Deepen your reflection on attachment and the therapeutic relationship with a session summary, reflective questions, practical tools and an editable CPD record.

Attachment in Counselling and Psychotherapy

An online discussion with a CPD and Reflection Pack

How can attachment theory help us understand a client’s experience while leaving room for their individuality? How do we explore patterns in relationships without allowing an attachment label to become the whole story?

This online discussion explores these questions through conversation, participant contributions and examples from therapeutic practice. It invites counsellors and psychotherapists to consider how an attachment perspective can support curiosity about protective responses, relational expectations and the meanings clients bring to their experiences.

The emphasis is on listening closely: what happened, what the person felt, how they responded and what that response may have helped them manage. Rather than arriving at a fixed explanation, the discussion encourages practitioners to hold theory lightly and remain open to the client’s own understanding.

Exploring attachment through the therapeutic relationship

Attachment ideas can provide a language for thinking about relationships. Their usefulness depends on how sensitively they are introduced and how well they fit the person’s experience.

The discussion considers attachment defences as responses that may have served a protective purpose. It explores how practitioners might acknowledge that purpose while asking whether a familiar response continues to meet the client’s needs in their present relationships.

Attention also turns to internal working models: expectations about ourselves, other people and the world. These expectations may become visible in everyday interactions and within the therapeutic relationship itself. A pause, a change in tone or an unanswered question can carry meanings that deserve careful exploration.

Examples involving a partner’s silence and an uncompleted household task illustrate how apparently ordinary moments can evoke concerns about reliability, care or connection. The invitation is to ask what the interaction means to the particular person, rather than assume a shared or universal meaning.

Working thoughtfully with attachment labels

Some clients arrive in therapy with an attachment label that has helped them make sense of their relationships. Others may feel uncertain about where they fit or find that their responses vary across situations and relationships.

The conversation explores how therapists can respond with interest and respect. What has the description helped the client understand? What does it mean in their daily life? Does it open possibilities, offer relief or leave them feeling that something is wrong with them?

These questions support a collaborative exploration of the client’s experience. The discussion encourages practitioners to establish the relationship and understand the value of a label before gently considering other possibilities.

Relational safety and experiences that are difficult to put into words

Participant questions bring attention to preverbal experience, adoption and care experience, shame, mirroring and the experience of being seen.

The discussion considers how small relational moments may matter, including the therapist’s gaze and the client’s comfort with eye contact. It invites reflection on pace, sensitivity and the conditions in which a person may feel able to explore experiences that are difficult to describe.

For practitioners, this offers an opportunity to consider how their presence and responses may be experienced by each client, while remaining cautious about drawing conclusions about early history from present behaviour.

A conversation that welcomes complexity

The recording also includes participant perspectives on neurodivergence, addiction and trauma. Contributors draw on personal experience and observations from their work to discuss questions of overlap, coping and understanding.

These contributions form part of an exploratory professional conversation. They include anecdotal observations and claims that would require further evidence before being used as established findings. The accompanying reflection pack helps participants distinguish useful questions for practice from statements requiring independent verification.

The accompanying CPD and Reflection Pack

The editable pack provides a structured way to revisit the available discussion, examine your responses and identify areas for further learning.

It includes:

• A factual summary of the supplied transcript excerpt
• Suggested learning outcomes and explanations of key concepts
• Eighteen reflective questions
• Three practical integration worksheets
• Applications to counselling and psychotherapy practice
• Prompts for supervision and further study
• An editable CPD record and action plan
• A participant feedback and reflection template
• A closing integrative reflection

The worksheets support exploration of a relational moment, reflection on an interaction within therapy and the use of an observer perspective to consider alternative meanings. They are reflective resources rather than assessment instruments and can be adapted to the client’s preferences, consent and therapeutic goals.

Who this resource is for

This resource is intended for counsellors, psychotherapists and trainees who want to reflect on attachment-informed thinking and its place in therapeutic work. It may be particularly relevant to practitioners considering how to work with attachment labels, relational expectations, protective responses and uncertainty in formulation.

It can support individual study, preparation for supervision or a reflective CPD portfolio entry. Participants are encouraged to identify their own learning needs and record how the material relates to their role and scope of practice.

Recording and CPD information

The accompanying pack is based on the available transcript excerpt, covering recording timestamps 01:03:39 to 01:42:41, a span of approximately 39 minutes. It does not summarise material before that point.

The excerpt captures a discussion involving Jo, Jane and participants. Closing remarks explain that the planned Jeremy Holmes session would be rescheduled; this resource should therefore be understood as the discussion captured in the available recording.

The pack supports your own reflection and CPD record. Record the learning activity and time you actually complete, in accordance with your professional body’s requirements. Completion of the pack does not itself certify attendance, competence or an approved number of CPD hours.

Make space for reflection

Use the recording and accompanying pack to revisit a question from your practice, consider an alternative understanding and identify one thoughtful next step. The aim is to support a more curious, collaborative exploration of what relationships mean to each client.

GAME OVER: Uncovering the Secrets of Unhealthy Relationship Behaviours and Manipulation

Some relationship behaviours are easy to recognise as unhealthy. Others are far more difficult to name.

A client may describe constantly questioning themselves, changing their behaviour to avoid conflict, feeling responsible for their partner’s emotions or repeatedly trying to restore a relationship that leaves them distressed and confused. What can look from the outside like a simple choice to “leave” may feel very different from inside the relationship.

GAME OVER: Uncovering the Secrets of Unhealthy Relationship Behaviours and Manipulation explores what can sit beneath controlling, manipulative and emotionally harmful relationship dynamics — and why these patterns can be so difficult to recognise and step away from.

This CPD session invites therapists and counsellors to look beyond the presenting behaviour and consider the psychological and relational processes that may be operating underneath it.

You will explore how unhealthy relationship patterns can develop and be maintained, including the ways vulnerability, attachment needs, fear, intermittent reinforcement and manipulation can influence how someone experiences themselves and their relationships.

