Attachment Informed Therapy: Recognising and working with patterns of insecure attachment in short-term work
Book ticketsOrganised by:
Counselling Service at Birkbeck, University of London
Description
The Birkbeck Training Series enters its sixth year in 2023-24. Launched in 2018 by the Student Counselling Service at Birkbeck, University of London, the workshops are created by and for HE counsellors and are tailored specifically for short-term work with students. We are very proud to have become a valued source of training within the sector and we hope to continue to provide a specialised thinking space for Counsellors working in HE.
Every year we focus on a theme to better understand how to reframe our way of working in this context. This year we have decided to focus on a topic that is at the very heart of the therapeutic relationship and human development – Attachment.
Bowlby defined attachment as the “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings”. Its theory focuses on relationships and bonds (particularly long-term) between people, including those between a parent and child and between romantic partners and suggests that people are born with a need to forge bonds, and that these early bonds may continue to have an influence on attachments throughout life.
Given that attachment theory is based firmly in long-term therapy, our trainings will look to explore and reframe how we can understand it in the context of short-term work.
Training 2: Attachment Informed Therapy: Recognising and working with patterns of insecure attachment in short-term work by Linda Cundy
Wednesday 21 February 2024, 9:30am-4:30pm
About the Workshop
Attachment Theory, along with some of the research underpinning it, is now well-known in the public domain. However, the implications for the practice of counselling and psychotherapy are little considered beyond the notion of the therapist as a “secure base”. Whatever a client’s presenting issue, their early relational history exerts an influence on their engagement with the therapeutic process.
This full-day workshop presents an attachment-informed model of therapy and the skills to recognise, understand and work with different constellations of defences and distorted – or contorted – relational dynamics that typify insecure patterns of attachment.
Workshop Themes
· The influence of core patterns of attachment, developing as a response to
insecurity in early life, on all later relationships, including with the therapist and
with oneself.
· The therapeutic challenges posed by clients’ attachment-related defences.
· Considering how short-term counselling can be informed by Attachment Theory.
About the Speaker
Linda Cundy is an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and a trainer specialising in attachment. She has twenty-five years’ experience of teaching, providing training, conference papers and presentations, and is the Attachment Consultant to the Bowlby Centre.
She is also an author who has contributed to and edited four books to date (And working on five and six!): Love in the Age of the Internet: Attachment in the Digital Era (2015, Karnac), Anxiously Attached: Understanding and Working with Preoccupied Attachment (2017), Attachment and the Defence Against Intimacy: Understanding and Working with Avoidant Attachment, Self-Hatred and Shame (2018), and Attachment, Relationships and Food: From Cradle to Kitchen (2021).
She has written a number of articles for professional journals and continues to be involved in training on a freelance basis and plans to spend more time writing.
For more information regarding the event or our other trainings, please visit our website: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/student-services/counselling-service/birkbeck-training-series
If you have any queries about bookings, eligibility for discounted tickets, how to make group bookings or would like us to send you the event brochure, please email Aditi Dhar at counselling-services@bbk.ac.uk
