Beneath the Presenting Problem: Using Attachment Theory in Clinical Practice
Presented by Jo Bealey
A practical exploration of how attachment shapes what happens beneath the presenting problem, and how we can work with it in the therapy room.
Live online | 4 hours | 5 ACA OPD points
Beneath the Presenting Problem is a four-hour professional development workshop for counsellors, psychologists, psychotherapists and mental health professionals who want to apply attachment theory in clinical practice. Building on Attachment Foundations for Therapists, it explores internal working models, attachment strategies, the therapist as an attachment figure, rupture and reunion, secure-base work and the role of the therapeutic relationship in supporting change.
Beneath the Presenting Problem
Using Attachment Theory in Clinical Practice
Knowing attachment theory is one thing. Knowing how to use it when you’re sitting with a client is something quite different.
Clients rarely arrive talking about their attachment strategy. They bring anxiety, relationship difficulties, anger, shame, repeated patterns, difficulties with intimacy – or simply a sense that the same things keep happening. And sometimes, as therapists, we get stuck too. We can find ourselves going round the same material with a client, or have a sense that something deeper is happening without being quite sure how to reach it.
Attachment gives us another way of listening.
We’ll look beyond the presenting difficulty and become curious about what might be happening underneath it. What has this person learnt to expect from relationships? What happens when they feel vulnerable? And what might their behaviour be trying to protect?
We’ll also turn our attention to something that’s easy to miss: what begins to happen between client and therapist.
Why does one client leave us wanting to reassure them, while another has us working unusually hard? Why can a break in therapy feel fairly ordinary to one client and hugely significant to another? And what might moments of closeness, distance or tension be telling us?
This is where attachment theory becomes much more than something we know. It can make the work feel exciting and laser-focused, helping us see what might actually be happening beneath the behaviour and where the therapeutic work needs to go.
It becomes a way of noticing what is happening in the room, in the relationship and in ourselves -and thinking differently about how we respond.
If Attachment Foundations helps you see through an attachment lens, this workshop takes you further into what you do with what you see.
What participants will explore
- Moving from attachment theory to attachment-informed clinical practice
- Understanding behaviour through an attachment lens
- Internal working models and relational expectations
- The therapist as an attachment figure
- Attachment dynamics within the therapeutic relationship
- Rupture, reunion, separation and therapeutic boundaries
- The influence of therapist and client attachment patterns
- Attunement, containment and the therapeutic use of self
- Creating a secure base within therapy
- Earned security and new relational experiences
The training material explicitly develops secure-base work into attunement, containment and verbalising implicit experience, with the therapeutic relationship used to support reflective capacity and relational change.