Attached Together is a podcast exploring attachment theory, attachment styles, and psychotherapy in clinical practice.
Created by the therapists and tutors at Optima Health Services, this podcast is for counsellors, psychotherapists, and mental health professionals who want grounded, thoughtful conversations about attachment, trauma, relationships, and everyday therapeutic work.
Each episode examines how attachment shapes the way we love, cope, regulate, and connect - both in our personal lives and in the therapy room. Expect practical insights, reflective discussion, and training-level knowledge that bridges theory and practice without unnecessary jargon.
Listeners can also receive a CPD certificate for each episode, making it easy to integrate ongoing professional development into your week while deepening your understanding of attachment-informed practice.
Whether you’re working with anxious, avoidant, or disorganised attachment, supporting couples, or strengthening your clinical formulation skills, Attached Together offers thoughtful, experience-based conversations rooted in real therapeutic work.
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What Happens to Our Attachment Patterns When We’re in a Group?
Season 2 · Episode 12
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 • Duration 29:18
What happens to attachment patterns when therapy moves from a one-to-one relationship into a group?
In this episode of Attached Together, attachment-based psychotherapist and supervisor Georgina Sturmer is joined by psychotherapist, author and group facilitator Sarah Dosanjh, widely known as The Binge Eating Therapist.
Drawing on Sarah’s experience of running therapy groups, support groups, courses and workshops, they explore attachment in group therapy and the extraordinary amount that can become visible when people are relating not only to a therapist, but to one another.
Sarah describes the importance of creating a clear purpose for a group and preparing people for what participation will actually involve. She also shares one of the questions she asks new members: “Who are you in a group?”
It is a deceptively simple question.
People arrive in groups with a lifetime of experience of belonging, adapting, caregiving, staying quiet, taking up space, managing conflict and protecting themselves. For some of Sarah’s clients, people-pleasing and caregiving can create a warm and supportive group while also making it easier to focus on everyone else rather than themselves.
The conversation explores what makes a therapy group different from a support group, including Sarah’s repeated invitation to notice what is happening internally even while somebody else is speaking.
Georgina and Sarah also consider rupture and conflict, the therapist’s own reactions when tensions emerge, and the things that may remain unsaid when group members find disagreement difficult to tolerate.
They look at the particular experience of online groups, boundaries around contact outside the group, and why an emotionally intimate connection created within therapy does not necessarily translate easily into friendship elsewhere.
And then there are endings.
Sarah describes what can happen when somebody announces that they are leaving: the group member whose immediate thought is, “Was it me?”, the different ways people approach goodbye, and the therapist’s own attachment responses to departures.
There is also an unusually candid exploration of therapist fallibility. Sarah recalls making a comment to a group member that she intended as teasing but realised had landed with a bite. Rather than allowing the moment to disappear, she returned to it, acknowledged what had happened and invited the group to explore its impact.
The episode offers a thoughtful reminder that therapeutic safety does not require a therapist to become a perfect facilitator. Rupture, uncertainty, endings and mistakes can themselves become part of the work.
For therapists curious about starting a group, Sarah also shares practical observations from years of group work, from defining a clear niche and setting a start date to establishing boundaries and commitment.
Above all, the conversation explores why group therapy can offer something that individual therapy cannot quite replicate: attachment patterns unfolding between peers, in real time.
Listeners can access a CPD certificate and reflection pack for this episode here.
When Culture and Faith Change the Attachment Story
Season 2 · Episode 11
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 • Duration 35:01
What happens when attachment theory is applied without enough attention to culture, faith, migration, identity or power?
In this episode of Attached Together, Optima lecturer, psychotherapist and supervisor Uruj Anjum is joined by Myira Khan, an award-winning accredited counsellor, supervisor, coach, trainer, author and founder of the Muslim Counsellor and Psychotherapist Network (MCAPN).
Together, they explore attachment theory and culture through an anti-oppressive lens, asking what can be missed when ideas about secure attachment are applied too literally or through culturally dominant assumptions.
