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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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

Research can often feel intimidating, overly academic, or disconnected from the reality of therapeutic practice. This CPD video, Becoming Research-Confident, offers a gentler and more accessible way in.

Designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors, trainees and attachment-informed practitioners, this workshop reframes research as something many practitioners are already doing: noticing patterns, asking thoughtful questions, reflecting on relational dynamics, and making meaning from complex human experience.

Rather than presenting research as something distant or reserved for academics, this CPD explores research as structured curiosity. You will be invited to consider how the skills you already use in clinical practice — reflective awareness, ethical sensitivity, critical thinking and tolerance of uncertainty — are also the foundations of good research.

The video introduces key types of research, including qualitative research, quantitative research, mixed methods, systematic reviews, case studies, practice-based research and clinical trials. It also supports you to think about how clinical curiosity can begin to develop into a clear, ethically considered research question.

This CPD is particularly helpful for practitioners considering Level 7 study, preparing for academic writing, developing a research project, or wanting to feel more confident engaging with research literature. It is also valuable for therapists who want to connect attachment-informed practice with evidence, inquiry and professional development.

Throughout the workshop, you are encouraged to explore not only what research is, but also your emotional relationship with it. Many practitioners carry anxiety, self-doubt or old academic wounds around research. This CPD offers a compassionate space to recognise those responses and begin building a more secure relationship with curiosity, uncertainty, evidence and learning.

By the end of this CPD video, you will have a clearer understanding of how research connects with therapeutic practice, how different research methods answer different kinds of questions, and how your own clinical curiosity may already contain the seeds of meaningful professional inquiry.

Who Is This CPD For?

This CPD video is suitable for:

• Counsellors and psychotherapists
• Attachment-informed practitioners
• Trainee counsellors and psychotherapists
• Supervisors and clinical educators
• Practitioners preparing for Level 7 study
• Therapists developing research confidence
• Practitioners who feel anxious or uncertain about academic work
• Therapists interested in practice-based research, case studies or systematic reviews

Learning Outcomes

By watching this CPD video, you will be supported to:

• Understand research as structured curiosity
• Recognise how research thinking begins in the therapy room
• Explore your own emotional relationship with research and academic learning
• Understand different types of research and what kinds of questions they answer
• Begin shaping clinical curiosity into a possible research question
• Connect attachment-informed practice with professional inquiry
• Identify realistic next steps towards becoming more research-confident
• Prepare for further study, including Level 7 research or systematic review work

Key Topics Covered

• Research confidence for therapists
• Research as structured curiosity
• Clinical curiosity and research questions
• Attachment-informed practice and inquiry
• Qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods research
• Systematic reviews and case study research
• Practice-based research in counselling and psychotherapy
• Research anxiety and academic confidence
• Level 7 study preparation
• Ethical thinking in therapeutic research
• Using supervision and peer discussion to develop research ideas

Therapist burnout attachment explores how a practitioner’s own attachment patterns, stress responses and need for support can shape the sustainability of therapeutic work. This reflective CPD training looks at what happens when therapists, counsellors and relational practitioners are expected to provide a secure base for others while their own professional secure base may be under strain.

Therapists are trained to offer attunement, containment, consistency and emotional steadiness. Yet therapeutic work carries a hidden emotional load. Over time, this can show up as exhaustion, emotional residue, reduced curiosity, difficulty switching off, professional isolation, or a sense of becoming either over-responsible or emotionally distant.

This course explores burnout not only as an occupational issue, but as a relational and embodied experience. It considers how anxious attachment strategies may appear as over-functioning, urgency, rumination, rescue, or excessive responsibility for client outcomes. It also examines how avoidant attachment strategies may appear as withdrawal, emotional distancing, self-reliance, minimising needs, or reluctance to seek support.

Participants are invited to reflect on the question: who holds the therapist? The training supports practitioners to notice early signs of depletion, understand how they carry client work in the body, and consider how supervision, peer connection, transition rituals and ethical self-care can strengthen sustainable therapeutic practice.

This training covers:

• Therapist burnout, emotional load and professional sustainability
• Attachment patterns under professional strain
• Anxious over-functioning and avoidant withdrawal in practitioners
• The therapist as a secure base for clients
• The importance of supervision, peer support and reflective practice
• Embodied signs of burnout and nervous system depletion
• Professional isolation, especially in online therapeutic work
• Ethical self-care as stewardship of clinical capacity
• Practical ways to strengthen the practitioner’s secure base

What is therapist burnout attachment?
Therapist burnout attachment refers to the way a practitioner’s attachment patterns can influence how they respond to emotional demand, responsibility, client distress, professional isolation and the need for support.