Rather than simply asking, “Why do they stay?”, we begin to ask a more clinically useful question:

“What is happening within this relationship that makes leaving, challenging or even recognising the pattern so difficult?”

In this CPD session you will explore:

• how unhealthy and manipulative relationship behaviours can present
• the difference between ordinary relationship conflict and more concerning patterns of control
• why manipulation can gradually alter a person’s confidence in their own judgement
• the psychological processes that can keep someone emotionally invested in a harmful relationship
• how attachment needs and relational vulnerability may interact with unhealthy relationship dynamics
• why reassurance, confrontation or simply advising someone to leave may not be enough
• how therapists can remain curious about both the behaviour they can see and the relational processes underneath it

Who is this training for?

This session is suitable for counsellors, psychotherapists and other helping professionals who work with clients experiencing difficult, controlling, manipulative or emotionally harmful relationships.

It may be particularly useful if you find yourself working with clients who repeatedly return to painful relationships, minimise concerning behaviour, question their own perceptions or struggle to understand why they cannot simply “walk away”.

Why is understanding unhealthy relationship behaviour important in therapy?

Manipulation and controlling relationship patterns do not always begin dramatically. They can emerge gradually and may become normalised within the relationship.

For therapists, recognising these dynamics can help us move away from judgement and towards a more nuanced understanding of what the client is experiencing.

When we understand what may be maintaining the relationship, we are better placed to support clients to rebuild trust in their own experience, recognise patterns and begin making choices from a more informed and empowered position.

GAME OVER offers an opportunity to look beneath the behaviour and develop a deeper understanding of what may really be happening within unhealthy relationship dynamics.

What are unhealthy relationship behaviours?
Unhealthy relationship behaviours can include manipulation, excessive control, intimidation, emotional withdrawal, persistent blame, undermining someone’s perception of events and patterns that gradually reduce one person’s autonomy or confidence.

Why can people find it difficult to leave unhealthy relationships?
There is rarely one simple reason. Attachment needs, fear, hope, emotional dependency, intermittent reinforcement, reduced confidence and the gradual normalisation of harmful behaviour can all contribute.

How can therapists help clients experiencing manipulation in relationships?
Therapists can help clients recognise relational patterns, explore their emotional and attachment responses, rebuild trust in their own perceptions and consider choices without judgement or pressure.

Is this CPD suitable for counsellors and psychotherapists?
Yes. GAME OVER is designed for counsellors, psychotherapists and helping professionals who want to deepen their understanding of unhealthy, controlling and manipulative relationship dynamics.

You will find more details of Julia’s training and podcasts on her website:- https://www.juliasummers.co.uk

The book can be purchased at Amazon here:- https://amzn.eu/d/09zzoBkz

Other CPD from Optima can be found here:- https://optimaattachment.co.uk/attachment-cpd-for-counsellors/

In this Optima Presents webinar, psychotherapist and attachment specialist Linda Cundy explores attachment, climate crisis and the natural world, considering how attachment theory can deepen our understanding of our emotional relationship with Nature. The session explores themes including climate anxiety, ecological grief, separation and loss, belonging and disconnection, and considers how environmental change can affect our sense of safety, connection and place in the world. Drawing on attachment-informed thinking, Linda invites counsellors, psychotherapists and other mental health professionals to reflect on the psychological impact of the climate crisis and what our relationship with the natural world might reveal about attachment, loss and the human need for connection.

Want to take your understanding of attachment further?

Our relationship with the natural world is another reminder that attachment isn’t simply about identifying an attachment style. It gives us a way of thinking about safety, connection, belonging, separation and loss — and how these experiences shape us.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy takes attachment theory into clinical practice, helping you recognise what may be happening beneath the behaviours your clients bring into the therapy room — and how attachment is unfolding within the therapeutic relationship itself.

Explore the Level 5 Diploma →

In this Optima Insights conversation, attachment-based psychotherapist and supervisor Uruj Anjum is joined by therapist Becca Upton (The No BS Therapist) to explore perfectionism and people-pleasing in therapy, and what may be happening beneath these often deeply established patterns.

Becca reflects on perfectionism as a response or coping strategy that may have developed through criticism and difficult experiences, but can also emerge through praise, achievement and being valued for particular ways of behaving. Together, Uruj and Becca consider how identity, relationships, comparison, cultural experiences and the wish to maintain connection may become intertwined with perfectionism and people-pleasing.

The conversation also explores high-functioning anxiety and how significant internal pressure or exhaustion can sometimes sit behind an outward appearance of coping well.

Turning towards the therapeutic relationship, they consider what happens when a client feels they need to be the “perfect client”, worries about disappointing their therapist or looks to the therapist for the right answer. Becca discusses the importance of autonomy, clear communication and allowing clients to experience an accepting therapeutic relationship over time rather than relying solely on reassurance.

Finally, the conversation brings the focus back to therapists themselves: our own potential perfectionism, the pressure to fix or rescue, and the expectation that every session should produce visible progress or leave a client feeling better.

A thoughtful discussion for counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors and trainees interested in perfectionism, people-pleasing, high-functioning anxiety, attachment and the therapeutic relationship.

Want to look more closely at what sits beneath the behaviour?

Perfectionism, people-pleasing, the need to get therapy ‘right’, fear of disappointing others — these are the kinds of patterns that can make much more sense when we begin to view them through an attachment lens.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy is about taking attachment theory off the page and into the therapy room. You’ll learn to recognise attachment strategies as they emerge in your clients, in the therapeutic relationship and, importantly, in yourself as the therapist.

Because sometimes the behaviour we’re trying to change is also the behaviour that once helped someone stay connected.