Myira considers attachment as something shaped within a much broader relational world. What changes when a child grows up with several caregivers rather than one primary caregiver? How might migration, displacement, racism, Islamophobia or a changing sense of home affect experiences of safety, rejection and belonging? And what happens when therapists either fail to ask about identity at all, or focus so heavily on one part of a client’s identity that the rest of the person disappears from view?
The conversation also explores culturally attuned therapy with Muslim clients. Myira challenges the assumption that sharing a faith identity makes people’s experiences of that faith the same, and discusses why clients should not have to become their therapist’s teacher on Islam, culture or identity.
An ethical dilemma brings these ideas into the counselling room. If a Muslim client facing loss, infertility or a difficult diagnosis says they are “leaving it in Allah’s hands”, should a therapist understand this as avoidance? Or might faith be offering hope, security and an active way of relating to something beyond the client’s control?
Rather than reaching too quickly for a label, Myira invites therapists to become curious about what the belief means to that individual and what their decision to come to therapy already tells us.
The episode closes with a deceptively simple challenge to therapeutic neutrality: the work happens between two whole people. Culture, identity, attachment patterns and lived experience do not stay outside the counselling room.
What Happens When We Start Getting Attached to AI?
Season 2 · Episode 10
Tuesday, September 15, 2026 • Duration 28:23
What happens when an AI relationship starts to feel safer, easier or more dependable than a relationship with another person?
In this episode of Attached Together, Jo, psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, is joined by Georgina Sturmer, an integrative attachment-based therapist, supervisor and lecturer in counselling and on Optima Attachment Training’s Level 5 Diploma.
Their conversation looks at AI relationships and attachment from an unusually human angle. What begins with chatbots offering encouragement soon moves into AI companions, romantic partners and avatars designed to recreate people who have died.
That raises some uncomfortable questions.
If somebody can recreate the voice and characteristics of a person they have lost, could that support a continuing bond in grief - or make it harder to face the reality of the loss? And what happens when somebody creates an AI version of an ex-partner, or potentially even their therapist?
The conversation considers why AI and attachment styles may be particularly interesting for therapists. Someone with anxious attachment might be drawn to the reassurance of something that is always available. Someone with avoidant attachment may find closeness easier when it does not require the same interpersonal vulnerability. For someone with disorganised attachment, the predictability of AI may offer relief from relationships that have previously felt chaotic or unsafe.
Jo and Georgina also consider what AI cannot easily reproduce.
Therapy is not simply about receiving empathic words. It involves two separate minds, embodied co-regulation, boundaries, misunderstanding, transference and countertransference - and the experience of rupture and repair.
The episode introduces the provocative idea of AI becoming a “pseudo-secure base”: something that appears to offer reliable soothing and security while potentially leaving the person increasingly dependent on something that cannot participate in a reciprocal human relationship.
What Do Our Dreams Reveal? Attachment, Relationships & the Therapy Room
Season 2 · Episode 9
Tuesday, September 8, 2026 • Duration 31:21
Dreams can reveal parts of a client’s inner world that are not always easy to reach through conversation alone. Through attachment theory, they may offer clues about attachment styles, relationships and what a client expects when they feel vulnerable or need someone.
In this episode of The Attach Together Podcast, Jane is joined by Gav McKee to explore attachment dreams in therapy.
Rather than treating dreams as puzzles to decode, Gav looks at the relationships within them: who is there when the client is frightened, what happens when they need help, and whether others feel available, distant or unsafe.
The conversation explores how anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment may appear in dream themes, while avoiding fixed interpretations. Gav also shares practical ways therapists can work with dream material with curiosity, without imposing meaning.
