This comprehensive training video course pack, specifically curated for psychotherapists and psychologists delves deep into the intricate dynamics of attachment and cultural burdens that shape our clients’ lives across generations.

Attachment: Hurting and Healing Across Generations explores the profound impact of attachment patterns from childhood through adulthood and across generations. Led by Dr. Gwen Adshead and Dr. Chrissy Jayarajah, this training examines how trauma, cultural influences, and migration affect attachment styles, using cutting-edge research and real-life clinical vignettes to illustrate these complex dynamics.

Healing Legacy Burdens: Culturally Competent Therapeutic Approaches equips you with the skills to recognize and heal cultural, legacy, and collective burdens through advanced therapeutic techniques. This workshop emphasizes the importance of cultural competence in therapy, particularly when working with marginalized clients, and provides practical tools for facilitating transformative healing through Internal Family Systems (IFS) and other parts-work therapies.

By combining these two powerful trainings, you’ll gain a holistic understanding of how to address both attachment-related issues and cultural burdens in your practice, empowering you to help clients navigate their personal healing journeys with strength and resilience.

Core Therapeutic Challenges Highlighted

• Attachment Dynamics: Understand the intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns and how early experiences shape adult relationships and emotional challenges.
• Cultural and Legacy Burdens: Recognize and heal the cultural and historical traumas that impact clients’ mental health and relational patterns.

Learning Outcomes

• Analyze and Address Attachment Issues: Utilize research data and clinical insights to understand how attachment styles are transmitted and change across the lifespan, and address parenting challenges through various developmental phases.
• Heal Cultural and Legacy Burdens: Implement culturally competent therapeutic approaches to identify and heal deep-seated cultural and legacy burdens, fostering holistic healing.
• Integrate Comprehensive Therapeutic Techniques: Seamlessly combine insights from attachment theory and cultural competence to provide nuanced, effective interventions for clients facing complex, intergenerational challenges.

Equip yourself with the knowledge and skills to profoundly impact your clients’ lives by addressing both attachment-related issues and cultural burdens with our expertly curated video course pack.

This video resource pack contains two complete workshops (CPD hours: 12 / CE credits: 6) that cover:

Part 1: Attachment: Hurting and Healing Across Generations (Dr Gwen Adshead & Dr Chrissy Jayarajah), CPD/CE credits: 6

The strong correlation between childhood attachment and:

• The blueprint that shapes an individual’s ability to form and sustain adult relationships and
• To navigate life emotional challenges

is now well established. New cutting-edge research is now delving deeper to understand the intricately connected strands of how attachment patterns affect not only adult relationships across a single lifespan but across generations, how trauma and its impact on attachment can be carried inter-generationally and how cultural influences and migration interplay with these dynamics on attachment.

Recent studies show that a number of stress-related psychiatric conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic pain disorder and chronic fatigue syndrome are associated with low blood cortisol, which can be inherited by children from traumatised parents[1].

Latest research also shows that psychological trauma such as childhood abuse might impact the long-term physical health of not only the immediate victim, but also their offspring, by etching itself onto the victim’s DNA[2] – having a visible impact on Attachment patterns.

Moreover, we now have evidence that:

• Maternal PTSD increases the probability of developing an insecure mother-infant attachment relationship and
• An insecure mother-infant attachment relationship increases the risk of the child developing PTSD following trauma exposure in later life[3]

Understanding attachment across the lifespan and generations in tandem is paramount for psychotherapists due to the intricate interplay and transmission of attachment patterns. The interconnectedness of attachment dynamics across generations unveils a tapestry woven with complexities, where early experiences profoundly shape an individual’s attachment style, influencing relational patterns throughout life. Learning this interconnectedness provides therapists with a comprehensive understanding of the origin and continuity of attachment-related issues, facilitating more nuanced interventions. Clinical challenges arise in deciphering the intricate links between a client’s past attachment experiences, their present relational dynamics, and the transmission of attachment patterns to future generations. Therapists can struggle with navigating how a client’s early attachment experiences might manifest in their current relationships or parenting styles, often presenting as maladaptive behaviours or unresolved relational patterns. Additionally, addressing intergenerational transmission demands therapists to consider cultural influences, migration, and family dynamics, amplifying the complexity of therapeutic interventions.

