All of us have addictions or addictive tendencies.
What do I mean by addictive tendencies?
Habits, proclivities, and persistent hungers to alter our state of consciousness via substances or behavioral &/or relational patterns.
When these occur, we try different strategies to deal with them: surrender to them, manage them via ‘moderation,’ yo-yo back and forth from holding back to letting go, and a plethora of strategies and programs to abstain.
I know from studying the research on addictions when I taught Addictions and Dependencies at a University for several years, that the effectiveness of any approach is, at best, around 30%. That includes strategies from laying on of hands, year-long in-placement treatment, twelve steps, and more.
My own research over the past 30 years has revealed two major forces that need to be UnShamed for people to bring true and deeper healing to this dynamic:
ONE. Behind each addiction or tendency is a HUNGER. AND, that underlying hunger is valid. It is a TRUE NEED, a REAL WANT or DESIRE.
That finding has huge implications for our healing: We need methods to unearth these hungers so that we can consider choices, other than harmful ones, for meeting that hunger.
In fact, the addictive manifestations are rarely deeply and sustainably satisfying. That is one of the reasons they persist so fiercely.
While some people have offered this clarity to understand addictions, often they also proffer that there is one particular hunger, for example, the hunger for love, to escape, to self-medicate, to soothe.
I have found these words to be wholly inadequate. In fact, people’s hungers are varied, diverse, numerous, nuanced and specific to the person.
TWO. While addictive patterns create harm, from financial and relational to physical harm, even death, the DEEPER AND ACTUAL EXPERIENCE OF THE HARM IS ALMOST ALWAYS DENIED.
That does not mean that we are totally unaware of the harm, but we don’t experience it - truly feel it and witness the impact.
Again, working somatically and with the inner and outer conflictual dialogue (voices for and against the addictive pattern), unearths the harm in ways that impact the body and psyche. In short, the person FEELS AND WAKES UP TO the harm in a way that they haven’t yet.
What does shame have to do with addictions & addictive tendencies?
People don’t abuse substances or have addictive tendencies because they are bored, looking for stimulation, stressed, or prone to self-medicating. While these are the usual suspects promoted by psychology texts, media, even bloggers, they rarely bear fruit—they neither render treatment programs more successful nor match people’s experience upon deeper inquiry.
People have addictions for hundreds of different individual, almost idiosyncratic, reasons.
What we need to do is caringly and carefully investigate people’s actual experiences using their substance of choice in a way that assumes there are real needs and intelligence built into the person’s compulsion to use the substance.
Only through this approach, a labor of love really, can we can discover the deeper reasons and meaning behind people’s addictions.
I have developed a technology for accessing these hungers through the UnShaming process.
I use various somatic interventions to help people feel, dance, sing or otherwise express these hungers via the body. This allows us to go beyond the mind’s reasonings and shamings, to get the valid source of the hungers. It also allows us to open our eyes to other approaches to feeding these hungers and why that has been so difficult.
It has not been difficult because we are stupid, lack discipline, lazy, or any other ‘shaming diagnosis.’
It has been difficult because of shame - shame has suppressed these hungers, making us unaware of them. AND, shame has made the conscious expression of these hungers forbidden.
3 HOUR MASTER CLASS
UnShaming Addictions and Addictive Tendencies: Radical Paradigms for Healing the Patterns that Rule You
Get instant access to the recording of this master class!
COST: $33
What Past Students Are Saying…
“I cherish the UnShaming space David is able to create. It is clear that he lives what he teaches.
There's a way in which a class with David is akin to an inoculation against the ‘shaming witness’ that is Western society, is capitalism, is mental health oppression, is patriarchy, is colonialism, is White Supremacy. Once inoculated, denial breaks down and everywhere one looks one sees the ugly violence of shame being perpetuated against the most tender and vulnerable and misunderstood parts of ourselves.
What bravery it is to become one who UnShames, one who pauses and listens to the buried whispers of world weary souls. May I live what David has taught me. May I know what it means to truly be a loving witness, for myself and for others.”
