Healing Sexual Trauma
The Sexual Trauma
Healing Journey
embodiment, empowerment, and resilience for female identified survivors
coming in September 2024
Facilitated by Erika Shershun, MA, LMFT, Somatic Coach, author of the Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook
About The Course
Sexual trauma is intensely wounding to the body, mind, and soul. It's a physical and emotional boundary violation, a devastating betrayal that robs us of our ability to trust, our sense of safety, our health and our wellbeing. It's no wonder that healing doesn't come easy. No matter how deep we bury it, the trauma remains in our cellular memory waiting to be integrated and healed. We cannot "just get over it" and "move on".
Erika Shershun, LMFT knows just how hard it can be to find the resources needed to heal from sexual trauma. She's an experienced licensed therapist and coach specializing in treating sexual trauma, and understands it's not always easy to find someone skilled in this challenging, yet rewarding work. Erika's passionate about helping survivors on their journey to heal, and brings a wealth of knowledge, understanding, compassion, and support to the course.
The Sexual Trauma Healing Journey is a six-month online somatic-based course that includes 3 live webinars a month with experiential's, Q & A's, tools, practices, and worksheets, recorded for your connivence. The Sexual Trauma Healing Journey welcomes and values diversity among female identified survivors, including all races, sexualities, body sizes, and abilities. The course curriculum is carefully curated, each week building upon the previous with insights, reflections, and practices that will aid you in your healing and growth. These are teachings you can return to again and again if needed for grounding, guidance and support as you move forward on your healing path.
Whether you're just starting your healing journey, deepening into it, or are frustrated that nothing has seemed to help, this course is for you.
The Healing Journey
Healing from sexual assault is a journey that takes time. There will be twists and turns along the way. You may have a breakthrough, followed by a time of reprieve; then a new discovery, detail, or memory will surface. This can feel devastating, like a big setback, and when your nervous system is in a depressed state, you may lose hope of ever healing from sexual trauma. But the journey’s not linear; it’s not about crossing a finish line. Each time you encounter what feels like a setback, another piece of the trauma is stepping into the light of day to be healed. It’s your preceding success, however small, that allowed for this new challenge to be faced.
These successes build upon one another until one day you'll look back and realize how far you've come - the flashbacks have ceased, the triggers diminished, you feel safe in your skin and present to fully experience life. The Sexual Trauma Healing Journey is designed to help guide and support you on this courageous and transformational path.
Your Course Instructor
Erika Shershun, MA, LMFT, is an author, a licensed therapist in private practice in California, and a survivor of sexual assault. It was her own long difficult journey to move beyond trauma symptoms that resulted in her piecing together the knowledge and tools needed to heal. Erika’s passion to prevent others from spending extra years and resources searching for relief from disruptive and painful trauma symptoms lead her to specialize in working with survivors and those suffering from PTSD. Her approach is compassionate yet direct, somatic based, and trauma informed, utilizing EMDR and other integrative modalities. Erika see's therapy client's individually, facilitates groups and offers coaching for clients residing outside of CA. The Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook and Course grew out of a desire to make her work more easily accessible to those in need.
What You'll Get
The Healing Sexual Trauma Course includes the
following resources to support you on your
healing journey.
OVER 18 HOURS OF POWERFUL TEACHINGS
A LIVE WEEKLY TRAINING WITH GUIDED PRACTICES AND Q & A'S, 3 TIMES A MONTH.
WEEKLY HANDOUTS, QUESTIONS, AND CONTEMPLATIONS
WEEKLY BODY BASED PRACTICES TO AID YOU IN YOUR HEALING
1
2
3
4
PRINTABLE TRANSCRIPTS
RECOMMENDED READING LIST
UNLIMITED ACCESS TO COURSE CONTENT FOR AS LONG AS
THE COURSE IS OFFERED
SPECIAL PROGRAM BONUSES
(SEE BELOW)
5
6
7
8
Special Bonuses Include
Bonus 1
Two 50 minute private coaching sessions with Erika the first 8 people who register for the course.
Bonus 2
A free signed copy of the Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook to the first 12 people who register for the course.
Bonus 3
A self-care playlist
Bonus 4
A guided practice Body Scan Meditation, audio by Erika
Bonus 5
Lovingkindness Meditation read by Krystal Ying, LMFT, LPPC krystalyingtherapy.com
Praise for Erika's Work
"This workbook is a must read for anyone struggling with unhealed trauma. Erika gives tangible tips to safely move through trauma in an empowering and validating way. Learning to listen to your body and emotions is scary and hard, but Erika's workbook makes this practice gentle, which is so needed. So many trauma survivors will be able to reclaim a part of themselves after finishing this."
- Stevie Croisant founder of We Are HER. weareher.net
"In this vital and beautiful workbook, Erika Shershun guides us through the process of understanding our sexual trauma, and ultimately working towards a place of thriving. What really emerges for me from these exercises, is that she is equipping survivors with the tools and processes that embolden us to move beyond surviving to flourishing. Erika is inviting survivors on a powerful journey of transformation - and I'm grateful to her for entrusting survivors to be the drivers of that process."
- JoEllen Chernow Co-Founder and Co-Director of Survivors Know www.survivorsknow.org
"Erika Shersun has managed to create an invaluable handbook for the many courageous survivors of sexual trauma who are working hard to find their way back to a life of normalcy. What is particular notable about this, among so many others, is that Ms Shershun knows the territory directly, having found a way to access her own considerable gifts of healing both herself and others. She provides a clear path towards finding one’s way."
- Don Hanlon Johnson, PhD. Professor of Somatics in the School of Consciousness and Transformation at CIIS, author and editor of several books including Bone, Breath, and Gesture, and Body, Spirit, and Democracy.
"A much needed, empowering resource for sexual assault survivors."
- Susanne Babbel, PhD, author of Heal the Body, Heal the Mind
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this course for female-identifying participants only?
Yes, since feeling safe enough or relatively safe is so vital to the work of healing from sexual trauma, the course is open to female identified survivors only at this time.
Who is this course for?
This course is open to survivors of sexual trauma, whether the events were recent, long ago in the past, or somewhere in between.
Is the course open to participants outside of the USA?
Yes, part of the motivation for creating this course is to reach survivors who may not have access to someone specializing in treating sexual trauma, survivors who will benefit from the material, wherever they reside.
What's included in this course?
The course includes 18 recorded hour + instructional video modules broken down into shorter more digestible segments, and two private 1 on 1 thirty minute coaching calls with Erika scheduled within a six month time frame. All designed to teach you about your body's relation to trauma and somatic (body based) skills to help you connect with a felt sense of safety/presence in your body, to learn to identify and set boundaries and to live with resilience. This course is made up of a combination of didactic and experiential practices. You will come away with a wealth of practices and techniques that you can return to again and again as you continue your healing journey.
I’m afraid of what I’ll discover if I do the work to heal. Is this something you see a lot?
Yes, in fact this is the biggest reason people are fearful of turning inward and doing the work to heal. Having named the fear is a great first step. Naming it helps to diminish fear’s power over you. It’s natural to resist change, our brains are wired that way – to fear the unknown. Yet most everything you’ve ever accomplished, including taking your very first step, brought up fear or anxiety before you took that leap; and trauma symptoms tend to lurk under the surface, affecting us more than we realize in our day-to-day life.
I'm not going to mislead you, the work of healing from sexual trauma is not easy. It takes courage and determination to improve the quality of your life. And with the wounds of trauma, sometimes you can feel a little worse before you feel better. One of the benefits of the course is that you can move through it at your own pace, strengthening your capacity to do the work as you practice the techniques and connect or reconnect with a felt sense of safety/presence. And I'll be there each teaching week to support you and answer your questions. I can assure you from first-hand experience and countless client feedback, when you get to the point of symptom relief it will all feel well worth it!
It has been said that our essence, our soul, is ever present like the sun, yet like the sun, it can become obscured by clouds. These clouds represent the wounds and trauma you've experienced throughout your life, along with the defenses that have helped you survive, yet these defenses (dissociating, people pleasing, rage...) may no longer serve you. Together we can bring awareness and begin to relax these defenses allowing more of your true self, your gifts, your ever-present essence to shine through.
Does this course include homework?
Each module will include prompts, handouts, and invitations to practice what you’re learning between sessions. For best results, I'll ask you to practice some of the techniques as “homework,” which will take no more than about 12 minutes per day. Every 4th week is a week of practice and rest, a time to review, catch up, and schedule one of your coaching calls.
Practicing these techniques for 12 minutes a day will help you access a more consistent state of grounded presence, and will make the practices easier for you to access and more effective when you find your nervous system becoming activated. This in turn decreases the frequency and severity of activation.
Do you offer refunds?
I'm unable to provide refunds once you begin the course, so please follow your own best judgment when making the decision to register. I am confident that this course contains a wealth of high-quality content, but you are the best judge of what is right for you at this time in your healing.
Do you offer a payment plan?
Yes, I hope to make this course accessible to as many participants as possible by offering an interest-free payment plan of 6 equal monthly installments.
It's important to me that participants who elect to use the payment plan are not penalized with any additional fees, so I'm absorbing the extra processing costs involved in offering a payment plan rather than passing them on to the customer.
I'm offering a limited number of scholarships for those who qualify.
How long will I have access to the course material?
As long as I continue to offer this course, which I expect to be for years to come, you will have access to the recorded modules and live call recordings. The coaching call portion of the course ends after you have received all 18 weeks of course content.
How will I access the course?
Content will be uploaded to the membership area, one week at a time, 3 weeks on, one week off for 6 months. Upon registration you'll receive an e-mail containing login details to access the course materials in the membership area. The first weeks material will be available the day after you register, then you'll receive an email each week with a link to access that weeks content.