Explore the Level 5 Diploma →

and the Level 5 Momentum Diploma

Neurodivergent Affirming Therapy: Rethinking Approaches for Autistic and ADHD Clients (2026) is a powerful resource for therapists, coaches, and professionals seeking to create truly affirming spaces for neurodivergent clients. By exploring ableism, unconscious bias, and the limits of traditional models, Amy invites practitioners to rethink their assumptions and build more ethical, inclusive ways of working.

Radically rethink how you work with Autistic and ADHD clients with this comprehensive and compassionate guide to neurodivergent affirming therapeutic practice.

Blending theory, neurodivergent education, and actionable strategies, this book provides tools grounded in an authentic understanding of how neurodivergent minds work – empowering therapists to create safer, more effective, and truly affirming spaces for their clients.

Drawing on Amy’s lived experience and professional expertise, Neurodivergent Affirming Therapy challenges traditional models that often misinterpret or pathologise neurodivergent ways of being, offering instead a practical, affirming, and inclusive approach.

Amy’s cards and other resources can be found on her website:- www.newgladecounselling.co.uk

Want to keep questioning what we think we know about our clients?

Amy’s work is an important reminder that behaviour can be misunderstood when we view it through only one lens.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy develops another lens for clinical practice — helping therapists think more deeply about attachment, relationships and what unfolds between client and therapist, while remaining curious about the individual in front of us rather than reducing them to a label or pattern.

It’s about learning attachment theory, certainly. But much more importantly, learning when it helps us understand a client — and when we need to remain curious.

Explore the Level 5 Diploma →

Explore Momentum Level 5 Diploma

The Seven-Eyed Model of Supervision

This on-demand workshop introduces the Seven-Eyed Model of Supervision, developed by Peter Hawkins and Robin Shohet. It offers a practical map for looking at supervision from several different perspectives rather than becoming fixed on one version of the work.

The workshop explores the model’s theoretical roots, including humanistic psychology, systemic thinking, psychodynamic theory, reflective practice and attachment theory. It then works through each of the seven “eyes”, focusing on the client, therapeutic interventions, the client–therapist relationship, the supervisee’s internal process, the supervisory relationship, the supervisor’s own responses and the wider systemic context.

Throughout the session, the model is presented as a way of creating supervision that can both support and challenge. It encourages supervisors and supervisees to slow down, notice what is happening in the room and consider the relationships, feelings, patterns and systems that may be shaping the work.

Key clinical themes

Seeing the client more clearly
Bringing the client vividly into supervision before moving too quickly into analysis or problem-solving.

Moving beyond advice-giving
Exploring what the therapist is doing, why they are doing it and what other options may be available, while supporting reflection rather than dependency.

Working with relationship dynamics
Paying attention to the relationship between client and therapist, including transference, unconscious interaction and repeated relational patterns.

Using internal responses as information
Exploring the supervisee’s feelings, thoughts and countertransference, as well as the supervisor’s own sensations and intuitive responses.

Noticing parallel process
Looking at how dynamics from the therapeutic relationship may be appearing within the supervisory relationship.

Holding the wider context in mind
Considering ethical frameworks, organisational culture, support systems, social pressures and other stakeholders that may affect therapy and supervision.

Applying an attachment lens
Understanding supervision as a secure base for exploration, vulnerability and reflective thinking, while noticing how care-giving and attachment patterns may be activated.

The workshop also considers the strengths and limitations of the model across counselling, healthcare, organisations, education, systemic work and short-term practice. It invites participants to think of the Seven-Eyed Model as a flexible map that can support deeper reflection, multiple perspectives and more transformative learning.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the recording, you will have explored:

* The history, origins and theoretical roots of the Seven-Eyed Model
* The purpose of each of the seven perspectives
* Practical supervisory questions and interventions
* The model’s relational, systemic and attachment-based dimensions
* Its strengths, limitations and possible applications in practice

Want to keep questioning what we think we know about our clients?

Amy’s work is an important reminder that even well-established therapeutic models can lead us to misunderstand what we’re seeing when we view a client through only one lens.

Our CPCAB Level 7 Diploma in Attachment-Focused Psychotherapeutic Practice is for experienced therapists who want to deepen their clinical thinking, question established assumptions and become more thoughtful about how and when they use attachment theory.

It’s not about making everything fit an attachment explanation. It’s about developing the confidence to hold complexity, recognise the limits of our own frameworks and remain curious about the individual in front of us.

Explore the Level 7 Diploma →

Explore the Momentum Level 7 Diploma

In this Optima Presents event, attachment-based psychotherapist, supervisor, trainer and author Linda Cundy explores the themes from her edited collection, *Narratives of Attachment, Danger and Survival*.

The conversation considers how attachment can be both a source of safety and a force that keeps people connected to relationships, communities, identities and coping strategies that may also be harmful. Drawing on stories relating to coercive relationships, cults, addiction, gangs, displacement and trauma, Linda reflects on the complex psychological and emotional processes involved in leaving, surviving and rebuilding a sense of self.

The event explores why leaving is rarely a simple or immediate act, and how grief, hope, belonging, identity and fear can shape a person’s choices. It also considers the importance of actual safety, affect regulation, mourning and supportive relationships in recovery.

Practitioners are invited to reflect on how attachment-informed thinking can deepen understanding of clients who remain in, return to or struggle to recover from unsafe situations, while maintaining a clear focus on accountability, safeguarding, cultural context and professional boundaries.

This event is relevant to counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches, mental health practitioners, social workers and other helping professionals interested in attachment, trauma, coercive control, recovery and relational practice.

What happens when attachment is part of what makes leaving so difficult?

Linda’s work brings us into some of the more complex territory of attachment-informed practice — where connection and danger can coexist, and where behaviours that appear difficult to understand may make much more sense when we consider what belonging, safety and survival have come to mean for that person.

Our CPCAB Level 7 Diploma in Attachment-Focused Psychotherapeutic Practice is designed for experienced therapists who want to work with this level of clinical complexity.

