Module 1: Understanding Shame and Self-Compassion
Christopher Germer, PhD · 2 hrs contact hours
Shame vs. guilt; the three healing paradoxes; recognizing and responding to backdraft and emotional overwhelm in clinical settings.
Learning objectives — you will be better able to:
- Differentiate shame from guilt based on psychological and neurobiological characteristics, including cognitive, emotional, physiological, and behavioral components.
- Apply self-compassion principles as an evidence-based approach to address shame-related distress in professional practice, including recognizing emotional overwhelm (“backdraft”) and development of appropriate safety responses.
Module 2: Mindfulness and Grief: Sorrow, Loss & Communal Contexts
Francis Weller, MFT · 2 hrs contact hours
The Five Gates of Grief; cultural barriers to mourning; grief and gratitude as complementary forces and the link to clinician burnout.
Learning objectives — you will be better able to:
- Describe cultural and communal factors that shape grief expression, including barriers to mourning in individualistic Western contexts.
- Explain how communal and ritual approaches to grief can support sustained emotional capacity in both personal and professional contexts.
Module 3: Self-Empathy & Self-Empowerment: A Needs-Based Approach
Myra Walden, MA & Bob Wentworth, PhD · 2.75 hrs contact hours
A seven-step Nonviolent Communication process — observation, judgment, somatic awareness, feelings, needs, mourning, inner silence — for emotional clarity and intentional action.
Learning objectives — you will be better able to:
- Describe a structured self-empathy process that integrates observation, emotional differentiation, somatic awareness, and needs recognition based on Nonviolent Communication principles.
- Apply needs-based awareness practices to a challenging situation to help reduce emotional reactivity, increase empathy, and enhance capacity for an intentional response.
Module 4: Mindful Sensitivity & Tonglen: Buddhist-Informed Clinical Practice
Fiona Brandon, MPS, MA, LMFT · 1.75 hrs contact hours
Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling tones; Tonglen as a silent in-session self-regulation tool to buffer against compassion fatigue.
Learning objectives — you will be better able to:
- Describe the clinical applications of Mindful Sensitivity — structured awareness of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral experience — as a therapeutic tool for supporting metacognitive awareness, affect regulation, and reduced emotional reactivity.
- Apply Tonglen, a compassion practice of giving and receiving, within clinical settings to support therapeutic presence, nervous system regulation, and empathic distress prevention across diverse client presentations.