Self-paced course · Eight modules
An eight-module course on shame, identity, and what we hand to the people closest to us
Shame that cannot be held does not stay put. It gets handed to somebody.
Dr. Donetta D. Quinones, PhD, LMHC, LPC · GraceRoot Relationship Healing Institute
Who this is for
If you have ever said something small and true — when you corrected me in front of your brother, it embarrassed me — and four minutes later heard yourself apologizing for bringing it up, this course is for you. It is also for the person who has begun to suspect that the sensitivity was never the problem.
It is written for individual study and for small groups, and it assumes no background in psychology. Every lesson ends in the same two questions, in the same order: What am I carrying that was never mine? What am I handing to someone else that is mine?
What you will be able to do
The eight modules
Three lessons each, meant to be taken in order — each module assumes the one before it.
| 01 | The Machine The four minutes, the two questions, and what this course is not. |
| 02 | Guilt and Shame Two sentences that sound alike — and catching the difference in the body, before it becomes a defense. |
| 03 | Three Roads Never built, attached to a story, or installed: the house with three doors, and reading the marks each one leaves. |
| 04 | What We Build The thing you made and then trusted, the five demands you placed on it, and loosening the grip without losing the thing. |
| 05 | How Shame Hides Shame in costume, pride as resistance to an accurate assessment, and projection as relocation rather than invention. |
| 06 | Where It Lands Humiliation, the family or office container, and what happens when a system protects the defense. |
| 07 | Why Moving It Fails Relocation relieves without resolving; the three-column ledger; exposure is not causation. |
| 08 | What You Can Survive Knowing Five sentences a person can learn to say, practicing under pressure, and a covering you did not make. |
Format & what you get
Dr. Donetta D. Quinones, PhD, LMHC, LPC is a licensed mental health counselor and licensed professional counselor and the founder of GraceRoot Relationship Healing Institute, with more than two decades in mental, emotional, and spiritual health through research, training, counseling, and ministry. The teaching is trauma-informed and plain-spoken, it does not diagnose anyone, and it is built from her book Where Are You? Shame, Identity, and What We Hand to the People Closest to Us.
Price
$149
One payment, workbook included. Self-paced, revisit any time, and questions go to support@graceroot.institute.
Questions people actually ask
No, and it says so in the first module. There is no checklist here for deciding that someone has a disorder, because a label ends an inquiry rather than opening one, and no honest clinician diagnoses a person she has never met. The course describes a machine, not a villain — and it asks you two questions, the second of which is about you.
Very possibly. Module 3 is built for exactly that frustration: the conclusion is the same for everyone who carries shame, but the road is not. One of the three roads runs straight through warm, stable families organized around a story.
No. Module 1 says this plainly: being harmed does not make you responsible for the harm. You are answerable for one thing only — what you do with what you were handed.
Please do not wait for Modules 5 and 6, which describe what happens when shame lands on a person. Talk to a counselor or an advocate, and if there is danger, the authorities. In the United States the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233 (or text START to 88788), and the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is 988. A course can help you see clearly; it cannot stand between you and anyone.
No. It is education, and it is not a substitute for care from a licensed professional. If something here opens more than a course can hold, that is the course doing its job, and the next step belongs with a person.
Yes. Enrolling in the course unlocks the interactive workbook — fifteen chapter exercises, the Shame in Costume field guide and the Emotional Health Check — at no extra cost.
Into your own browser, on your own device. Practice answers, quiz answers and progress are saved there and nowhere else — nothing is transmitted.
The book and the course begin with a question asked in a garden, of a man who was hiding — not because he was lost, but because he had just discovered what it feels like to be seen. Where are you? This is a place to answer it.
GraceRoot courses are psychoeducational learning programs, not emergency care, legal advice, or a replacement for therapy. Certificates document GraceRoot completion. Court, employer, board, or continuing education acceptance should be confirmed before purchase unless a page states a specific approval.