Healing Your Past –
Transforming Your Future
“It was hard work but life changing and excellent…it was greater than my wildest imagination….the overall structure is truly amazing, clearly well thought out and refined.”
“This program healed my childhood pain that had been haunting me my whole life. Now, of course, sad traumas are still sad but they no longer bother me….I no longer feel like a ‘victim.’ I feel much more creative, more loving and liberated. I’m happy.”
– Quotes from recent graduates
of our 20-Week Group Intensive Program
“Recovery begins with embracing our pain and taking the risk to share it with others. We do this by joining a group and talking about our pain.”
– John Bradshaw
Combining the transformative work on Complex PTSD by Pete Walker, John Bradshaw’s pioneering and healing work with the inner child, shame, and codependency, and breakthroughs in neuroscience with Brené Brown’s teachings about shame and vulnerability, our trauma-informed, state-of-the-art Healing Your Past – Transforming Your Future 20-Week Program provides a safe and dynamic space in which lasting transformation occurs. Our experiential processes repattern your brain, heal your emotional body, and allow you to create new, vibrant experiences of emotional health within yourself and your relationships.
Pete Walker’s work, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, picks up where John Bradshaw’s work left off, both deepening and expanding John’s work in healing the inner child and repairing our traumatized relationship with our core self. Incorporating Pete’s work has helped us empower people to learn to love, protect, and care for themselves by releasing learned patterns of self-contempt and self-abandonment.
We feel deeply grateful and privileged to learn from Pete and apply his contributions to our therapy services.
“I so appreciate having you folks to refer survivors to.” — Pete Walker
John Bradshaw, in his ground-breaking work, describes how early childhood experiences cause each of us to lose touch with our real self. As a legacy of growing up in a dysfunctional or addictive family, being subjected to emotional, physical, verbal, or sexual abuse, repetitive or abusive criticism, abandonment or neglect, we learn to hide our real self. Having a parent or caregiver who was emotionally unavailable, unattuned, or absent can produce the same result. In all these situations, we do not feel seen or heard. A sense of “toxic shame” about ourselves takes hold.
“I really endorse the Center for Creative Growth. This group is the best counseling satellite we have anywhere in the country” — John Bradshaw
Crediting John Bradshaw’s pivotal work on shame as being a foundation for her work, Brené Brown describes how this pervasive feeling of shame makes us feel too vulnerable to create real and authentic relationships. Instead, in order to feel some form of acceptance and love, we develop an adapted, codependent self. Brown says that in order to attain the kinds of human connection and intimacy that we seek, we have to let ourselves be vulnerable.
But how do we do that?
By healing the wounds and trauma of the past that made us go into hiding and by practicing being vulnerable in a safe setting.
Do you experience any of the following?
- Feel alone, even when you’re with people?
- Yearning to be seen and known — and free from childhood pain?
- Feel disconnected, isolated, or ashamed?
- Afraid to be your real self and afraid to make mistakes?
- Feel defective, flawed, empty, lonely, inadequate, or not good enough?
- Experienced trauma during your childhood?
- Find yourself in unsatisfying or unhealthy relationships, sacrificing your own needs to meet the needs of others, or unable to sustain a lasting intimate relationship?
- Feel stuck in creating the life you want?
- Have a parent who was critical, abusive, shaming, or emotionally unavailable?
- Was a parent stressed, distressed, or distracted during your growing up years?
- Grew up in a family where you experienced lack of love and attention, had an emotionally absent parent due to addiction, divorce, or death?
- Lacked support to be your real self while growing up?
- Lived with a parent who was alcoholic, addicted to drugs, work, overeating, affairs, debting, or gambling?
- Affected by a parent or sibling who was chronically ill or disabled?
- Grew up in a family where there was raging or physical, emotional, verbal, or sexual abuse?
- Need to control others or yourself?
- Suffer from an inability to enjoy life fully?
- Missing a sense of inner peace or a connection to spirituality?
Answered “yes” to any of the questions above?
Ready to heal from these painful wounds?
Our 20-Week Program releases feelings of shame and separation and frees you to resolve the painful legacies of growing up hiding your real self — whether due to being raised in a stressed, distressed, dysfunctional, addictive, or abusive family, or one that just didn’t see who you were.
This powerfully transformative group program releases you from the painful effects of childhood wounds and trauma, freeing you to connect with yourself and others
Join Our Next 20-Week Group Intensive Program
Beginning Saturday, April 11, 2026
(with breaks for holidays)
Here’s Jason Saffer, Co-Director of the Center for Creative Growth,
talking about the impact of our 20-Week Group Intensive Program:
You don’t have to take our word for it!
Here are some real quotes from real people who completed our Program:
“I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. It was the best money I have spent on myself in a very long time.”
“I feel I’ve gotten what I’ve hoped for: a new, deep sense of trust of my inner guidance, confidence in my capacities to be in intimate relationships….I am so glad and grateful that I took this program. I feel I have penetrated and broken free from a lifetime of inner blockages that I’ve been working on for as long as I can remember. I feel a new opening and beginning and a new belief and trust that I can live the fuller, deeper, happier life I’ve wanted to live….Overall, I feel a more thorough and grounded opening of my heart and trust and optimism that my life’s purpose in love and career can manifest more easily and clearly now.”
“Life changing and excellent…greater than my wildest imagination….the overall structure is truly amazing.”
See what other graduates of our 20-week Group Intensive Program have to say.
We’ve been offering this transformative group program since 1991.
Contact us now to arrange a free introductory meeting with the therapist who leads the group.
We’ll be glad to explore with you whether this group experience is right for you!
Ready To Take the Next Step To Create the Life
You Want?
Call or e-mail us now for a free phone consultation.
info@creativegrowth.com
510-527-2100