You'll hear about:
• Retelling a dream in the present tense • Listening for emotions and relational patterns • Exploring significant figures through an IFS-informed lens • Experimenting with different perspectives within a dream • Working with unfinished or recurring dreams • Noticing what happens when the therapist appears in the client's dream • Recognising possible shifts towards earned secure attachment
Gav also considers how dreams may change during therapy. A client who once faced everything alone might begin asking for help. Someone may arrive when they're distressed. A frightening figure may lose some of its threat.
We can't treat those changes as proof of earned security, but they may give us another glimpse of an internal working model beginning to shift.
The episode closes with a clinical dilemma: what happens when a recurring dream is so frightening that talking about it overwhelms the client?
ChaptersCommon questions
Attachment Theory Beyond the Parent-Child Relationship
Season 2 · Episode 8
Tuesday, September 1, 2026 • Duration 27:09
Attachment theory child therapy looks beyond a child’s behaviour to the relationships and systems around them. In this episode of Attach Together, Georgina Sturmer and child and adolescent psychotherapist Alix Hearn explore attachment, play, intergenerational patterns, place and therapeutic relationships.
What is a systemic approach to attachment?
A systemic approach to attachment looks at the relationships, histories and environments surrounding a child, rather than locating difficulty within the child alone. Alix explores how family, education, culture, trauma and wider systems can shape a child’s experience, drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model to support attachment-informed formulation.
In this episode
Georgina and Alix explore:
Why attachment needs to be understood relationally and systemically
The limitations of focusing solely on a child’s behaviour
Intergenerational attachment patterns and trauma
Therapeutic relationships with parents and carers
Play as a language of relationship in child therapy
Attachment, belonging and the “more-than-human world”
Place attachment and physical environments
Children’s agency and choice in therapy
How systems can recreate relational difficulties
The ethics of very short-term therapeutic work
Alix also raises an important clinical question: when a child has experienced repeated loss, disruption or relational trauma, is offering six sessions necessarily better than offering no therapy at that point? Might supporting an adult or another part of the child’s wider system sometimes be more appropriate?
The discussion leaves space for practitioners to think about these questions rather than suggesting a universal answer.
Common questions
What is attachment theory in child therapy? Attachment theory in child therapy helps us consider how experiences of safety, connection, separation and relationships may shape how a child relates to themselves and others.
How do attachment styles affect relationships? Attachment patterns can influence expectations of closeness, safety, care and connection. Alix encourages curiosity about these patterns without reducing people to fixed categories.
ChaptersResources
Attachment & Burnout: Why Therapists Keep Going When They’re Running on Empty
Season 2 · Episode 7
Tuesday, August 25, 2026 • Duration 44:52
Attachment and burnout in therapy raises an uncomfortable question: why can therapists be so good at noticing distress in other people, yet struggle to recognise when they’re becoming depleted themselves?
In this episode of The Attachment in Practice Podcast, Wendy Widdrington is joined by counsellor, couple therapist and supervisor Phil Pinchen to explore attachment theory, attachment styles, relationships and therapy through the lens of therapist burnout.
And there’s a personal reason for the conversation.
After Wendy and Phil spent months researching attachment and burnout as part of their Level 7 work, Phil gently wondered whether Wendy herself might be experiencing some burnout.
Her internal response was essentially: Absolutely not. I’m coping very well, thank you.
So why can burnout be so difficult to recognise — and even harder to admit?
In this episode
• What burnout can actually look like in therapists • Attachment styles and different responses to stress • Why “I’m fine” can sometimes deserve another question • People-pleasing, striving and self-reliance • Losing the energy or “spark” that normally makes us feel like ourselves • Finding your personal “stress signature” • Wendy’s “work-joy ratio” question • Why supervision can protect against professional isolation • Creating enough safety to have courageous conversations about burnout
A question to take into supervision
What is your stress signature?
How would somebody who knows you well recognise that you were becoming stressed?
Would you become quieter? More irritable? Work longer? Worry more about clients? Withdraw? Stop doing the things that normally restore you?
Attachment-informed therapy isn’t only about understanding our clients. Sometimes the attachment lens can help us become more curious about ourselves.