It invites you to think beyond attachment strategies alone and consider trauma, relational dynamics, safeguarding, context and your own responses as a practitioner — while holding onto the complexity of the person rather than looking for a simple explanation.

Explore the Level 7 Diploma →

Explore the Momentum Level 7 Diploma

An experiential CPD workshop exploring how therapeutic assumptions, interpretations and unconscious meaning-making can shape client work. This course helps practitioners distinguish what is known, observed, inferred and assumed, supporting more ethical, reflective and trauma-informed practice.

Course Overview
Conjecture: When You Don’t Know What You Think You Know

This experiential CPD workshop explores the assumptions, interpretations and unconscious meaning-making that can shape therapeutic practice. In client work, practitioners are often required to make sense of partial stories, fragmented disclosures, emotional cues and relational patterns. While clinical intuition and formulation are valuable, they can also lead us to become certain too quickly.

This course invites practitioners to slow down and examine the difference between what is known, what is observed, what is inferred and what may simply be assumed. Through reflective exercises, discussion and practice-based exploration, participants are encouraged to consider how conjecture operates in the therapy room and how it can affect assessment, formulation, note-taking, supervision and the therapeutic relationship.

The workshop supports a more ethical, curious and trauma-informed stance, helping practitioners hold their clinical understanding lightly while remaining responsive to the client’s own meaning, pace and lived experience.

Course Content

During the workshop, participants will explore:

Understanding Conjecture in Practice

An introduction to conjecture as opinion, interpretation, assumption or conclusion formed without complete evidence. Participants will consider how conjecture naturally appears in therapeutic work and why it needs to be handled with care.

Fact, Observation, Inference and Assumption

A practical exploration of the differences between what a client has directly shared, what the practitioner has noticed, what has been clinically inferred and what may have been assumed. This section helps practitioners strengthen reflective awareness and reduce premature certainty.

The Speed of Meaning-Making

Participants will examine how quickly therapists can begin to form ideas about clients, especially when patterns feel familiar. The workshop considers how theory, experience, intuition and personal bias may all influence interpretation.

Working with the Unknown

The course explores the reality that clients may not disclose everything, may not yet have language for their experience, or may protect certain material until safety and readiness have developed. Participants will reflect on how to tolerate uncertainty without rushing the process.

Mapping What Is Known and Unknown

Using reflective tools such as “I know,” “I think I know,” “I suspect” and “I have never asked,” participants will identify where their understanding of a client may be solid, tentative or unexplored.

Ethical Curiosity

The workshop considers how to ask thoughtful, consent-based questions without becoming intrusive. Participants will reflect on timing, power, safety, shame, trauma, culture, identity and professional boundaries.

Formulation as a Provisional Process

Participants will explore how to keep formulations open, collaborative and revisable. This includes using careful language in supervision, case notes and therapeutic conversations.

Application to Client Work and Supervision

The course supports practitioners to bring greater clarity into supervision, review assumptions in client work, and develop a more reflective relationship with uncertainty.

Who This Course Is For

This course is suitable for counsellors, psychotherapists, trainees, supervisors and other helping professionals who want to deepen their reflective practice and strengthen the ethical use of clinical judgement.

It will be particularly relevant for practitioners who:

Work therapeutically with complex client material
Use formulation, assessment or reflective case discussion
Want to become more aware of assumptions and bias in practice
Are interested in trauma-informed and culturally sensitive ways of working
Want to improve the quality of their supervision reflections
Sometimes feel pressure to “know” or make sense of a client too quickly
Are developing confidence in working with uncertainty
Want practical tools for distinguishing fact, observation, inference and assumption

How comfortable are you with not knowing?

Developing as a therapist isn’t always about knowing more. Sometimes it’s about becoming more aware of what we think we know — and being willing to question it.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy helps you take attachment theory into clinical practice without turning it into another set of labels or assumptions about your clients.

You’ll learn to notice attachment patterns, think about what may be happening within the therapeutic relationship and become more curious about your own responses as a therapist.

Attachment gives us a powerful way of making sense of what we see in the therapy room. The skill is learning to use that lens while still leaving room for uncertainty, curiosity and the client’s own meaning.

Explore the Level 5 Diploma →

Course Overview and Description

When Motherhood Changes Everything: Attachment and Matrescence explores the profound psychological, emotional, relational and identity transition that can take place during pregnancy, birth and early motherhood. Rather than viewing this period only through the language of postnatal adjustment or perinatal mental health, the course introduces matrescence as a process of “mother-becoming”: a significant developmental transition that can reshape a woman’s sense of self, body, relationships, needs and vulnerabilities.

Through an attachment-informed lens, the course considers how becoming a mother may activate existing attachment patterns and defences. Participants are invited to look beneath surface presentations such as anxiety, overwhelm, reassurance-seeking, emotional withdrawal, shame, hypervigilance or difficulty asking for help, and to consider the deeper attachment needs and protective strategies that may be present.

The course uses the case example of Emma, a first-time mother experiencing anxiety, self-doubt, sleep difficulties, body shame and fear of being alone with her baby. Her presentation is explored not simply as a set of symptoms, but as a meaningful response to an activated attachment system during a period of intense change.

Key areas include the nervous system, co-regulation, mentalisation, shame, grief and loss, the wider relational system, intergenerational stories of motherhood, and the therapist’s own countertransference. The course also considers how cultural expectations of the “good mother” can intensify shame when a mother’s lived experience does not match idealised narratives of natural confidence, bonding or enjoyment.

By the end of the course, participants will have a richer understanding of matrescence as an attachment transition and will be encouraged to apply this learning in assessment, formulation, therapeutic pacing, supervision and reflective practice. The course is particularly relevant for counsellors, psychotherapists and helping professionals working with pregnancy, birth, early motherhood, maternal mental health, fertility, baby loss, attachment and identity transitions.

What changes when we look beneath the presenting problem?

