Break the Shame Spiral: A Free Somatic Event on Healing Hidden Shame with Arielle Schwartz

When did you first learn it wasn’t safe to be fully yourself?

You’ve probably done the work. Read the books, sat with a therapist, named your patterns. And still, in certain moments, your chest tightens, your voice disappears, or a familiar wave of “not enough” shows up before you can think your way past it.

According to psychologist and trauma recovery expert Dr. Arielle Schwartz, that reaction has a name, and it isn’t a character flaw. It’s functional freeze, a nervous system response tied to inherited and deeply held shame. Not shame as embarrassment, but shame as a protective strategy your body built to keep you safe when belonging, connection, or self-expression once felt threatened.

In her free online event, How to Heal Hidden Shame, Arielle offers a compassionate framework for understanding where that shame spiral comes from, and a guided somatic practice for working with it directly in the body.

Why This Matters Right Now

Shame doesn’t usually announce itself. It hides underneath anger, grief, and anxiety, tangled together beneath the surface until you can’t quite tell what you’re actually feeling or what you actually need. Left unexamined, it quietly limits how much of your energy, voice, and vitality is available to you in everyday life.

Understanding shame as a protective response, rather than a personal failure, is often the shift that makes healing possible. That reframe alone can soften years of self-judgment.

Who This Is For

This event is a fit if you recognize any of the following:

It’s especially useful if you’ve already done inner work, know your patterns intellectually, and are ready for a body-based approach that goes beneath the story.

What You’ll Explore

• A guided somatic experience for recognizing where shame limits your natural vitality, and what opens up when that energy is freed
• The core building blocks of emotional intelligence, and how they support self-worth and healthier relationships
• Why shame, anger, grief, and anxiety often tangle together, and how separating them helps you name what you truly need
• How shame quietly shuts down access to your other emotions, and what that costs you day to day
• Why shame functions as a form of protection, and how understanding its purpose builds self-compassion instead of self-judgment
• Practical, body-based tools for working with difficult emotions so you feel steadier and more self-trusting

About Dr. Arielle Schwartz

Dr. Arielle Schwartz is a licensed clinical psychologist, certified complex trauma professional, EMDR consultant, and yoga teacher based in Boulder, Colorado. She’s the author of seven books, including The Complex PTSD Workbook, EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology, and Applied Polyvagal Theory in Yoga. As founder of the Center for Resilience Informed Therapy, she trains therapists worldwide in an integrative, mind-body approach that blends relational therapy, somatic psychology, EMDR, and applied polyvagal theory.

What Colleagues Say About Her Work

During the event, Arielle will also share details about her upcoming 7-week live video course, where she goes deeper into unwinding shame from the body, healing attachment wounds, and restoring nervous system regulation, for anyone who wants to continue the work beyond this free session.

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