Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma

Ken Benau, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist. For over 30 years, Dr. Benau worked with children and adults with various learning and developmental differences, in inpatient, outpatient, and school settings. He also taught and supervised graduate students studying clinical psychology in school-based clinical consultation, psychotherapy, and psychological testing. Dr. Benau currently enjoys working psychotherapeutically with adults living with various learning and developmental differences, including LD, ADHD, and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at his private practice in the San Francisco Bay area. His special interest and expertise is in shame and pride-informed psychotherapy with survivors of relational trauma. Working from an integrative perspective, he incorporates psychodynamic, experiential, and somatic approaches, amongst others. He has explored this theme in professional conferences, webinars, podcasts, and in several peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Benau’s well-received book, Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma: Concepts and Psychotherapy (Routledge), was published in March, 2022. https://www.routledge.com/Shame-Pride-and-Relational-Trauma-Concepts-and-Psychotherapy/Benau/p/book/9781138362383

Ken loves horses, children (especially when they’re silly), laughing and making others laugh, writing, plants, freestyle dancing, and singing off-key. Living proof of the gifts of neurodiversity, Ken has been described as kind, sensitive, perceptive, directionally challenged, mechanically limited, and determined to decipher his own handwriting. He enjoys others' quirks as much as his own. Ken is grateful to be married for 30 years to someone who excels in most areas he does not, and then some. His two adult children do good in the world, and have concluded their father is an acquired taste… worth acquiring.