Anxiety, reassurance-seeking, withdrawal, shame or finding it difficult to ask for help can tell us something important — but they don’t necessarily tell us the whole story.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy helps therapists move beyond recognising symptoms and begin to understand what may be happening underneath them.

You’ll learn to recognise attachment strategies as they emerge, explore the relationship between attachment, trauma and the nervous system, and become more confident in using what you notice within the therapeutic relationship.

Because when behaviour begins to make sense in the context of someone’s attachment experiences, the way we work with it can change too.

Explore the Level 5 Diploma →

Couples Therapy Through an Attachment Lens: Patterns, Safety and Repair is a reflective CPD workshop for counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors and practitioners who want to understand couple dynamics through an attachment-informed lens.

This workshop explores the important shift from seeing one partner as “the problem” to understanding the relationship as the client. Rather than focusing on blame, participants are invited to become curious about the recurring patterns that keep couples stuck, including pursuing, withdrawing, escalation, shutdown, emotional distance and repeated conflict.

Through an attachment lens, the workshop looks beneath the presenting issues couples bring to therapy, such as conflict, betrayal, lack of intimacy, fertility challenges, grief, parenting difficulties, family pressures or separation decisions. It helps practitioners listen for the deeper attachment questions often sitting underneath: Can I trust you? Will you be there for me? Do I matter? Are we safe together?

Participants will explore adult attachment patterns, common couple cycles, rupture and repair, and the role of emotional safety in helping partners move from defensiveness towards greater vulnerability and connection. The workshop also introduces key couples therapy models, including EFT, Gottman Method, Imago and PACT, considering how each approach supports repair, co-regulation, attunement and secure relating.

The course also places strong emphasis on ethical, safe and anti-oppressive practice. It considers multi-partiality, confidentiality, safeguarding, coercive control, power imbalance, culture, identity and neurodiversity, recognising that attachment never develops in isolation and that couples work requires careful clinical judgement, specialist awareness and appropriate supervision.

This workshop offers a thoughtful introduction to couples therapy through an attachment lens, supporting therapists to move beyond surface-level communication difficulties and towards a deeper understanding of the emotional meaning beneath couple conflict, disconnection and repair.

What changes when the relationship becomes the client?

Couples work asks us to hold more than one person’s story at the same time — to look beyond who is pursuing, withdrawing, escalating or shutting down and become curious about the attachment needs underneath the cycle.

Our CPCAB Level 7 Diploma in Attachment-Focused Psychotherapeutic Practice is designed for experienced therapists who want to deepen their clinical practice and work more confidently with complex relational dynamics.

You’ll explore attachment at an advanced level, including how patterns are enacted within relationships, rupture and repair, trauma, emotional regulation and the therapist’s own position within the work.

It’s about moving beyond who is causing the problem? towards a much more useful question: what is happening between these people, and what is keeping the pattern going?

Explore the Level 7 Diploma →

Clients rarely arrive in therapy as one neat, unified self. More often, they bring a whole inner cast: protective parts, wounded younger parts, fears around closeness or distance, internal conflict, shame, anger, withdrawal, people-pleasing, self-criticism, and longings for connection that may feel both vital and frightening.

This reflective CPD workshop explores how Internal Family Systems (IFS) and attachment theory can be brought together to deepen therapeutic understanding and practice. Attachment theory offers a powerful lens for understanding relational survival strategies, while IFS gives us a compassionate language for how those strategies become organised internally as “parts”.

Rather than viewing client behaviours as resistance, avoidance, neediness, manipulation or defiance, this workshop invites practitioners to ask a more compassionate and clinically useful question: what is this part trying to protect?

Participants will explore how different attachment organisations may present through IFS-informed protector strategies, including dismissing, preoccupied and disorganised patterns. The session also considers the role of exiles, attachment wounds, therapist parts, countertransference, rupture and repair, and the therapist’s capacity to remain grounded in Self-energy.

The emphasis is not on becoming an IFS practitioner in one session — no one needs that kind of pressure on a Tuesday afternoon — but on developing an attachment-informed, parts-aware stance that can enrich relational work, supervision and clinical reflection.

What the Course Covers

This CPD session explores:

• How attachment theory and IFS complement one another in therapeutic practice
• The client’s “inner family”: managers, firefighters, exiles and Self-energy
• Protector strategies within dismissing, preoccupied and disorganised attachment patterns
• Why protectors need to be respected before approaching vulnerability
• How exiles often carry shame, grief, loneliness, abandonment pain and unmet attachment needs
• The therapist as a secure base, both relationally and internally
• Therapist parts, countertransference and the IFS “U-turn”
• Rupture and repair as opportunities for attachment healing
• How Self-energy can support therapeutic presence, pacing and earned secure attachment

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this CPD session, participants will be able to:

1. Describe how IFS and attachment theory can be integrated as complementary frameworks for understanding clients’ internal and relational worlds.
2. Recognise common protector strategies associated with dismissing, preoccupied and disorganised attachment patterns.
3. Reframe behaviours often labelled as resistance as protective adaptations shaped by attachment experience.
4. Understand the importance of respecting protectors before moving toward exile material or deeper vulnerability.
5. Reflect on therapist parts, countertransference and the use of the IFS U-turn in clinical practice.
6. Identify how rupture and repair in the therapeutic relationship can support attachment healing and movement towards earned security.

Who Is This Course For?

This course is suitable for qualified and trainee counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors and mental health practitioners who are interested in attachment, trauma, relational therapy, Internal Family Systems, parts work, and the therapeutic relationship.

It will be particularly relevant for practitioners working with clients who experience shame, emotional dysregulation, relational trauma, avoidance, dependency fears, internal conflict, difficulties with trust, or intense push-pull dynamics in relationships.