At this intellectually stimulating seminar based on cutting-edge research, Dr Gwen Adshead and Dr Chrissy Jayarajah come together to explore the dynamics of Attachment, not just across a lifespan but also across generations. Dr Adshead will first present research data that supports and challenges how attachment styles might be transmitted from adult to child. She will also discuss the role of:

• Maternal Mentalising and reflective function (RF) and
• The role of fathers in influencing childhood attachments

Dr Chrissy Jayarajah will then offer a series of clinical vignettes from her practice as a perinatal psychiatrist to illustrate how attachment can be transmitted across generations. She will also discuss the role of cultural influences, and the impact of migration on attachment.

Vignette one: Ruth is a 40-year-old nurse with six-month-old twins and a daughter aged five. She has a known diagnosis of OCD and anxiety disorder. She describes as having a perfect childhood. However, she notes that she had a better relationship with her father than her mother, whom she described as ‘very critical’. Her medical records note that she was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa aged 14 yrs old. When you ask her about this, she states that it was a misdiagnosis, and she is just a very ‘health-conscious individual’. In her pregnancy, Ruth had become increasingly preoccupied with her health and wellbeing, taking several natural remedies and supplements and exercising for 2 hours a day. She is currently mixing breast and bottle feeding, but you are concerned as she has mentioned that she needs to “reduce the ounces of milk” for her twins as its “too many calories”. She mentions that she has put her five-year-old daughter on a diet, as she has enrolled her for national ballet competition, which is very competitive.

Vignette two: Maryam is a 24-year-old asylum seeker and is fleeing the civil conflict. She and her husband moved to the UK three years ago when they got married, and she gave birth to her first child earlier this year. She presents to her doctor asking for specialist help, as she has been having difficulty sleeping and recurrent nightmares. She also describes feeling scared in her own home – particularly at night when she is alone as her husband is working late at the restaurant. When she takes a shower, she describes feeling “ghosts” are surrounding her and can see snakes at the end of her bed. She can also hear male voices at night, which she describes are the voices of the soldiers in her village back home which causes her to feel very fearful. She has no past mental health history. On further exploration you recognise that she is quite isolated with no family support, and her experience of mothering is very different to what she grew up with (in a large extended family with her mother grandmother and aunties in her family home).

Following on from these discussions, Dr Jayarajah will discuss the theory of attachment applied in detail to different kinds of family relationships across the lifespan. Using an understanding of theory from epigenetics, connectomics neuroscience and family therapy, she will explore how attachment needs might change with age and stage of development; and the attachment needs of young adults and older adults of both sexes.

Both speakers will draw on their respective clinical experiences (including perinatal work and family courts) to specifically discuss:

• Attachment from the cradle to the grave; understanding that attachment is fluid and can change across the lifespan
• Examples of “parenting challenges” through the different phases (new-born, toddler, school age, teenage and adult)
• Attaching and the attached – thinking about parenting whilst being parented; caring for elderly and/or vulnerable parents
• Systemic family therapy principles used in clinical practice (including family scripts)
• Attachment in special circumstances (IVF / donor egg insemination / adoption)
• Video based therapies (VIPP/VIG) the new therapeutic modality to support with improving attachment related difficulties in clinical practice

Overall, the webinar explores the domains of attachment theory as they apply to parenting; across the generations and from infancy to adulthood. The speakers will present research and clinical vignettes to explore how the attachment system is a living dynamic one, with both physical and psychological aspects.

