Creating Healthy Patterns of Attachment, Including Needs of Teens: ATFT Module #3
Presented by
Deborah D. Gray, LICSWAttachment in teens is a topic that requires special focus. Teens need to stay connected and nurtured while they separate their identities through normal individuation. This video gives techniques for enhancing teen attachments. We will also discuss limit setting and parenting approaches that are evidenced based as benefiting teen development.
Overview
ATFT Module #3 2.5 CEs
These workshops were recorded as part of the ATFT Certificate program, but therapists will find them very useful as stand alone learning sessions.
This module spends ample time on attachment practice issues. It includes a special section of attachments in adolescence.
The module discusses issues around our own attachment patterns and how that informs how we see our clients. Areas covered include:
- What do people need from their therapist in the way of support when they are doing
- attachment work?
- What approach works best when a family is not using a helpful approach?
- Which clients bring out your best?
- Which people do you struggle with?
- How do you handle your anger or disappointment with clients so that you do not distance,
- criticize, or over function?
- When do you feel guilt or shame that is unwarranted?
Attachment in teens is a topic that requires special focus. Teens need to stay connected and nurtured while they separate their identities through normal individuation. This video gives techniques for enhancing teen attachments. We will also discuss limit setting and parenting approaches that are evidenced based as benefitting teen development.
Reflective Questions:
What was present or absent from your nurturing experience? When you were a teen, what was your individuation process like? How do these experiences help and hinder you as you work with your clients? When do you tend to side more with parents or children? What are your strategies to actually help your clients to build healthier attachments rather than act out your own family issues?
About the Presenter
Deborah D. Gray, LICSW has the honor of helping families to develop close, satisfying relationships after children’s earlier losses, traumas, and/or prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol. In addition to her therapy practice, Deborah is an author and trainer. She developed and taught the post-graduate certificate program, Attachment/Trauma Focused Therapy (ATFT), which is now available remotely and in modules through Cascadia Training. Deborah has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from ATTACh (International Association for Training on Attachment and Trauma in Children). She was a Henry Meier Practitioner in Residence at the U of WA School of Social Work. She was core faculty for the Adoption and Foster Care Therapy Post-Graduate Certificate Program at Portland State University for 19 years, teaching on the topics of trauma, grief, attachment, and child welfare. Deborah served as the attachment consultant for the 5-year Quality Improvement Project for Children’s Administration. She has keynoted numerous State and Non-profit child welfare conference addresses, including the Joint Council of International Children’s Service Conference in Washington DC. She received her MSW from Syracuse University and MPA in Public Administration (Health Care) from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Deborah is the author of: *Promoting Healthy Attachments; Attaching through Love, Hugs, and Play; Nurturing Adoptions: Creating Resilience after Neglect and Trauma; and Attaching in Adoption. She co-authored Games and Activities for Attaching with Your Child.