.

• What I once saw as insecurity, I now see as a capacity to be more vulnerable and acutely aware of my need for more fluid boundaries. 

• What I once saw as anger, I now see as a fire of passion and intensity that carves a path for my voice to be more empowered and free.

• What I once saw as resentment in my relationships, I now see as deeper needs and desires that are needing expression and support. 

• What I once saw as criticalness and judgment, I now see as an impulse to develop finer theories and methods for understanding the human condition as well as the urge to write and communicate those theories. 

• What I once saw as flaws, errors, and derailments, I now see as the spirit of my own intelligence, guiding me toward a more authentic life.

UnShaming has created within me an unswerving capacity to look into the eye of others’ tornadoes of manifest horrors, from sexual violence to the wounds of war.

It has allowed me to face my experiences with profound acceptance and compassionate tending.

This, too, is what it provides for my students.

It will expand your consciousness, self-love, and self-awareness as you venture onto your most meaningful, soulful path.

What will UnShaming unfold within you?

I hope to find out.

With love,

David