Questions we exploreChapters
Attachment and EMDR: What Happens When the Processing Gets Stuck?
Season 2 · Episode 6
Tuesday, August 18, 2026 • Duration 27:59
How do attachment styles and relationships influence EMDR and trauma therapy? In this episode, Jo Oxley and attachment and relationship therapist Jo Bealey explore EMDR and attachment therapy through the lens of relational safety — particularly what may be happening when trauma processing becomes “stuck”.
EMDR and attachment therapy can be understood as the integration of trauma processing with attention to the attachment strategies, internal working models and relational expectations that a client brings into the therapeutic relationship.
Clients with preoccupied attachment may need to explain and stay connected while processing, while those with avoidant tendencies may prefer less disclosure — raising questions about relational safety, self-reliance and the urge to “just get it done”.
Jo O and Jo B also consider the therapist.
What happens when processing stops and the therapist begins to wonder: Have I done something wrong? Have I chosen the wrong target? Should I rescue the process?
Rather than seeing stuckness simply as a problem to overcome, an attachment-informed approach invites curiosity about what it may be communicating.
In this episode:
How attachment styles can shape the experience of EMDR
Core beliefs as possible expressions of internal working models
Why relational safety may be important before trauma processing
Anxious/preoccupied and avoidant strategies during EMDR
What “stuck” processing might communicate
Therapist attachment responses, shame and the impulse to rescue
Grief, loss and developing a more coherent story
Using supervision to explore what is being co-created
Building a secure relational base when safety has rarely been experienced
Chapters
00:16 Welcome to Attached Together 01:44 EMDR through an attachment lens 04:17 Core beliefs and internal working models 06:27 Avoidant attachment and “just processing it”09:11 Creating relational safety12:27 When processing opens other memories14:48 Attachment wounds, grief and mourning18:08 The therapist’s attachment style19:25 What happens when EMDR gets stuck?25:12 What stuckness may be communicating
Questions practitioners may be askingCPD & Further Learning
Attachment and Adoption: Beyond the “Lucky” Narrative
Season 2 · Episode 5
Tuesday, August 11, 2026 • Duration 22:05
Attachment and adoption in therapy requires an understanding of attachment theory, attachment styles, relationships and the ways early separation may emerge within counselling. In this episode of Attached Together, Georgina speaks with attachment-focused psychotherapist Jane about working therapeutically with adults impacted by adoption.
Jane trained alongside Georgina on the Optima Level 5 course and now works in private practice, predominantly with adults affected by adoption. She brings both clinical knowledge and lived experience as an adoptee.
In this episode
Jane and Georgina explore:
How adoption practices have changed over time
Why there is no single adoptee attachment style
Anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment strategies
Identity, belonging and genetic mirroring
Grief, anger and the pressure to feel “lucky”
Push-pull dynamics in the therapy relationship
Body-based regulation and “adoption overwhelm”
The importance of carefully managed breaks and endings
Therapist self-awareness, competence and supervision
Adoption is not one experience. Some adult adoptees may fear abandonment and seek reassurance, while others may protect themselves through emotional distance, self-sufficiency or withdrawal. Attachment and adoption in therapy therefore requires curiosity rather than assumptions.
The conversation also considers how missing family stories, early disruption and the absence of genetic mirroring may affect identity. Because some experiences originate before language, clients may communicate them through bodily states, metaphors or relational patterns rather than a clear narrative.
Common questionsWhat is adoption trauma?
Adoption trauma refers to the emotional or relational impact that separation, loss, disrupted caregiving and identity uncertainty may have on an adopted person. Not every adoptee will use this term, so therapists should follow the client’s language.
How can adoption affect attachment styles?
Early separation, neglect, trauma or changes of caregiver may influence how a person approaches trust, closeness and dependency. Some adoptees may seek connection intensely, while others may rely on compulsive self-reliance.
