A Live, Interactive Webconference
Wednesday, November 12, 2025, via Zoom Interactive Webconference
9:30am-12:30pm, 1:30pm-4:30pm AST
Youth referred for intensive behavioral health services often live in families marked by fragile, insecure attachment, particularly in parent-child relationships. Fragile, insecure, or “troubled” attachments are often at the core of emotion dysregulation, negative interactional patterns, and dramatic symptomatology. To effectively help these youth and their families, it is important for therapists to be grounded in an understanding of applied attachment theory, and to be able
listen to families interacting with an “attachment ear.” This workshop provides a brief overview of attachment theory, its relationship to emotion regulation, and how it can inform assessment and intervention in family treatment.
Three common insecure attachment patterns are described and how they show up in enmeshed and disengaged families. Major focus is given to how therapists can use attachment theory to improve their skills in relational reframing, which is considered essential to improving family functioning. Emphasis will be given to pacing and using the language of attachment to shift caregivers and youth from a behavioral view of their challenges to a relational one. This language taps into yearning for a sense of felt safety, a sense of being seen and known (attunement), the experience of felt comfort (soothing), and a sense of being valued (expressed delight). Concepts and intervention strategies commonly used in Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT) are demonstrated through videotaped case examples.
As a result of attending this training, participants will be able to:
1. Describe the nature and functions of attachment.
2. Identify common attachment patterns and how they shape relationships.
3. Recognize the attachment subtext in youth and family interactions.
4. Describe how the language of attachment can be used to cultivate a relational treatment frame.
5. Describe how to use enactments to strengthen the parent child relationship.
Agenda
- 9: 30am-11:00am AST: Focus on Objectives 1-2
- 11:00am-11:15am AST: Break
- 11:15am-12:30pm AST: Focus on Objectives 2-3
- 12:30pm- 1:30pm AST: Lunch
- 1:30pm-3:00pm AST: Focus on Objective 4-5
- 3:00pm-3:15pm AST: Break
- 3:15pm-4:30pm AST: Focus on Objective 5
This is a beginning to intermediate level course. The target audience is behavioral health professionals working with youth and families. This is a live synchronous distance learning activity conducted in real time, allowing for simultaneous participation of participants and instructors from different locations.
Frequently Asked Questions
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