Therapeutic Attachment Relationship

Expanding the Therapeutic Attachment Relationship

The therapeutic Alliance is a major factor in the success of Psychotherapy.  All of the psychotherapy outcome research points to this fact.  Recent psychotherapy research has been looking at the importance of attachment.  This  course is intended to inspire and train experienced therapists in new ways to utilize the Therapeutic Attachment Relationship in clinical practice.  We will also teach the participants how to discern aspects of the therapeutic relationship that are usually unconscious and invisible to the untrained eye.

In the past two years our clinical research and teaching experiences have taught us many new things that will be incorporated into this course.  The Therapeutic Attachment Relationship is an invaluable resource that is often underutilized even by quite experienced therapists. This will be a practical training course to give the participants new understandings, approaches, and interventions that they can take with them to use with their patients/clients immediately in the following weeks.

The topics to be covered will be the following:  Utilizing the relationship as a source of Activation energy to do the work of therapy and bring more brain systems on line.   Building a sense of ‘safeness’ more than safety that is necessary to access approach oriented and need satisfying experiences. Focusing on the bottom up experience of the uniquely evolving therapeutic attachment relationship. Differentiating the transpiring therapeutic relationship from the top-down experience of the relationship from previous development [implicit relational patterns, transference, projections, distortions, etc.]  Utilizing the relationship to activate neurotransmitters- oxytocin and serotonin to facilitate neuroplasticity and the goals of therapy.  Uncovering new therapeutic material as a result of working actively with the therapeutic attachment relationship such as unconscious Anxiety, hyperconnections or hypoactivations of Brain systems, fear of closeness, self-sabotage of relationships, guilt or shame.  And Using psychophysiological phenomena as evidence to guide the therapist to facilitate the development of the Therapeutic Attachment Relationship

We will teach and demonstrate how to use this perspective to enhance your practice of psychotherapy. There will be several live therapy demonstrations and careful review of video-recordings of therapy sessions.   We will learn a number of therapeutic approaches to focus on and highlight important aspects of the therapeutic attachment relationship.   We will explore a variety of interventions to activate neurotransmitters to facilitate the therapeutic process.  There will also be therapy demonstration exercises for each of the participants to experience new ways to explore the Therapeutic Attachment Relationship.

Learning Objectives 

1] How to utilize the Activation energy of the therapeutic relationship to over ride the patient/client’s avoidant tendencies, for example: fear, shame or depression

2] How to differentiate the bottom up from the top-down experience of the therapeutic relationship

3] How to utilize the therapeutic relationship to activate neurotransmitters to facilitate long-term changes in therapy

Therapeutic Process of CIMBS is called: NeuroPhysioPsychoTherapy.  Neuro- refers to our active interventions to maximize neuroplasticity for long term learning and specific interventions to activate multiple neurotransmitters to facilitate the therapeutic process.  Physio- refers to our observations of psychophysiological phenomena to adjust our therapeutic process and redirect our interventions in response to psychophysiological shifts.  Psycho- refers to our careful attention to 6 different psychological Brain Systems and to our therapeutic process that explicitly meets the psychological needs of the patient.

Therapeutic Elements: CIMBS incorporates all of the change elements that are a part of the following evidence based therapies:  CBT [desensitization, cognitive restructuring, behavioral change], mindfulness based CBT, affect activation and cognitive restructuring of EDT [Experiential Dynamic Therapy and STDP] therapies [we were co-investigators in prospective evidence based EDT psychotherapy study],  and we use the interruption and rebalancing of EMDR.  In addition we utilize Empirically supported relationship elements since therapy relationships make substantial and consistent contributions to outcome results.

Therapeutic Outcomes:  Our goal is to enable our patients/clients to become the author of their own lives, capable of making the best of any situation, continuously learning and growing to the full extent of the neuroplasticity of their brains and fulfilling their lives.