How might adoption appear in therapy?How can therapists work in an adoption-informed way?Chapters
Attachment-Informed Therapy for Neurodivergent Parents: Why “Good Parenting” Can Look Different
Season 2 · Episode 4
Tuesday, August 4, 2026 • Duration 28:11
In this episode of Attach Together, Joanne Kay is joined by Lyn Coombs and Alison Cunningham to explore what therapists need to understand when working with parents of neurodivergent children.
Attachment-informed therapy for neurodivergent parents is an approach that offers relational safety, curiosity and non-judgement while helping parents explore their own emotional needs, attachment responses and experiences of caregiving.
The conversation considers how parents can become highly attuned to sensory, emotional and behavioural cues that others may not notice. This attunement can become a strength, but it may also leave parents feeling as though they are constantly anticipating difficulties, managing risk or “firefighting”.
In this episode, you will hear about:
Why believing a parent’s experience is clinically important
How societal judgement can become internalised as shame
The difference between loving a child and enjoying every part of parenting
Why parents may grieve expectations without rejecting their child
How neurodivergent parenting can affect partners, siblings and wider relationships
Why talking about the child may be a necessary starting point in therapy
How therapists can notice body language, dysregulation and unspoken emotion
The importance of allowing anger, guilt, pride, grief and love to coexist
How attachment-informed therapy for neurodivergent parents can provide a secure, accepting base
Guests
Lyn Coombs is an attachment-based and person-centred counsellor specialising in bereavement, domestic abuse and work with parents of neurodivergent children and carers.
Alison Cunningham is an integrative counsellor who works with young people, including those with care experience, and with neurodivergent people.
Common questionsHow can therapy support parents of neurodivergent children?
Therapy can offer a place where parents do not need to minimise, edit or justify their experiences. It can help them identify their own feelings, needs and attachment responses while remaining compassionate towards their child.
Can parents love their child and still feel angry or overwhelmed?Why might a parent spend therapy talking mainly about their child?Chapters
Attachment Ruptures in Therapy: What If Getting It Wrong Is Where Healing Begins?
Season 2 · Episode 3
Tuesday, July 28, 2026 • Duration 28:49
Attachment rupture and repair sits at the heart of attachment theory, attachment styles, relationships and therapy. But what happens when a client feels misunderstood, rejected or even judged by their therapist?
In this episode of Attached Together, attachment-based psychotherapist Uruj Anjum is joined by Gav, an attachment-based and IFS-trained therapist, to explore why ruptures are not a sign that therapy has failed. In fact, when they are recognised and repaired, they can become some of the most meaningful moments in the therapeutic relationship.
A missed detail. A difficult question. A cancelled session. A boundary that feels like rejection.
These moments may seem small, but for a client with a history of abandonment, criticism or emotional disconnection, they can reactivate much older attachment wounds.
Together, Uruj and Gav discuss how therapists can notice these shifts, stay present when things feel uncomfortable, and respond without becoming defensive or rushing to make everything feel better.
Attachment rupture and repair is the process of recognising a break in emotional connection and working together to restore safety, trust and understanding.
You will hear why secure attachment is not built through perfect attunement, but through repeated experiences of disconnection followed by repair. The conversation also explores how clients may internalise shame when conflict has never been safely resolved, and how therapy can offer a different experience: one in which hurt can be expressed without the relationship ending.
The episode includes a powerful ethical dilemma:
What do you say when a client tells you, “I felt judged by you last week”?
Gav considers how therapists can hold two truths at once: that they may not have intended to judge the client, while also taking the client’s experience seriously.
In this episode
Why rupture is inevitable in meaningful therapeutic relationships
How attachment styles shape responses to boundaries and misunderstanding
Common questions exploredChapters
As Myira puts it: “human first, therapist second.”
Listeners can also access a CPD certificate for this episode.