Teaching and Learning Methods

The session includes teaching input, clinical reflection, attachment-informed parts formulation, reflective prompts, and an optional experiential exercise focused on accessing Self-energy. Participants are encouraged to reflect on both client parts and therapist parts, making the learning directly applicable to clinical practice and supervision.

Key Takeaway

At the heart of this workshop is a compassionate shift in therapeutic stance: from “What is wrong with this client?” to “What has this part been trying so hard to protect?”

When attachment theory and IFS are brought together, they offer a deeply humane way of understanding survival strategies, relational wounds and the possibility of earned security — both within the therapeutic relationship and within the client’s own internal system.

What changes when we stop asking what’s wrong and start asking what it’s protecting?

IFS gives us one way of understanding the protective parts a client brings into therapy. Attachment gives us another way of understanding how those protective strategies developed — and why they may still be needed.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy helps therapists move beyond identifying attachment styles and begin using attachment thinking in their everyday clinical work.

You’ll learn to recognise the protective strategies sitting beneath behaviours such as withdrawal, people-pleasing, reassurance-seeking, emotional distance or difficulty trusting — while also exploring what happens when those strategies enter the therapeutic relationship.

Because the behaviour that feels difficult in the therapy room may once have been exactly what someone needed to stay safe, connected or protected.

Explore the Level 5 Diploma →

Josh Fletcher explores anxiety in the modern world, looking at panic, avoidance, reassurance-seeking, safety behaviours and the embodied experience of fear. The session frames anxiety as a protective alarm system rather than a personal failure, and considers how modern life can heighten threat perception. Through an attachment-informed lens, the event invites practitioners to think about anxiety as both a nervous-system response and a relational strategy, while reflecting on how therapists can offer steadiness, psychoeducation, careful pacing and relational safety without becoming part of the reassurance cycle.

Please be aware that the recording contains some explicit language. We would also like to clarify that any views expressed by Joshua during the session were his own personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Optima. At Optima, we remain committed to creating respectful, ethical, attachment-informed and professionally reflective learning spaces. This conversation offered much to think about, and we value opportunities for learning that are held with care, curiosity and professional integrity.

Course overview

Holding Minds in Mind: Attachment and Mentalisation in the Therapy Room explores how clients’ early attachment experiences can shape their capacity to understand their own and others’ minds. The course introduces mentalisation as the ability to stay curious about thoughts, feelings, intentions, and relational dynamics, especially when emotions are high or relationships feel under threat.

Participants are invited to consider how mentalisation can become harder during shame, fear, rupture, or attachment activation, and how this may show up in therapeutic work through withdrawal, certainty, emotional flooding, intellectualisation, or difficulty trusting the therapist’s mind.

The course offers practical ways to support clients by prioritising regulation, pacing reflective work carefully, responding to rupture with curiosity, and using tentative, boundaried interventions that help clients move from certainty to curiosity, reaction to reflection, and threat to connection.

What happens when curiosity disappears in the therapy room?

When attachment is activated, our capacity to wonder about our own mind — and someone else’s — can become much harder. Certainty, withdrawal, emotional flooding or intellectualisation may all tell us something about what is happening underneath.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy helps therapists recognise these moments and understand attachment as something that unfolds within the therapeutic relationship, not simply as a theory we apply to clients.

You’ll explore attachment strategies, mentalisation and reflective functioning, trauma, regulation, rupture and repair, and your own responses as a therapist — developing the confidence to stay curious when the work becomes more complex.

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This course explores how practitioners can understand and create “places of safety” for children, young people, families, clients and supervisees in an increasingly unsafe and anxious world.

It focuses on safety as something relational, embodied and contextual rather than simply physical. Key themes include attachment within wider ecological systems, co-regulation, play, belonging, repair after rupture, emotional availability, and the importance of understanding behaviour as meaningful communication rather than pathology. The course also invites practitioners to think critically about decolonising child mental health, giving voice to silenced or marginalised experiences, and recognising how culture, history, family systems, environment and power shape people’s sense of safety.

A central takeaway is that children and young people rarely struggle in isolation. Practitioners are encouraged to ask what sits behind behaviour, how adults can offer a secure base, and how therapeutic or supervisory relationships can become spaces where difficult feelings are survived, repaired and held — but not carried alone.

What does it really mean to be a secure base for someone?

Safety isn’t simply about creating a calm therapy room. It’s something that can be experienced relationally — through consistency, emotional availability, co-regulation, repair and the experience of being understood.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy helps therapists take attachment theory into clinical practice and become more curious about what behaviour may be communicating.

You’ll explore attachment strategies, trauma and the nervous system, mentalising, rupture and repair, and the therapeutic relationship — while considering the wider relationships, experiences and contexts that shape a person’s sense of safety.

Because when we stop asking “What’s wrong with this behaviour?” and start wondering “What might this behaviour be telling us?”, our understanding of the person can change.

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The Functional Model Revisited: An Attachment-Informed Approach to Supervision
Tutors: Uruj Anjum and Georgina Sturmer

In this workshop, Uruj Anjum and Georgina Sturmer revisit the Functional Model of supervision and explore what happens when it is viewed through an attachment-informed lens.

The session begins with the three functions of supervision developed by Francesca Inskipp and Brigid Proctor: formative, normative and restorative. Uruj and Georgina explain these as the learning and development function, the ethical and accountability function, and the emotional support and containment function. Rather than treating these as three tidy columns, they explore how the functions often overlap within real supervision sessions.

A key focus of the workshop is the idea that supervision does not land in neutral space. It lands in people, with histories, identities, relationships to authority, and different levels of comfort with being seen, challenged or supported. The tutors explore how supervision can feel stretching, exposing, collaborative, comforting or frustrating – sometimes all at once.

The workshop then brings in attachment theory, considering supervision as both a secure base and a safe haven. Uruj and Georgina look at how supervisees may lean towards different functions depending on their attachment strategies. Avoidant tendencies may lead supervisees to stay in intellectual, formative or normative spaces, while anxious tendencies may seek reassurance through the restorative function. Supervisors also bring their own attachment patterns, which can shape whether they over-support, avoid challenge, move too quickly into teaching, or struggle with restorative work.