Why does this matter in therapy practice?
When therapists are under-held, they may over-function, withdraw, become emotionally depleted or lose reflective capacity. Understanding these patterns supports safer, more ethical and more sustainable therapeutic work.

This CPD training is suitable for counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors, trainees, coaches working therapeutically and other relational practitioners who want to reflect on burnout, attachment-informed self-care and the sustainability of their clinical practice.

How therapists can recognise avoidant defences, understand the countertransference, and build relational safety without pushing for closeness too quickly.

Avoidant attachment in therapy describes a relational pattern where clients may protect themselves from vulnerability, dependency, rejection or emotional overwhelm by relying on distance, self-sufficiency and intellectualisation. In this episode of The Attachment in Practice Podcast, Georgina Sturmer explores how avoidant attachment can appear in the therapy room, how therapists might experience it in the countertransference, and how attachment-informed practice can support clients to feel safe enough to move gently towards connection.

Drawing on attachment theory, attachment styles, relationships and therapeutic practice, this episode looks beyond the idea of avoidance as disengagement. Instead, avoidant attachment is understood as a protective strategy: one that may have developed in response to early relational environments where emotional needs were minimised, closeness felt unsafe, or independence was praised.

Georgina reflects on how avoidant clients may present as articulate, thoughtful and highly capable, while remaining disconnected from feelings, bodily experience or relational vulnerability. The episode explores common defensive mechanisms such as intellectualisation, humour, minimising and rationalising, and considers the risk of therapists either colluding with these defences or pushing too hard against them.

Listeners will also be invited to think about their own attachment responses in the therapy room. When working with avoidant attachment, therapists may notice feelings of flatness, distance, boredom, inadequacy or a pressure to “make something happen”. These responses can offer valuable clinical information when held with curiosity and supervision.

This episode is especially relevant for counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, supervisors, trainees and attachment-informed practitioners who want to deepen their understanding of avoidant attachment in clinical practice.

In this episode, we explore:

• What avoidant attachment really means
• How avoidant attachment presents before and during therapy
• Why intellectualisation and humour can function as defences
• How avoidance lives within the therapeutic relationship
• What therapists may notice in the countertransference
• How to work gently with boundaries, pacing, metaphor and the body
• Why the goal is not to dismantle defences, but to build relational safety

Autism and attachment therapy requires clinicians to hold two important lenses at the same time: attachment-informed practice and neurodiversity-informed understanding. This training video explores how autism and attachment can appear similar in the therapy room, while arising from very different internal processes.

Designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, supervisors and trainee therapists, this course supports clinicians to differentiate between attachment-based relational defences and neurodevelopmental difference. It considers how autistic clients may be misread in therapy, particularly around eye contact, silence, emotional expression, communication style, sensory processing and relational engagement.

Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference that can affect social communication, sensory processing and behavioural patterns. Attachment theory explores how early relational experiences shape a person’s strategies for safety, closeness and distress. When these two areas overlap, therapists need careful clinical judgement to avoid misattunement, over-pathologising difference, or interpreting neurological expressions as relational resistance.

Based on training by Darren Sharpe, this video introduces practical ways to adapt therapy for autistic clients, including clearer contracting, predictable structure, direct communication, sensory awareness and environmental adjustments. The training also explores the importance of asking, “What is the nervous system communicating?” rather than assuming disengagement, avoidance or resistance.

You will learn how to:

• Distinguish between autism traits and attachment-based relational patterns
• Understand the difference between neurodevelopmental difference and relational defence
• Recognise common therapy room misreads with autistic clients
• Adapt communication, pacing and structure in therapy
• Support sensory safety as a foundation for relational safety
• Use supervision to reflect on countertransference, bias and clinical uncertainty

This training is suitable for practitioners developing attachment-informed, neurodiversity-informed and trauma-aware practice.

Common questions explored in this training

What is autism and attachment therapy?
Autism and attachment therapy is an approach that helps clinicians understand how autistic clients may experience relationships, safety and communication through both a neurodevelopmental and attachment-informed lens.

How can autism be mistaken for avoidant attachment?
Autistic clients may avoid eye contact, prefer solitude, communicate directly or need more processing time, which can sometimes be misread as avoidance, resistance or emotional withdrawal.

Why is sensory safety important in therapy?
Sensory safety supports relational safety. When a client’s nervous system is overwhelmed by light, sound, smell, seating or pace, deeper therapeutic work may become difficult or inaccessible.