The discussion includes:
• AI companions, avatars and romantic relationships • grief, continuing bonds and recreating someone who has died • the Eliza effect and attributing human qualities to technology • anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment patterns • reassurance, emotional regulation and dependency • mentalisation and the importance of a genuinely separate mind • human co-regulation and embodied relationships • transference, fantasy and AI versions of therapists • rupture and repair • how therapists can respond without shame or premature judgement
Rather than deciding whether these relationships are simply good or bad, the episode returns to a more useful clinical position: curiosity about what the relationship provides and what need the person may be trying to meet.
However rich the material may be, there are times when exploration needs to wait.
If a client is becoming dysregulated, our first task is to offer enough relational safety for them to remain present. Gav describes this as trying to read a map in the middle of a storm. The map may contain something useful, but first we need shelter.
01:28 Why dreams matter in therapy 04:15 Why do we dream? 07:16 Dreams and attachment theory 09:23 Attachment styles in dreams 12:52 Working creatively with dreams 17:44 When a client dreams about their therapist 20:20 Dreams and earned secure attachment 23:31 Curiosity rather than interpretation 26:15 Recurring and frightening dreams 28:50 Regulation, safety and the secure base
What can dreams reveal about attachment? They may offer clues about what a person expects from relationships, particularly when they need comfort, protection or connection.
Should therapists interpret clients' dreams? The approach explored here is less about finding the “correct” meaning and more about helping the client become curious about their own experience.
What if dream work overwhelms the client? Slow down. Safety and regulation come before exploration.
A CPD Reflection Pack accompanies this episode, with reflective questions, supervision prompts and ideas for bringing dream work into attachment-informed practice.
If this conversation brings a colleague, supervisee or fellow trainee to mind, please share the episode with them.
Why consider the wider system? A child’s difficulties may make more sense when considered alongside family relationships, intergenerational experiences, education, culture, professional systems and environment.
What role does play have in attachment-informed therapy? For younger children in particular, play can be a primary language through which relationship, emotion and experience are communicated.
00:00 Welcome to Attach Together 01:40 Rethinking attachment through systems and environment 04:22 Intergenerational attachment and family formulation 05:46 The circles and systems surrounding a child 09:34 Building trust with parents and carers 11:19 Working therapeutically with families 12:32 Play as the language of child therapy 17:25 Children’s agency and choice in therapy 19:16 Place attachment and the more-than-human world 23:37 Ethical dilemma: is short-term therapy always helpful?
Listeners can also access a CPD certificate to record their professional learning.
Can attachment styles affect therapist burnout? Attachment strategies may influence how we respond to stress and whether we seek support, over-function or withdraw. Wendy and Phil discuss research suggesting an association between anxious attachment and burnout, while noting that findings around avoidant attachment were less clear and need further research.
How can supervision help with burnout? Supervision offers space to notice changes in workload, energy, boundaries and our relationship with the work — particularly changes that may be difficult to see on our own.
00:00 – Introducing Phil and attachment & burnout 01:28 – Researching burnout through an attachment lens 05:58 – What is burnout? 07:37 – Why admitting burnout can feel difficult 08:51 – Burnout as a process 10:10 – When enthusiasm tips into imbalance 11:34 – Feeling frazzled and losing our spark 15:05 – Reflection, supervision and connection 16:06 – Attachment in supervision 17:42 – Anxious and avoidant attachment defences 19:55 – The work-joy ratio 22:08 – Supervision and professional isolation 25:16 – Recognising our own warning signs 27:15 – People-pleasing, striving and asking for help 30:03 – Earned security and self-understanding 32:45 – Willpower, self-reliance and pushing through 34:48 – Courageous conversations
📄 A CPD Reflection Pack accompanies this episode for counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors and trainees who want to take the discussion into reflection, supervision or their CPD record.
How can attachment affect EMDR? Attachment strategies may influence how safe a client feels processing difficult material alongside another person, how much they need to talk, and how they experience closeness, dependence and vulnerability.