The session also explores power, culture and identity in supervision. Uruj and Georgina invite supervisors and supervisees to think not only about difference, but about how power operates in the room: whose voice is centred, whose knowledge is valued, and how accountability can be offered without shame.

Through role plays, and reflection, the workshop brings the model to life with examples of anxious and avoidant patterns in supervision. The emphasis is on using the Functional Model as a structure, while also noticing safety, threat, power and the nervous systems in the room.

Key clinical themes

• The Functional Model of supervision: formative, normative and restorative
• How the three functions overlap in real supervision
• Supervision as more than a case presentation
• Supervision as a secure base and safe haven
• How attachment patterns shape the experience of supervision
• Avoidant strategies: intellectualising, minimising and staying in thinking
• Anxious strategies: reassurance-seeking, self-doubt and fear of getting it wrong
• How supervisors’ own attachment patterns affect the work
• The role of power, culture and identity in supervision
• Accountability without shame
• Difference, hierarchy and the impact of being seen
• Using attunement to move safely between the three functions

This recording is suitable for supervisors, supervisees and therapists who want to think more deeply about supervision as a relational, ethical and attachment-informed space.

PLEASE NOTE: The time of the recording has been adapted from a live session and includes time for reflection!

What changes when we begin to see supervision as an attachment relationship too?

Supervision isn’t a neutral space. Both supervisor and supervisee bring their attachment histories, responses to authority, experiences of being seen and challenged, and different ways of seeking safety when the work feels exposing.

Our CPCAB Level 7 Diploma in Attachment-Focused Psychotherapeutic Practice takes this thinking further, with Attachment-Informed Supervision forming part of the Level 7 training.

You’ll explore what it means to become a supervisor, how attachment dynamics can emerge within the supervisory relationship, and how we hold support, challenge, accountability, power and difference without losing sight of the relationship.

Because becoming an attachment-informed supervisor isn’t simply about knowing another model. It’s about becoming curious about what is happening between supervisor and supervisee — including what we ourselves bring into the room.

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Understanding and Working With Avoidant Attachment in Adult Relationships
Tutor: Georgina Sturmer

In this workshop, Georgina Sturmer explores how avoidant attachment shows up in adult relationships, and how therapists can support clients to understand the patterns that keep them distant from others.

Georgina begins with a clear introduction to attachment as an internal “alarm system”. When life feels stressful, threatening or emotionally exposing, avoidantly attached clients may protect themselves by moving away, becoming self-reliant, shutting down feelings, or keeping others at a distance. On the outside, this can look calm, confident and capable, but underneath there may be fear of rejection, dislike, vulnerability or being overwhelmed by closeness.

The session looks at how avoidant attachment can affect romantic relationships, family relationships, friendships, work relationships and the therapeutic relationship itself. Georgina uses the case example of Bob and Sarah to explore the relational “dance” that can happen when one person seeks closeness and the other withdraws. She invites therapists to think about what this dance might feel like for the client, for the other person, and for the therapist in the room.

A strong focus of the workshop is on helping clients slow down and notice what happens in the moment their attachment alarm goes off. Rather than trying to change behaviour straight away, Georgina encourages curiosity about what feels threatening, what the client imagines is being asked of them, and why distance begins to feel like the safest option.

The workshop also explores practical ways of working with avoidant attachment, including attunement, co-regulation, mentalisation, psychoeducation, the Parent-Adult-Child model, inner child work, body awareness and metaphor. Georgina shows how therapists can help clients understand their need for space without using it as an attack, and how they can begin to recognise the emotional cost of always protecting themselves through distance.

Ultimately, this session is about increasing safety rather than forcing vulnerability. When avoidantly attached clients feel safe enough, the dance can begin to change — not because they are pushed into closeness, but because they no longer have to dance alone.

Key clinical themes

• Understanding avoidant attachment as protection
• Attachment as an internal alarm system
• How avoidance shows up in adult relationships
• The link between closeness, alarm and withdrawal
• Working with clients who minimise, intellectualise or use humour
• Using the metaphor of the relational “dance”
• Understanding pursuer-withdrawer dynamics
• Exploring the therapist-client relationship with avoidant clients
• Supporting mentalisation and curiosity about others’ feelings
• Using psychoeducation without encouraging over-intellectualising
• Working with the Parent-Adult-Child model
• Exploring younger parts and inner child work when safety has been built
• Helping clients notice body signals when their alarm goes off
• Increasing safety so vulnerability can become more possible

This recording is suitable for therapists and counsellors who want to understand avoidant attachment in adult relationships and work more confidently with clients who protect themselves through distance, self-reliance and withdrawal.

PLEASE NOTE: The time of the recording has been adapted from a live session and includes time for reflection

Knowing someone has an avoidant attachment strategy is one thing. Knowing what to do with that in the therapy room is another.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy is designed to help therapists make that move from knowing attachment theory to actually using it in clinical practice.

You’ll learn to recognise attachment strategies as they emerge through behaviours such as withdrawal, self-reliance, intellectualising, minimising or difficulty with vulnerability — and become curious about the protection underneath rather than trying to change the behaviour too quickly.

You’ll also explore what happens when these strategies enter the therapeutic relationship, including your own responses as the therapist and how safety, attunement, mentalising and rupture and repair can support change.

Take attachment from theory into the therapy room.

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Becoming Research Confident: A Therapist’s Path to Level 7
Tutor: Uruj Anjum

In this workshop, Uruj Anjum invites therapists to think about research in a way that feels more human, accessible and rooted in clinical practice.

Rather than presenting research as something distant or purely academic, Uruj begins with the idea that research often starts in the therapy room. Therapists are already noticing patterns, asking why certain dynamics emerge, wondering what helps clients, and making meaning from what unfolds in the work. In this sense, research is framed as structured curiosity.