— Tessa Wren Greene
“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. I wish everyone would adopt this way of helping people through pain. Known and unknown.”
— Sue
“David has a lovely wisdom and skill for liberating a truth you didn't know was there! I'm in the process of my third workshop with him and it's changed my life in ways I could've never imagined.”
— Paula Retter
“I’m savouring every moment of being in the program, and slowly feeling those deep internalised beliefs and voices shift.
This is life- changing work and the reverberations are enormous. Thank you for sharing your life’s work and experience with us ❤️”
“David, this experience has been shifting bedrock level things inside me in ways I can sense are only just opening. It’s beautiful!
I feel like I’m birthing a new me. And I’ve shared ideas and the exercises with my mom who was abused as a child and she’s finding healing she’s never felt 😭 Thank you for these gifts!”
— Shanna
“Thank you for helping me see myself, my story, with a brighter, more empathetic and humane lense. Your course on shame was profoundly transformative, leaving me with a renewed consciousness of the poetry of life.
“Tatiana St-Louis
The reasons people use addictive substances are often more compelling than their desire to be free from the suffering and damage addictions cause. Understanding and addressing these reasons is critical to making more powerful inroads in addiction treatment.
Most people make up explanations about why they use certain substances that are not at all connected to the experiences they have using those substances.
Addictions are like hotels - they are not home but can remind people of home so powerfully that they won’t easily abandon them without knowing where their real home is and how to get there.
How is my approach is different?
For over 30 years, I’ve supported my students in reconnecting with the wisdom, power, and intelligence of their whole and authentic selves by releasing the grip shame has over their lives.
In that time, I’ve noticed that teachers of shame overlook one vital aspect of healing…
Your deepest difficulties are not meant to be ignored or exiled, they are here to help you become yourself.
I weave this connection- and empathy-based understanding of shame into all the work I do.
My UnShaming approach is a radically loving path to healing that regards every part of you with gentle curiosity & fierce compassion
Here, we acknowledge that your addictions, thoughts, beliefs, problems, traumas, body, and dreams are brilliant and beautiful expressions of your soul.
UnShaming is one of the most revolutionary and fast-working techniques available.
3 HOUR MASTER CLASS
UnShaming Addictions and Addictive Tendencies: Radical Paradigms for Healing the Patterns that Rule You
Get instant access to the recording of this master class!
COST: $33
What Past Students Are Saying…
“Thank you very much for the wisdom you bring to the world - I have appreciated it so much. It’s like it has given me a type of permission to start to soften. I hadn’t realised it clearly but for most of my life I’ve held a hard, sharp and cutting view of myself and therefore often the world.
I’ve spent so much time looking at where I’m trying to get that it has been difficult to see how I’ve been coming from. The UnShamed paradigm has helped me see that where I’m going to can’t be anywhere I truly desire until I reorganise how I’m coming from. This witnessing of myself, others, the world, will act as the basis for me to explore how being UnShamed may allow me to express in this life.”
— Matt Augustyn
“David showed us, with wisdom and deep tenderness, how to unlearn the cultural lie (SHAME) that binds us from our most natural and gifted selves.
In a dream, during the course, I met with myself as a small child (around 4 years old). In a lonely, worried whisper she confided in me that she didn’t know how to say or do what she was ‘meant to’ like the other children. I am so glad I can now have a relationship with her (I’m only 54!) and reteach her loveliness.”
— Simone Jean Carter, Psychotherapist
“Radically simple. Radically. Just what is, observed as is, without judgement or agenda. With interest and compassion and love. Incredible approach. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be in that space and learn as David works this way.”
— Lynn Ross
“I don’t quite know how to get across just how important and valuable the work you are imparting to us in the Shame/Trauma cohort is for myself personally and in my work with clients.
It’s creating a paradigm shift in not only how I see and approach my clients but also in how I sit and be with myself in sessions. There is a huge amount of calm in being able to proceed being curious about whomever the client arrives with.”
— Christine Kahane, NBC-HWC, MCWC
ABOUT 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 to be “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 upcoming book, The Unshaming Way, will be published by North Atlantic books in 2024.