There will be time for discussion and comment at the end of both evenings.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the research data that supports and challenges how attachment styles might be transmitted from adult to child
• Discuss the role of fathers in influencing childhood attachments
• Attachment from the cradle to the grave; explain how attachment is fluid and can change across the lifespan
• List examples of “parenting challenges” through the different phases (new-born, toddler, school age, teenage and adult)
• List systemic family therapy principles used in clinical practice (including family scripts)
• Discuss attachment in special circumstances (IVF / donor egg insemination / adoption)

[1] Rachel Yehuda

[2] Harvard Study

[3] Yehuda, Halligan, Bierer, 2001

Part 2: Healing Legacy Burdens: Culturally Competent Therapeutic Approaches (Stacy Ruse, LPC), CPD hours: 6 / CE credits: N/A

We are all heirs to a legacy, laden with both cultural burdens and gifts, transmitted across generations through epigenetic imprints as well as cultural, societal and lived experience. The imperative lies not just in recognizing these burdens but in understanding how to facilitate their healing. This advanced workshop offers psychotherapists and psychologists a profound exploration of these dynamics and equips them with the transpersonal and internal parts-work therapy techniques necessary for transformative practice.

In psychotherapy, understanding cultural, legacy, and collective burdens is crucial. These burdens encompass historical traumas, familial narratives, and societal expectations. Generational trauma and cultural dynamics play a significant role, alongside secrecy and shame, in perpetuating these burdens. As therapists, it is important to recognize and work through the subtle indicators of these burdens carried in individuals, including those stemming from racism, patriarchy, and perfectionism; to facilitate transformative healing in our clients. At this workshop, we also learn to explore how our own cultural perspectives and conflict styles that we bring to our work, impact communication and how to effectively connect across cultural, class and racial differences in our clinical settings. Legacy burdens hinder the collaborative and non-judgemental approach that is key to a strong therapist-client relationship. When we better understand legacy burdens and learn to work through them, we greatly increase our efficacy to resolve emotional wounds, traumas and to facilitate transformative release and healing in our clients.

Protective parts are vital in navigating and safeguarding against emotional traumas. Addressing their concerns and fears empathetically is key to establishing trust. Using specialized parts-work techniques, therapists can navigate protective systems, fostering cooperation and paving the way for deeper exploration. IFS is a non-pathologizing therapeutic model that helps our clients to address those parts of themselves that are reactive to issues involving racism and oppression. With compassion, curiosity and parts-work therapy, we can help our clients to release and heal from stuck patterns of behaviour that constrain them and restrict their world view.

Especially when working with marginalized clients, therapists must tailor interventions to their unique challenges. Cultivating cultural competence ensures therapeutic interactions are inclusive and empowering. By acknowledging diverse experiences, therapists can co-create healing spaces that honour identity and resilience. Through a nuanced application of internal parts-work techniques, we will learn how clients can navigate legacy, cultural identity, and personal healing with strength and agency.

Through didactic instruction, experiential exercises, and case vignettes, this workshop provides a comprehensive toolkit for therapists and healing professionals seeking to facilitate profound transformations in their clients’ lives. By illuminating the path towards healing legacy and cultural burdens, practitioners embark on a journey towards deeper understanding, empathy, and social change.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss cultural, legacy, and collective burdens within the context of psychotherapy, including their origins, manifestations, and perpetuating factors
• Assess subtle indicators of cultural and legacy burdens in clients, practitioners, and society, and learn to navigate protective systems that hinder healing
• Apply Internal parts-work therapy techniques for facilitating the release of entrenched emotional and psychological burdens, fostering holistic healing and restoration
• Discuss cultural competence and sensitivity in therapeutic interactions, tailoring interventions to address the unique challenges faced by marginalized clients and ensuring equitable treatment and outcomes
• Discuss strategies for connecting clients’ narratives and symptoms with underlying legacy and cultural burdens, empowering them to navigate their personal healing journey with strength and agency