Inner Child and Early Attachment Trauma Certificate

Full Course Description

Mother Hunger: Treating Trauma, Grief and Attachment Wounds from Unmet Maternal Needs

Do you have clients who feel trapped in cycles of harmful behaviors and are unable to stop?

Clients who struggle with an insatiable need for sex and love, periods of overeating or starving, and painful, unstable relationships?

I’ve seen these traits over and over in clients. As I searched for answers I discovered a common thread – so many had a deep yearning for a mother’s love, attention, and care that was not met during childhood.

Hiding in secrecy and shame, this unnamed problem left clients a lifetime legacy of insecure attachment, trauma, addiction, anxiety and so much more.

It led me to write my best-selling book Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection and Guidance to help people name what they’re missing and begin to heal.

And now for the first time ever, you can join me for a complete training, as I tackle this complex problem and give you the clinical tools and solutions you’ve been looking for…

…so you can help your clients break free from harmful cycles and emptiness resulting from unmet maternal needs.

When you join me, I’ll share a healing path with powerful therapeutic interventions so you can:

Recognize signs and symptoms of unmet maternal needs in clients
Destigmatize shame and feelings of inadequacy that accompany undermothering
Use attachment-focused interventions to help clients identify unhealthy attachment patterns and work towards building healthier relationships
Build greater self-awareness and emotional regulation in clients
Help clients create sense of safety and trust within themselves
Give clients a toolkit of self-care and self-soothing techniques

So many of your peers who have trained with me say this material is “this is the missing piece” in both their treatment approach and personal healing.

Kelly McDaniel

Program Information

Objectives

Analyze unmet maternal needs through the lens of attachment injury.
Identify the impact of neurobiological changes associated with complex trauma on the development of mood disorders.
Develop skills to create a therapeutic container for disenfranchised grief.
Utilize family constellation work to bring repetitive traumatic patterns into awareness.
Use imagery of positive attachment experiences to assist in the development of adult secure attachment.
Examine countertransference reactions in therapeutic practice to maintain professional boundaries.

Outline

Attachment Injury from Unmet Maternal Needs

The three core elements of maternal needs
Child development impacts when core needs are unmet
Insecure attachment from the perspective of an attachment injury
How insecure attachment impacts adult functioning
Tools to identify attachment injury and complicated grief

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress: The Legacy of an Abusive Mother

PTSD vs. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Brain changes from CPTSD and mood disorders
Creative and flexible strategies for supporting “difficult” clients

Apology Aches and The Disenfranchised Grief of Mother Hunger: Working with Clients Hurt by Those Who Were Supposed to Love Them

Identify the “apology ache”
Reduce the “apology ache” to manage adult interactions
Create a safe, supportive environment for clients to explore and express difficult emotions
Reduce the craving our clients have for closure
Manage the fantasy of the ideal parent figure
Disenfranchised grief and creating a container
Journaling and creative ways to support healthy grieving

Clinical Tools to Treat Adult Daughters with Unmet Developmental Needs

Attachment-focused interventions to identify bonding behaviors
Techniques to move clients towards building healthier relationships
Family constellation work to help clients explore their maternal bond
Use imagery of positive attachment experiences to assist in the development of adult secure attachment in therapeutic contexts
Self-soothing practices for emotional regulation

Additional Clinical Issues

When is group work helpful and when is it not?
Address countertransference
Treatment termination
Research, risks and treatment limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Social Workers
Psychologists
Case Managers
Addiction Counselors
Therapists
Physicians
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 02/20/2025

Treating Adult Clients of Emotionally Immature Parents

No matter what you treat, we all work with clients trying to overcome the wounds inflicted by emotionally immature, insensitive, self-absorbed, and controlling parents.

As a therapist, working with these clients can leave you feeling frustrated and ineffective as they make the same self-destructive choices again and again, struggle to set healthy boundaries, find themselves unable to walk away from the role of “rescuer” in toxic relationships, and only say what they think others want to hear – including in therapy.

Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD, is the Amazon #1 Best Selling Author of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting or Self-Involved Parents. A psychotherapist for over thirty years, her work has been translated into 34 languages and has helped thousands of people reverse their toxic psychological legacy and reclaim their lives.

Watch her as she shows you how you can find greater therapeutic success with clinical strategies to help your clients take control of their relationships and lives, break free from harmful patterns, connect more deeply with themselves and others, and become the person they were always meant to be.

The invaluable tools Dr. Gibson will share can help all therapists:

Skillfully guide clients in how they can restructure toxic relationships with parents and others
Free clients from the fear, shame, and self-doubt that traps them in a life of emotional coercion
Teach clients to protect themselves from hurtful behaviors without completely severing all ties
Give clients the courage to set boundaries without feeling guilty

This is one training you can’t afford to miss! Purchase today!

Program Information

Objectives

Distinguish between psychopathology and emotional immaturity, and establish how a disease concept model can impede therapeutic progress.
Demonstrate practical communication skills that clients can use to protect themselves and redirect interactions with emotionally immature people.
Utilize cognitive and emotional techniques to teach clients how they can set boundaries without feeling guilty.
Employ interventions that help clients regain self-trust and the ability to identify emotionally immature control maneuvers.
Formulate a treatment strategy that teaches clients how to evade attempts to undermine their mental freedom, inner-world connection, sense of goodness, and ability to reach out to others.
Apply effective therapy approaches to release clients from emotional coercion and self-doubt in emotionally immature relationships.