The session gently demystifies different types of research, including quantitative research, qualitative research, systematic reviews, mixed methods, case studies, practice-based research and clinical trials. Uruj offers simple explanations of what these approaches involve, and how some may feel closer to the way therapists already think and work.

A key focus of the workshop is helping therapists reflect on their own relationship with research. Uruj explores how words like “research” can bring up curiosity, doubt, avoidance, perfectionism, fear of getting it wrong, or memories of earlier academic experiences. She also looks at what Level 7 study involves, including critical thinking, engaging with literature, developing an independent research project, and integrating reflection with academic thinking.

The workshop includes a reflective exercise and breakout discussion to help participants identify areas of clinical curiosity. Uruj encourages therapists to notice the questions that already live in their practice, and to begin imagining how those questions might be shaped into research.

Uruj also shares her own research journey, from working as an NHS research genetic counsellor across multiple studies, through to her current systematic review exploring the intergenerational psychological effects of having a parent with Huntington’s disease.

This recording is suitable for therapists and counsellors who feel curious about research, interested in Level 7 training, or unsure whether they are “academic enough” to take the next step.

Key clinical themes

• Research as structured curiosity
• Recognising the research skills already present in therapy practice
• Understanding different types of research in simple terms
• Exploring the difference between literature reviews and systematic reviews
• Reflecting on fear, doubt, confidence and avoidance around research
• Understanding what Level 7 study involves
• Moving from clinical curiosity to research question
• Bridging therapeutic identity and research thinking
• Using systematic review to gather and make sense of existing knowledge
• Seeing research as human, relational and connected to practice

This workshop offers a gentle and encouraging introduction for therapists who want to become more research-confident and begin imagining a pathway toward Level 7 study.

PLEASE NOTE: The time of the recording has been adapted from a live session and includes time for reflection

Could your clinical curiosity become your next research question?

If you’ve ever noticed something in your client work and found yourself wondering why does this keep happening?, what do we actually know about this? or what might help? — you’re already beginning to think like a researcher.

Our CPCAB Level 7 Diploma in Attachment-Focused Psychotherapeutic Practice gives experienced therapists the opportunity to take that curiosity further.

Alongside advanced attachment-focused clinical practice and supervision, you’ll develop your research thinking and undertake your own systematic review, exploring a question that matters to you and your practice.

You don’t need to arrive feeling like an academic. You need curiosity, a willingness to question what you think you know, and an interest in taking your clinical thinking to the next level.

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Autism & Attachment in the Therapy Room
Tutor: Darren Sharpe & Jo Oxley

In this 2.5 hour training, Darren Sharpe explores the intersection between autism and attachment in the therapy room, with a focus on helping therapists avoid misreading autistic clients and adapt practice in ways that support safety and engagement.

The session begins by framing autism as a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference, with highly variable presentations. Darren introduces key ideas including the spectrum model, the neurodiversity perspective, and differences in communication, social interaction and flexibility. The training invites therapists to consider which behaviours in therapy may be autistic traits rather than resistance, disengagement or emotional avoidance.

A strong focus of the workshop is sensory processing and the nervous system. Darren explores how sensory sensitivity or sensory seeking can shape emotional regulation, relational safety and therapy engagement. Participants are encouraged to think about behaviour as communication, and to ask what the client’s nervous system may be communicating in the room.

The training also includes an attachment theory refresher, looking at secure, avoidant, ambivalent/anxious and disorganised attachment patterns. Darren then explores where autism and attachment can overlap, and how autism may sometimes look like attachment difficulty. For example, reduced eye contact may be about sensory regulation, independence may be misread as avoidance, and literal communication may be mistaken for emotional distance.

A key part of the session focuses on therapy-room misreads. Darren invites therapists to reflect on how clients who appear disengaged, distant, avoidant or emotionally unavailable may in fact be overwhelmed, processing, regulating or communicating differently.

The workshop includes case study exploration and practical strategy building. Participants consider clients who speak in monologues, struggle with emotional language, or appear distant but attend consistently. The session then moves into autism-supportive adaptations, including clear structure, predictable pacing, explicit expectations, processing time, sensory adjustments and open repair of misunderstandings.

This recording is suitable for counsellors, therapists and mental health professionals who want to better understand autistic clients through both autism and attachment lenses, and adapt their work to reduce harm and increase therapeutic safety.

Key clinical themes

• Autism as a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference
• Neurodiversity-affirming therapeutic practice
• Understanding highly variable autistic presentations
• Sensory processing and nervous system safety
• How sensory safety supports relational safety
• Attachment patterns in the therapy relationship
• Where autism and attachment may overlap
• Avoiding misreads around eye contact, distance and engagement
• Understanding behaviour as communication
• Working with clients who appear distant but attend consistently
• Adapting therapy through structure, clarity and predictability
• Supporting emotional language and processing time
• Reducing sensory load in the therapy room
• Using both autism and attachment lenses in formulation

This training offers practical, reflective guidance for therapists who want to work more confidently and safely with autistic clients in the therapy room.

PLEASE NOTE: The time of the recording has been adapted from a live session and includes time for reflection

Attachment can help us understand behaviour — but it shouldn’t become the explanation for everything.

An autistic client who avoids eye contact isn’t necessarily avoiding connection. A client who needs distance may be regulating sensory overwhelm rather than defending against intimacy. What looks like disengagement may actually be processing.

Our CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy helps therapists learn to use attachment as a clinical lens without losing sight of the whole person in front of them.

You’ll learn to recognise attachment strategies, explore what happens within the therapeutic relationship and become more thoughtful about what you’re observing, what you’re interpreting and what else might explain the behaviour you see.

Because good attachment-informed practice isn’t about finding attachment everywhere. It’s about knowing when the lens helps — and when we need to look again.

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