Shame, Pride and Relational Trauma: an interview with Ken Benau, trailer
Channel: Experiential Psychotherapy Training
Date: 2022-04-01

Full interview is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQsXHh2ZkiQ

Ken Benau, Ph.D. has been a licensed psychologist for 30 years, with an independent practice in psychotherapy, consulting and training, currently in Kensington, CA (SF Bay Area).  Dr. Benau has a special interest in working with children, adolescents and adults living with various learning differences, ADHD and High Functioning Autism, as well as depression and anxiety.  Dr. Benau also works with survivors of relational or developmental trauma, all from an integrative approach to psychotherapy.  His theoretical orientations include attachment and emotion-focused, psychodynamic, experiential, somatic and Coherence Therapy.  Dr. Benau has a special interest in understanding and working with shame and pride in survivors of relational trauma.

His book, "Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma" is a guide to recognizing the many ways shame and pride lie at the heart of psychotherapy with survivors of relational trauma. In these pages, readers learn how to differentiate shame and pride as emotional processes and traumatic mind/body states. They will also discover how understanding the psychodynamic and phenomenological relationships between shame, pride, and dissociation benefit psychotherapy with relational trauma. Next, readers are introduced to fifteen attitudes, principles, and concepts that guide this work from a transtheoretical perspective. Therapists will learn about ways to conceptualize and successfully navigate complex, patient-therapist shame dynamics, and apply neuroscientific findings to this challenging work. Finally, readers will discover how the concept and phenomena of pro-being pride, that is delighting in one's own and others' unique aliveness, helps patients transcend maladaptive shame and pride and experience greater unity within, with others, and with the world beyond.