Teaching, Training & Programming
Integrating morally-informed care into lives, work, and communities
Dr. Michele DeMarco's Healing & Teaching Work
How I Can Help
I offer several educational and professional development opportunities for those interested in learning more about moral harm and its effects on individuals, groups, and society, as well as healing strategies that are contextual and adaptable, and can be integrated into diverse practices.
These include courses for individuals, training for clinicians and professionals, and programming suitable for general audiences or for specific populations and groups. See more below.
For Cultivation, Healing, & Growth
Courses for Individuals
Michele offers several courses on moral trauma, moral resilience, and related areas like forgiveness, healing writing, emotional regulation, conflict transformation, and ethical decision-making. Some are self-directed; others are in a group (typically virtual). All courses are science-backed and suitable for general audiences.
*In development. Check back in early 2025 for launch dates.
Self-Directed ✍︎
From the renowned Journal for Change Series that launched Michele's heralded and similarly titled book, Writing the Wrongs, comes this 28 day course that lets you unburden your soul after wrongdoing. Whether you’re struggling to reconcile the impossible, unbearable, or unimaginable with deep, lasting emotional or spiritual pain, this course is for you.
Self-Directed ✍︎
Are you haunted by memories of things you did (or didn’t do) that caused great pain to yourself or others; compromised your core values or sacred beliefs; or resulted in harm, even devastation? Are you racked with guilt and shame, questioning your goodness or self-worth, and struggling with relationships? If so, this 12 week course will help you find self-forgiveness.
Self-Directed ✍︎
Life is full of morally challenging situations, but with the damaging effects of the pandemic, and growing social, political, and economic strife, many people today are confronting moral distress. This 28 day course shows you how to transform feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness into moral resilience and regain or retain wholeness in all situations.
For Practice and Integration
Training & Professional Development
Take your healing work to new heights
As moral trauma gains increasing awareness, so too does the variety of professionals seeking to help people heal and recover from it. Michele provides training for clinicians, chaplains, healers, and other care professionals whose work involves helping people transform moral trauma into moral repair and moral resilience and who wish to integrate morally-informed care into their lives, work, and communities.
Michele offers three science-backed trainings: 1) administering embodied disclosure therapy (EDT), her writing therapy for healing moral injury and moral distress; 2) administering the 6-fold path to self-forgiveness, her new model developed for self-induced moral injury; and 3) the Whole Soul Inventory, an assessment tool for gauging moral resilience — all of which she developed in response to the growing demand for the treatment or moral trauma.
For Moral Trauma
Learn how to administer EDT, purposely designed to overcome the challenges of expressive writing and other exposure-based writing therapies that use fast-paced, explosive, “let-it-all-go” writing, causing agitation, rumination, overwhelm, or shut down in certain populations, including moral injury. EDT has shown particularly useful for people struggling with moral injury, trauma, and “soul wounds.”
For Self-Forgiveness
6-Fold Path to Self-Forgiveness (6-FPSF)
Learn how to administer the 6-FPSF, an interdisciplinary, narrative-based healing writing program for the treatment of self-induced moral injury, that draws upon theoretical literature, evidence-based psychological interventions, spiritual-oriented practices, creative arts, and somatic exercises. It's based on six components: reckoning, remorse, reconcile, rectify, recreation, remain.
Moral Resilience
Learn how to leverage the Whole Soul Inventory as a tool for therapeutic or spiritual settings. The Whole Soul Inventory assesses a person's moral strengths and areas for growth. The categories of assessment (i.e., subscales) align with Michele's pillars of moral resilience: self-awareness, self-mastery, self-determination, self-expression, meaning-making, patience, forgiveness/reconciling, and dynamic balance.
For Transforming Moral Harm
Programs & Workshops
Michele offers several science-backed programs that can be integrated into any organization, group, or institution. All programs and workshops are science-backed and suitable for general audiences or for specific populations and groups (see below). I am happy to work with your organization to custom-design an offering for your unique needs.
Moral Injury & Moral Distress 101
So, That's What It's Called!
Moral trauma disrupts our sense of meaning, purpose, value, connection, resilience, and transcendence and can have long-term consequences, such as burnout, exhaustion, numbness, disconnection, and diminished moral sensitivity (also called “compassion fatigue”). This is a foundational program that introduces participants to moral trauma, specifically moral injury and moral distress — including historical context, signs and symptoms, causes and effects, vulnerable populations, how it effects people, groups, relationships, and what can be done to heal it.
Healing Writing for Moral Injury & Moral Distress
Writing the Wrongs
This course offers a breakthrough, evidence-based writing program for healing moral injury. Writing exercises provide a safe and immersive way for participants to engage with what is deepest and most important, fully integrate haunting memories, redefine meaning and purpose, recover goodness and hope, and build resilience. Embodied practices for minimizing distress are included, as is group sharing. Resources for maintaining wholeness and wellness are also provided. Participants leave feeling understood, accepted, connected, more empathetic, more compassionate towards themselves, and a renewed sense of what matters most. Workshops are for anyone, regardless of writing experience.
For Self-Forgiveness
Are you haunted by memories of things you did (or didn’t do) that caused great pain, compromised your core values or sacred beliefs, or resulted in harm, even devastation? Are you racked with guilt and shame, questioning your goodness or self-worth, and struggling with relationships? If so, this soul-inspiring program on self-forgiveness can transform your life.
Building Moral Resilience
Life is full of morally challenging situations, but with the damaging effects of the pandemic, and growing social, political, and economic strife, many people today are confronting moral distress. This profound and practical workshop shows you how to transform feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness into moral resilience and regain or retain wholeness in all situations.
For Emergent Writers
If you have a story to tell and you want to bring it to the world, this program is for you. The Soul Console Writers Program is for emergent writers to take on the serious business of writing (and publishing) their life. Participants will learn how to claim their voice, tell their story, and offer their work as a profound gift to others. They’ll also gain the skills to engage the writing process and a GPS for navigating the world of publishing.