Why might EMDR processing become stuck? Jo invites practitioners to consider stuckness as communication: might the client feel unsafe, overwhelmed or uncomfortable? What is happening relationally as well as within the processing?
Why does the therapist’s attachment matter? A therapist’s own attachment strategies may influence how they respond to uncertainty — including impulses to rescue, withdraw, blame themselves or move the work forwards.
A CPD certificate is available for time spent listening to the episode. Visit the Optima Attachment website:
For practitioners interested in developing their attachment-informed practice further, Optima delivers Level 5 and Level 7 Diplomas in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy.
Adoption may emerge through difficulties with trust, identity, belonging, control, grief, anger or endings. It may also appear through push-pull dynamics between therapist and client.
Use the client’s preferred terminology, avoid assumptions, build relational safety, notice attachment dynamics and plan carefully for absences and endings.
00:00 Introduction 01:51 The changing history of adoption 05:11 Attachment strategies in adult adoptees 07:15 Identity and genetic mirroring 09:35 Adoption-informed therapy 10:19 Language, grief and the “lucky” narrative 13:29 Push-pull dynamics in therapy 15:20 Building a secure therapeutic base 15:41 Body-based work and adoption overwhelm 17:49 Breaks and therapeutic endings 19:58 Competence, supervision and self-awareness 21:08 Final reflections and CPD information
FREE CPD Certificate & Reflection Pack
You can download the FREE CPD Certificate for this episode via our website www.optimahealthservices.co.uk and join our listener list to receive the Reflection Pack for future episodes.
Yes. Love, pride, grief, frustration and exhaustion can exist at the same time. Conflicting emotions do not make someone a bad parent.
Talking about the child may help the parent process experiences they have not previously felt safe enough to express. As trust develops, their own feelings and needs may become more accessible.
00:00 Introduction to Attach Together 01:07 Meet Lyn Coombs and Alison Cunningham 02:27 Why parents need to be believed 04:43 Societal judgement and parenting blame 05:44 ADHD medication and the “marbles” analogy 07:43 Parenting styles, attachment and research 09:56 External pressures and parental guilt 11:31 Isolation and the shrinking village 13:00 Rethinking secure attachment in neurodivergent families 15:38 Parental self-doubt and intense attunement 18:00 Clinical dilemma: keeping therapy focused on the parent 19:30 Creating space for mixed emotions 22:30 Reading what is not being said 23:38 Shame, anger, grief and love 25:23 Effects on partners and siblings 26:13 Closing reflections
FREE CPD Certificate & Reflection Pack
You can download the FREE CPD Certificate for this episode via our website www.optimahealthservices.co.uk and join our listener list to receive the Reflection Pack for future episodes.
The link between unrepaired conflict, shame and self-blame
How to recognise withdrawal, anger and disconnection in the room
Why therapist defensiveness can deepen a rupture
How supervision and personal therapy support relational work
How attachment rupture and repair can contribute to earned secure attachment
Does a rupture mean therapy has gone wrong? No. Ruptures are a natural part of close relationships. What matters is whether they can be recognised and explored.
How does attachment affect rupture in therapy? A client’s attachment history may shape how they experience mistakes, boundaries, absences and changes in the therapist’s tone or availability.
How can a therapist begin repair? By noticing the shift, regulating their own response, acknowledging the client’s experience and becoming curious about what happened between them.
00:16 Introduction 02:04 Gav’s background 03:10 Why rupture and repair matters 04:07 How secure attachment develops 06:42 Rupture in the therapeutic relationship 08:58 Why ruptures are inevitable 12:55 What repair looks like 14:16 When repair is a new experience 16:47 Working with shame 18:47 Supporting the therapist 20:46 Earned secure attachment 23:06 “I felt judged by you” 26:05 Final reflections
FREE CPD Certificate & Reflection Pack
You can download the FREE CPD Certificate for this episode via our website www.optimahealthservices.co.uk and join our listener list to receive the Reflection Pack for future episodes.
