Working with Shame and Grief: Self-Compassion and Emotional Resilience in Clinical Practice

About this pathway

Shame and grief are among the most challenging — and least directly addressed — emotional terrain clinicians encounter. This course develops the affective and relational competencies to meet that terrain skillfully. Christopher Germer examines shame and the empirical research on self-compassion; Francis Weller explores grief and the communal practices that support it; Myra Walden and Bob Wentworth introduce needs-based self-empathy as a relational repair mechanism; and Fiona Brandon presents Mindful Sensitivity and tonglen as compassion practices clinicians can use in session and for their own resilience. Each program deepens the clinician's capacity to work skillfully with difficult emotional states — both in clients and in themselves — while offering tools that are simultaneously clinical, relational, and meaningful.

The 4 sessions · 8.5 CE contact hours

Each session is a recorded video with an assessment. The filed learning objectives are listed under every module.

1. 

   01· 2 hrs· Christopher Germer, PhD

   Understanding Shame and Self-Compassion

   Shame vs. guilt; the three healing paradoxes; recognizing and responding to backdraft and emotional overwhelm in clinical settings.

   Learning objectives

   • 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.
2. 

   02· 2 hrs· Francis Weller, MFT

   Mindfulness and Grief: Sorrow, Loss & Communal Contexts

   The Five Gates of Grief; cultural barriers to mourning; grief and gratitude as complementary forces and the link to clinician burnout.

   Learning objectives

   • 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.
3. 

   03· 2.75 hrs· Myra Walden, MA & Bob Wentworth, PhD

   Self-Empathy & Self-Empowerment: A Needs-Based Approach

   A seven-step Nonviolent Communication process — observation, judgment, somatic awareness, feelings, needs, mourning, inner silence — for emotional clarity and intentional action.

   Learning objectives

   • 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.
4. 

   04· 1.75 hrs· Fiona Brandon, MPS, MA, LMFT

   Mindful Sensitivity & Tonglen: Buddhist-Informed Clinical Practice

   Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling tones; Tonglen as a silent in-session self-regulation tool to buffer against compassion fatigue.

   Learning objectives

   • 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.

Questions clinicians ask

The other pathways in this curriculum

• Pathway IThe Neuroscience of Mindfulness: Attention, Habit Change, and Anxiety9.5 CE contact hours · 5 sessionsRichard J. Davidson, PhD · Rick Hanson, PhD · Judson Brewer, MD, PhD$179
• Pathway IIGuiding and Teaching Mindfulness: Ethics, Skill, and Adaptations for Adults and Children8 CE contact hours · 4 sessionsJames Baraz, MA · Donald Rothberg, PhD · Susan Kaiser Greenland, JD · Rick Hanson, PhD$149
• Pathway IVTrauma-Sensitive Mindfulness and Clinical Safety: Adverse Effects, Serious Illness, and Chronic Pain11.5 CE contact hours · 6 sessionsWilloughby Britton, PhD · David Treleaven, PhD · Susan Bauer-Wu, PhD, RN · Vidyamala Burch, OBE · Oren Jay Sofer$227

Taking all four? The complete bundle covers 37.5 CE contact hours and saves $227 versus enrolling separately.