Healing Strategies for Anxious Avoidant Relationships
Presented by
Dreya Blume, LCSWThis training equips psychotherapists with a trauma-informed understanding of anxious- avoidant dynamics and offers practical strategies for helping clients navigate these challenging relational patterns.
Overview
3 CEs – Meets Criteria for Health Equity or Cultural Competence CEs Recorded: April, 2026
Anxious-avoidant relationship patterns can feel like a push-and-pull magnet, leaving clients frustrated, disconnected, and stuck in cycles of longing and withdrawal.
This training equips psychotherapists with a trauma-informed understanding of anxious- avoidant dynamics and offers practical strategies for helping clients navigate these challenging relational patterns.
Participants will explore how early attachment experiences shape adult relationship styles and contribute to cycles of pursuit and distance.
Through case examples, discussion, and reflective exercises, attendees will learn tools to help clients recognize these patterns, build awareness of their own relational tendencies, and practice interventions that foster secure connection and emotional regulation. Therapists will leave with actionable strategies to guide clients toward healthier, more balanced relationships while supporting self-compassion and resilience.
Workshop Objectives:
Develop an understanding of anxious-avoidant relationship dynamics and their attachment-related origins. Learn strategies to help clients recognize, interrupt, and shift push-pull cycles in relationships. Identify interventions to promote secure attachment, emotional regulation, and relational resilience in clients.
About the Presenter
Dreya Blume (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, author, and educator. Dreya began working in the mental health field in 2004 in southwest Virginia, where she spent almost two decades serving the local transgender community as a gender therapist. She recently moved to Durham, NC, where she focuses on offering continuing education training to therapists and coaching for private practice clinicians who want to expand their business uniquely. Dreya loves to write and is the author of several books, including, “The Tarot Activity Book: A Collection of Creative and Therapeutic Ideas for the Cards,” “Journaling the Tarot,” “Everyone Has a Story: Using the Hero’s Journey and Narrative Therapy to Reframe the Struggle of Mental Illness,” and “Tarot for Transformation: Using the Major Arcana to Discover Your Best Self and Create a Life Worth Living.” All of Dreya’s books (under her former name, Andy Matzner) are available here: https://dreyablume.com/books. Dreya is also passionate about teaching. Before becoming a mental health clinician, she spent many years teaching English as a Second Language in places such as Japan, Australia, Thailand, and Hawaii. Once in Virginia, Dreya worked as an adjunct professor for almost twenty years at Hollins University, teaching gender studies and sociology in their Master of Liberal Studies program. In addition, she spent twelve years teaching future social workers in the human services program at Virginia Western Community College. Learn more about Dreya on her website: https://dreyablume.com/.