Outline

Spotting Emotional Immaturity: Teach Clients to Understand Emotional Immaturity

Importance of describing over diagnosing
Projective identification and the Emotionally Immature Relationship System
Characteristics of emotional immaturity and maturity
What relationships feel like with emotionally immature people

How Emotionally Immature Parenting Impacts Your Clients: What You Can Expect When They Come for Therapy

Emotional loneliness and the fear of non-being
Good coping, emotional suffering; polyvagal effects
Self-disconnection and distrust of the inner world
The four horsemen of self-defeat
Loss of emotional autonomy and mental freedom
Healing fantasies, role-self, internalizer vs. externalizer styles

Cognitive and Emotional Techniques: What Works and What Doesn’t

Why clients find it so hard to break free from exploitation and emotional neglect
Why CBT and psychodynamic approaches aren’t enough
Exercises to help clients express themselves without anxiety
Teach clients to simultaneously disengage and become relationship leaders
How to define and use values as guideposts for the future
Phrasing suggestions, encouraging agency and showing how it’s done

End Emotional Takeovers and Coercion: Help Clients Achieve Emotional Autonomy from Emotionally Immature People

The emotionally immature person’s “distortion field”
Emotional coercion: how clients can spot and deflect control maneuvers
Communication skills to establish boundaries without guilt
When to sever ties with someone

Release Self-Doubt, Shame, and Fear: Clinical Tools and Interventions to Help Clients Find Their True Selves

Techniques to release clients’ feelings of personal “badness”
Interventions to address fears of being selfish and incapable of love
Tuning into energy shifts to track safety, unreliability, and threat in others
Repurpose self-doubt, shame, fear and guilt
Practicing experiencing emotionally intimate connection

Practice Tips for Working with the Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

Using countertransference effectively
Honoring personal style
Invitation, collaboration and celebration vs. direction and persuasion
How to phrase suggestions
Research and treatment limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Social Workers
Psychologists
Case Managers
Addiction Counselors
Therapists
Physicians
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 08/25/2023

Attachment Trauma Treatment Workshop: Step-by-Step Clinical Solutions for Processing Childhood Trauma in Adults

The echoes of childhood pain leave profound scars that can last a lifetime.

But treating the resulting trauma isn’t easy and comes with clinical challenges like intrusive memories, emotional dysregulation, and fears of abandonment or intimacy that hurt their relationships.

And while attachment theory is informative, it doesn’t translate that knowledge into effective practice.

That’s why I created this exciting new training so you can fully understand how attachment trauma impacts your clients PLUS be fully prepared to treat them and achieve amazing results.

You’ll get powerful techniques from mindfulness, guided memory exercises, and trauma-informed narrative therapy. I’ll break it all down for you – step by step – so you’ll know exactly what to do and when.

We’ll kick things off with mindfulness practices that help your clients calm their nervous systems, recognize their triggers, and break the patterns hurting their relationships.
Then, I’ll share guided memory and imagery techniques to help your clients disempower painful memories and transform feelings of abandonment into a sense of safety and security.
Finally, we’ll dive into trauma-informed narrative therapy exercises that let your clients tell and take control of their stories, reshape how they see themselves, and build the healthy relationships they deserve.

And because we all work with clients from diverse backgrounds, I’ll make sure you have the tools to adapt these strategies for everyone, including those from marginalized communities.

Don’t miss this chance to help your clients break the cycle of attachment trauma, reclaim their self-worth, and foster meaningful connections.

Purchase now!

Dr. Shama Panjwani
Psychotherapist and Professor at Keiser University

Program Information

Objectives

Distinguish between the development trajectories of different attachment styles.
Examine the concept of attachment wounds and inner child healing.
Analyze the relationship between core beliefs formed from attachment trauma and unhealthy relationship cycles.
Use guided memory exercises to increase insight into traumatic events from childhood.
Choose mindfulness strategies to provide grounding when triggered within personal relationships.
Utilize trauma informed narrative to reduce reactiveness.

Outline

Attachment Formation, Styles, and Trauma

Stages of attachment in early childhood development
Attachment and brain development
Attachment styles and parental figure relationships
Identify different types of trauma
Adverse Childhood Experiences

Attachment Trauma and Mind-Body Responses

Formation of attachment trauma
Physiological responses to trauma
Core beliefs and schemas
Personality development

Attachment Wound and Inner Child Healing

Psychological wound from adverse childhood experiences
Self-confidence, identity formation, and forming healthy relationships
Concept of inner child healing

Signs, Symptoms, and Triggers

Cognition, self-doubt and beliefs
Emotional distress and regulation
Behavioral indicators
Impact on having healthy relationships in adulthood

The Attachment Trauma Toolkit: Mindfulness, Guided Memory Recall and Trauma-Informed Narrative Therapy

Existing theories and techniques in working with attachment trauma

Mindfulness Exercises for Emotional Regulation and Grounding

How mindfulness fosters awareness and presence
Benefits of mindfulness in emotional regulation
Grounding exercises to connect clients to the present moment
Breathing techniques to manage anxiety and emotional dysregulation
Body scans to enhance somatic awareness

Guided Memory Techniques: Use Imagery to Create Safety and Security

Step-by-step process
Create imagined scenes of safety and secure attachment
Facilitate insight and processing
Manage emotional responses

Trauma-Informed Narrative Therapy: Restructure Negative Self-Talk and Core Beliefs

The power of storytelling in healing
How narrative shapes identity and self-perception
Step-by-step guide to helping clients reframe their narratives
Techniques for identifying and challenging negative beliefs
Encourage clients to create empowering personal stories
Research, risks, and treatment limitations of each approach

Cultural Responsiveness and Ethical Implications

Working with marginalized populations
Acknowledge systemic oppressions
Cultural considerations, awareness, and responsiveness
Ethical guidelines and reminders

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Art Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Psychologists
Physicians
Case Managers
Addiction Counselors
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals