Share page
Affect Confusion, Cumulative Trauma and Attachment Disruptions: Psychotherapy for Borderline Disorders
- London, 29 & 30 May 2025, Thursday & Friday
Affect Confusion, Cumulative Trauma and Attachment Disruptions: Psychotherapy for Borderline Disorders
“I don’t want your kindness. Your kindness feels like a trap—it stirs something I can’t control, and I don’t know if I can survive it.”
This statement captures the paradoxical struggles of borderline clients—where the yearning for connection collides with deep fears of dependency and rejection. Their lives are often marked by tumultuous relational conflicts, polarised emotions, and unmet relational needs. These challenges often stem from Early Affect Confusion – a developmental phenomenon arising from a caregiver’s continuous misattunement to a child’s affect, rhythm, and relational needs.
Times:
10:00 am – 4:00 pm, London UK on both days
Venue: Broadway House, Tothill Street, London SW1H 9NQ
Important: no online streaming is available for this event
Limited seating event, please book early to avoid disappointment.
Ticket price includes attendance at London plus video recording of the whole event .
Note: Lunch is provided to delegates attending in person.
For more information on how to access handouts and video recordings please click here
There is no known commercial support for this programme.
This course does not qualify for CE credits.
Original price was: £ 279.00.£ 189.00Current price is: £ 189.00.
Receive a 5% discount if you buy more than one ticket for one course. Tell a friend!
Course Credits
Speaker(s)
Course length in hours
Location
Full course information
This advanced two-day, in-person workshop provides diagnostic perspectives on Attachment Disruptions including:
- An understanding of the aetiology of Early Affect Confusion
- Formation of Borderline Personality traits
- The therapeutic use of treatment contracts
- The significance of an attuned therapeutic relationship
- A working knowledge of when and how to use behavioural interventions and/or supportive age regression
Dr Richard Erskine draws on decades of clinical experience and an integrative therapeutic approach to shed light on the narratives of clients dominated by affect confusion and attachment disruptions. These clients’ inner worlds often oscillate between blaming others and harsh self-criticism, seeking justification for rage while harbouring profound confusion about relationships.
Workshop Highlights
Dr Erskine will guide participants through the core tenets of relational therapy with a focus on borderline clients whose behaviours often reflect archaic attempts at self-stabilisation in response to relational neglect and cumulative trauma. These clients frequently exhibit intense and unstable interpersonal relationships, emotional and behavioural impulsivity, and identity disturbances. A hallmark of their struggles is the polarisation of emotions – swinging between extremes of idealisation and hate, elation and despair, anger and dependency.
In this workshop, we will address:
- Diagnostic perspectives on Attachment Disruptions and Early Affect Confusion, avoiding pathologising labels
- Attunement to vitality affects, focusing on subtle but powerful shifts in energy, movement, and emotional tone that foster emotional resonance and connection
- The oscillation of Anxious, Avoidant, and Disorganised attachment patterns, which can fluctuate even within the same individual
- Integration of neuroscientific insights into cumulative neglect, including vagal nerve dysregulation, hippocampal impacts, and amygdala hyperactivation, to deepen understanding of the biological underpinnings of these struggles
- Therapeutic strategies, including behavioural interventions, supportive age regression, and treatment contracts, tailored to address the complex relational needs of borderline clients
Therapeutic Approach
Dr Erskine’s integrative and relational approach prioritises the therapist’s attunement to the client’s affects, rhythms, and relational needs, fostering an experience of unbroken connection. Of particular importance is attunement to vitality affects, capturing the subtle yet powerful shifts in the client’s energy and emotional tone. These moments provide opportunities for clients to experience being deeply understood and to begin reshaping their relational identities.
Through case vignettes and clinical discussions, participants will examine and identify reparative actions for unmet relational needs, including:
- Validation and affirmation within a relationship
- Acceptance by a stable, dependable and protective other person
- Confirmation of personal experience
- Opportunities for self-definition and agency, allowing clients to redefine their relational identities
- Impacting the other person in meaningful and affirming ways
Participants will also explore the therapist’s role in providing relational stability, addressing both transference dynamics and the broader relational conflicts clients face.
Advanced Clinical Skills
This advanced two-day workshop will equip participants with actionable therapeutic tools, such as:
- Methods of transference resolution and countertransference identification.
- Strategies for addressing oscillating attachment patterns and relational needs.
- Techniques for engaging in sustained phenomenological inquiry, focusing on the client’s body-based and emotional responses.
- Attunement to vitality affects, enabling the therapist to respond in ways that foster emotional resonance and connection.
- Integration of neuroscientific insights into cumulative neglect, to better understand the biological impacts of relational trauma and how they inform therapeutic work.
Learning Objectives
At this workshop, participants will:
- Assimilate and comprehend a series of therapeutic interventions that reflect relational, co-constructive, and intersubjective sensitivity in the psychotherapy of clients with Borderline Personality traits
- Differentiate between various forms of therapeutic inquiry and apply the skills of acknowledgment, validation, and normalisation to address oscillating emotional states and polarised relational patterns
- Formulate a therapeutic perspective that incorporates attunement to the client’s affects, rhythms, vitality affects, and developmental level
- Critically evaluate psychotherapy demonstrations to describe what is therapeutically effective and explain why it is effective
Join Us
This workshop offers a rare opportunity to deepen your understanding of borderline clients’ complex relational worlds while expanding your therapeutic skill set. Whether you are a seasoned psychotherapist or new to this challenging yet rewarding work, you will leave with practical tools, profound insights, and a renewed sense of connection to your clients’ healing journeys. Secure your place today and take a pivotal step towards enhancing your therapeutic practice,
© nscience UK, 2025 / 26
Location
What's included in this course
- Presented by world-class speaker(s)
- Handouts and video recording
- 10 hrs of professionally produced lessons
- 1 year access to video recorded version
- CPD Certificate
- Live event in London
Dr Richard Erskine draws on decades of clinical experience and an integrative therapeutic approach to shed light on the narratives of clients dominated by affect confusion and attachment disruptions. These clients’ inner worlds often oscillate between blaming others and harsh self-criticism, seeking justification for rage while harbouring profound confusion about relationships.
Learning objectives
- Assimilate and comprehend a series of therapeutic interventions that reflect relational, co-constructive, and intersubjective sensitivity in the psychotherapy of clients with Borderline Personality traits
- Differentiate between various forms of therapeutic inquiry and apply the skills of acknowledgment, validation, and normalisation to address oscillating emotional states and polarised relational patterns
- Formulate a therapeutic perspective that incorporates attunement to the client’s affects, rhythms, vitality affects, and developmental level
- Critically evaluate psychotherapy demonstrations to describe what is therapeutically effective and explain why it is effective
You'll also be able to...
Develop the ability to interpret and modulate the body’s nervous system (sensory and autonomic) to regulate arousal levels in clients and for safer trauma therapy
Identify and acquire recovery options and strategies for trauma clients inappropriate for trauma memory processing, particularly for those who don’t want to and those who decompensate or dysregulate from memory work
Also develop the ability to interpret and modulate the body’s nervous system (sensory and autonomic) to regulate arousal levels for professional self-care
Richard G. Erskine, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist and Training Director of the Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy (New York City and Vancouver). Originally trained in client-centered child therapy, Dr Erskine also studied Gestalt therapy with both Fritz and Laura Perls. He is a certified clinical Transactional Analyst and a Licensed Psychoanalyst who has specialized in psychoanalytic self-psychology and object-relations theory. His work is an integration of these concepts and more than forty years of clinical experience, which has included working with disturbed children, inmates in a maximum security prison, borderline and narcissistic clients, post-traumatic stress and dissociative identity disorders. Recently his research and clinical practice have focused on the treatment of the schizoid process and on the psychotherapy of obsession.
He is the author of several books and scores of articles on psychotherapy theory and methods. His best-selling book (with Jan Moursund and Rebecca Trautmann) is “Beyond Empathy: A Therapy of Contact-in-Relationship” (1999, Brunner/Mazel) and most recently, in 2015, he has published “Relational Patterns, Therapeutic Presence” (Karnac).
Program outline
3 reasons why you should attend this course
- Courses delivered by internationally renowned experts.
- Our courses are stimulating, thought-provoking, therapeutically relevant and actionable.
- Join from anywhere: all registered delegates get access to a video recording after each event.
What we offer
250+
500+
webinars delivered
100+
world-class speakers
What our customers say
Similar courses
-
Original price was: £ 279.00.£ 189.00Current price is: £ 189.00.
-
Original price was: £ 159.00.£ 119.00Current price is: £ 119.00.
Part of the nscience family, nscience publishing house is an independent publisher of practical, clinical-application oriented books covering the practices of psychotherapy, counselling and psychology.
Our easy to search directory website lists the services offered by mental health practitioners throughout the UK.