Embodying Secure Attachment: Guiding Client’s Towards a Secure Self
Deidre Fay · MSW
THIS PROGRAM HAS LIMITED APPROVAL FOR DISTANCE LEARNING CES. PLEASE CLICK ON THE SPECIFIC CE INFORMATION LINK BELOW FOR FULL PROFESSION/STATE DETAILS.
It is the participant’s responsibility to check if their state is approved for CEs. No refunds will be given on CE purchases for failure to check state approval. Please click on the Specific CE Information link below for more details.
Course Details
Deidre Fay, MSW
With decades of experience as a psychotherapist and educator, Deirdre brings together her research with neurobiology and attachment theory, then blends in ancient wisdom into a practice of what she calls “becoming safely embodied.” Deirdre’s message resonates deeply with those who may look successful on the surface, but internally they may be plagued with shame, anxiety, distress, depression, and wondering how to release shame from their body. Experts in the field have described her practical methods as a “radically positive approach to healing trauma” and a way for people to “get better faster.” Deirdre is the author of Becoming Safely Embodied: A Guide to Organize Your Mind, Body and Heart to Feel Secure in the World.Embodying Secure Attachment: Guiding Clients Towards a Secure Self
One of the main reasons post-traumatic stress disorder doesn’t resolve is due to the underlying, unresolved attachment issues. Our bodies, minds, and hearts are wired to connect. When connection(s) are broken, or betrayed, especially while growing up, our client’s internal patterns become disorganized, remaining that way despite how our client appears externally.
Research indicates that one in four people has a secure attachment style (Brown, Elliott, et al, 2016). Which means that three out of four, have insecure attachment styles. While that sounds daunting the good news is attachment patterns can be changed. To help our clients heal, we need to not only have a cognitive understanding of attachment patterns but more importantly, know how to deal with the non-narrative imprinting that happens before the brain is fully formed.
This experiential workshop will be designed to give you the attachment theory in an easy-to-understand way so that therapists can apply that in their clinical settings. More importantly, you’ll learn strategies and practices to use with your clients the day you return to work.
Recently a therapist wrote me the following, “I’ve had therapy, read books, etc but this is a portable way for me to not get hijacked into rumination and lost in the world of hurt. I’m teaching it to all my clients! I know different practices resonate more with different people but this one is my go to.” These are the simple and utterly practical skills you’ll learn in the workshop.
Bowlby and Ainsworth saw the ability to use attachment figures as a secure base giving a felt experience of both a safe haven and also providing the confidence necessary to explore and master our client’s ordinary environments. Utilizing attachment theory facilitates creating a safe container for our clients to make sense of the confusing internal world, separating the past from the present.
Pulling directly from Bowlby’s radical reconceptualization of neediness as a precursor of curiosity, exploration, and ultimately competence in fully being engaged in the environment we’ll celebrate the fundamental needs and longings that urge our clients toward a more satisfying environment. We’ll use the ancient wisdom traditions and their penetrating knowledge of neediness and longing as fundamental resources for our client’s healing. The opposite is spiraling into shame cycles.
To alter the non-narrative cycles we’ll explore how Bowlby’s concept of internal working model, a mental representation, can be changed earning our clients a felt sense of secure attachment. These consolidated implicit patterns get embodied without a narrative making it difficult to shift. Cultivating kindness, mindfulness, and developing attachment language provides a therapeutic map to remap what relationship researcher John Gottman clinically describes as our client’s “perpetual problems.”
More importantly, you’ll learn strategies and practices to use with your clients the day you return to work.
Embodying Secure Attachment:
Guiding Clients Towards a Secure Self
with Deidre Fay, MSW
Course Agenda
6 Hours – 6 CEs
Module 1 > Healing Mindset: Integrating Wisdom Traditions to Embody Attachment – 1 hour 44 minsIn these times of disruption, the clinical challenges we face as people and professionals are vast. Our clients are facing existential terrors with anxiety and depression at an all-time high. Health professionals are needing to draw upon a holistic multi-dimensional container that comes with psycho-spiritual integration (as unique from religious orientation). Triggers can be a transformational tool. Both the wisdom traditions and attachment theory inviting pivoting into withdrawing senses from outside hypervigilance attuning instead to the body, mind and heart. Attunement is central to this learning, and trusting, the client’s inner world instead of asking the client to already make sense of their vitality affects (Stern), felt sense (Gendlin), pulsatory energy (Bainbridge-Cohen, Apohysan). We’ll describe the Healing Cycle and Healing Stages that outline how to positively changing attachment patterns. In this session, you will learn:
• Clinical Challenges (31 mins)
• Triggers as Transformation – Trauma is a Modern-Day Bodhisattva Training (18 mins)
• Psycho-Spiritual Integration (9 mins)
• Trust the Language of the Body, Mind, & Heart: Pathways of Communication (13 mins)
• Positively Changing Attachment Patterns: Healing Cycle and Stages (33 mins) Module 2 > Attachment Wounds & Repair – 2 hours 5 mins
Every human has fundamental attachment needs that operate as a native and natural stream of consciousness. Bowlby’s evolutionary understanding is the basis of attachment theory. Yoga psychology has a similar understanding from a different perspective which we explore in the course. As a client gains a familiarity with the absolutely normal attachment needs a pathway out of their attachment upset emerges priming them in a new, more nourishing direction. In this session, you will learn:
• Overview – Attachment Model (22 mins)
• Yoga Psychology: The Main Psycho-Spiritual Orientation of this Course (24 mins)
• Integrating Attachment Theory (20 mins)
• Fundamental Attachment Needs (43 mins)
• Self-Other Differentiation (18 mins) Module 3 > Working with Triggers to Embody a Secure Mind Body & Heart – 1 hour 23 mins
As much as we wish to eliminate triggers a more powerful stance is learning how triggers are the guidance system orienting us away from what is upsetting and directing the client toward new possibilities. We explore the fears, blocks and resistances to becoming securely attached. Using the Parallel Path model we can map out a client’s imprinted patterns. Learning how a client might have a Pyramid of Triggers and how to Deconstruct those triggers provides metacognitive monitoring, ultimately leading to mastery. In this session, you will learn:
• Blocks to Becoming Embodied (20 mins)
• Parallel Lives Path (16 mins)
• Conflict & Repair (20 mins)
• Pyramid of Triggers (11 mins)
• Deconstructing Triggers (16 mins) Module 4 > Attachment Patterns – 1 hour 11 mins
Similar to the Healing Cycle and Stages of Healing we discuss in Module 1, there is also an embodied cycle of attachment that orients the client to the native states of connection. Yoga psychology describes the layers of the multi-dimensional body allowing the client to develop skills in accessing their body, mind & heart. Yet, once a client has a greater self-structure they become aware of the subtexts that people communicate through. Decoding subtexts reduces the cognitive dissonance reinforcing the Self/Other Differentiation of a secure self. In this session, you will learn:
• Embodied Cycle of Attachment (21 mins)
• Koshas: Layers of the Multidimensional Body (10 mins)
• Decoding Subtexts (19 mins)
• Repatterning Protest (21 mins) Module 5 > Granularity Changes Everything – 51 mins
Repatterning attachment patterns does not happen cognitively or in the level of understanding. Attunement is necessary, attunement to others and to oneself. This is the skill of Reflective Functioning. As a therapist we enter what Daniel Stern called the Intersubjective Matrix, the multi-dimensional space where communication happens. We then look at the research behind how emotions are constructed so find the window of possibility that happens when we make life more granular. This, then, provides the container for a client to develop a SOLID, STEADY, and SECURE SELF structure. In this session, you will learn:
• Intersubjective Matrix (9 mins)
• Theory of Constructed Emotions (19 mins)
• Making Life Granular (11 mins)
• Developing a SOLID STEADY SECURE SELF (12 mins)
Embodying Secure Attachment:
Guiding Clients Towards a Secure Self
with Deidre Fay, MSW
Learning Objectives
• Identify one essential tool therapists can use to integrate attachment therapy• Name the two Journeys a person takes to practice becoming embodied
• Summarize attachment protest
• Identify the 4 Stages of a Healing Cycle
• Name the 5 phase Attachment Model used in this course
• Describe how prana/life force activates triggers
• Provide psychoeducation on Self/Other Differentiation
• Identify 6 of the 8 Fundamental Attachment Needs
• Identify the three natural phases of life
• Provide psychoeducation on the fears, blocks, and resistances to becoming safely attached
• Summarize how time capsules are imprinted and what happens when “triggered”
• Increase the client’s ability to navigate conflict
• Describe how shame is an attachment wound
• Describe the 6 Embodied Movements of Attachment
• Identify the 5 layers of the Koshas
• Evoke client interest in how relational subtext creates dissonance
• Summarize the practice Reach Out- Open Up- Draw In
• Facilitate psychoeducation on how emotions are constructed
• Summarize how making a concept granular facilitates change
• Explicate the role of gratitude as a pivot point in healing
• Describe the Transformational Model to become SOLID STEADY SECURE SELF
For beginning mental health professionals including Social Workers, LPCs, and LMFTs.
Continuing Education Credits
To receive Distance Learning/Home Study continuing education credit, applicants must complete all course materials, purchase the CEs, submit an evaluation form, and pass a post-test with a score of 80% or greater. It is the responsibility of the attendee to determine if the CE credit offered by Academy of Therapy Wisdom meets the regulations of their state licensing/certification board.
CostThere is a CE Processing Fee of $35 for the Distance Learning CEs, which will be available for purchase after the entire course has been completed. CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS OFFERED:
Psychology: Not offered for this training.
Counseling:
Academy of Therapy Wisdom has been approved by NBCC as an ApprovedContinuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7370. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Academy of Therapy Wisdom is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. This program is approved for 6 CE Credit hours.
Social Work: This program has been approved for 6 Distance Learning Social Work Continuing Education hours for relicensure, in accordance with 258 CMR. NASW-MA Chapter CE Approving Program, Authorization Number D92257.
Marriage/Family Therapy: See below for CAMFT information.
California Professionals:Academy of Therapy Wisdom, Provider #1032323, is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, and LPCCs. Academy of Therapy Wisdom maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. This course meets the qualifications for 6 hours of continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.
This course is $397. You can purchase it here.
Cancellation
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If you require ADA accommodations please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We cannot ensure accommodations without adequate prior notification.
Cancellation Policy
We offer a 14-day money-back guarantee on all of our live & on-demand courses. If you find that the training is not right for you, please email us at support@therapywisdom.com within 14 days of your purchase. You can request a full refund or exchange, whichever you would prefer.
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