What Is Unshaming Work?

I’m deeply informed by David Bedrick’s Unshaming® work, which offers a different way of relating to the parts of ourselves we’ve learned to judge, suppress, or change.

Shame is an experience of having internalized voices who tell us that there is something fundamentally wrong with us: I’m too much. I’m not enough. I shouldn’t feel this way. I should be different.
Unshaming asks us to get curious about those judgments rather than automatically believing them.

From “What’s wrong with me?” to “What’s here?”

Instead of trying to fix, overcome, or shame ourselves out of difficult emotions and behaviors, we explore what they might be expressing, protecting, or making possible. We get curious about the part that’s being shamed.

Anger might carry wisdom.
Sensitivity might have something true to say.
Resistance might be protecting a boundary.
A “problem” might be a meaningful response to something we’ve experienced.

In somatic Unshaming work, we find where a shamed part lives in the body, amplify it, and let it express through sound, movement, or words.

Making space for the whole of you

Unshaming work invites us to bring curiosity and compassion to the places where we feel most conflicted, ashamed, or unacceptable.

Rather than asking, “How can I get rid of this part of myself?” we might ask:

What if there is something valuable here?
What is this part trying to communicate?
What becomes possible when I stop fighting myself?

Unshaming is ultimately about creating a relationship with ourselves where nothing has to be exiled. We can begin to find a truer path in life, as a truer version of ourselves.