You are not too much. You are not too little. You are enough.
Somatic therapy for shame and self-worth, support for adults and teens in Marin County and throughout California.
It shows up differently for different people. For some it's a relentless inner critic that never lets up, no matter how much they achieve or produce. For others it's a persistent sense of not quite belonging, of feeling fundamentally different from everyone else in a way that can never quite be fixed. For others still it's the deep, quiet belief that they are, at their core, too much, not enough, or simply unworthy of the love and belonging they watch other people find.
Shame is one of the most painful human experiences and one of the most hidden. Unlike guilt, which says "I did something bad," shame says "I am something bad." It is not just an emotion but a damaging self concept that leads to great suffering. It is an identity. And it has a way of running quietly underneath everything, shaping choices, relationships, and the way we move through the world, often without us ever realizing it.
If you recognize yourself here, you are not alone. And there is a way through.
Why somatic therapy for shame
How I work with shame & self-worth
My approach to shame is relational above all else because shame is fundamentally a relational wound, and healing it requires a relational experience of safety and genuine acceptance. The therapeutic relationship itself is part of how healing happens.
Within that relationship, we work somatically by noticing where shame lives in your body, how it moves, what activates it, and what helps it soften. We draw on Internal Family Systems (IFS) to work with the protective parts of you that developed around shame: the inner critic, the people-pleaser, the perfectionist, the self-saboteur. We’ll discover what they're guarding and help those parts finally get some relief.
We also work to rebuild what so much shame has damaged: your relationship with yourself. Your capacity to feel safe in your own skin, to know your own worth from the inside rather than constantly seeking it from the outside, to trust your own experience, needs, and desires. The Rhythms of Resource framework speaks directly to this by showing you how to move from Presence (safety in yourself) through Play (reclaiming a sense of wonder and possibility) to Peace (a deep, abiding sense of wholeness that doesn't depend on external validation).
What clients often discover
This might be for you if:
Shame is a profoundly physical experience. When it activates we feel exposed, humiliated, or fundamentally flawed and the body responds: the chest collapses, the gaze drops, the breath shortens. The impulse to hide, shrink, or disappear takes over. Chronic shame shapes not just how we think about ourselves but how we hold ourselves, how we take up space, how we relate to others and to our own needs and desires.
Talking about shame can help; naming it, understanding its origins, recognizing the experiences that created it. But the body often needs more than understanding. It needs new experiences of identity: the experience of being seen without being shamed, of feeling safe enough to be fully present, of discovering that the self that was hidden in shame is actually worthy of curiosity, care, and even delight.
Somatic therapy creates the conditions for those new experiences. And because the body holds shame so deeply, working somatically is often what finally allows it to release.
Clients working with shame and self-worth frequently experience:
A quieting of their inner critic. While no part ever goes away, there can be a significant reduction in its volume and authority.
More capacity to receive care, connection, and positive regard from others without deflecting or dismissing it.
A growing sense of their own worth that comes from the inside. Worth that’s stable, embodied, and increasingly independent of achievement, appearance, or approval.
Healthier, more authentic relationships as the shame-driven patterns of people-pleasing, withdrawal, or intensity begin to shift.
A profound and often surprising sense of coming home to themselves and feeling, perhaps for the first time, like they are enough exactly as they are.
You live with a persistent inner critic that no amount of achievement seems to quiet.
You feel fundamentally different from other people, like everyone else received a manual for belonging that you never got.
You find it difficult to receive love, care, or compliments without deflecting, minimizing, or waiting for judgement.
You people-please, over-function, or self-sabotage in ways you understand intellectually but can't seem to stop.
You're ready to stop managing shame and start actually healing it.
