Working with loss: An attachment-informed, internal family systems approach

Who should view this webinar recording?

Anyone who works in a professional care role or supports people through all forms of loss and grief. Our content is applicable to a wide variety of professions including counsellors, social workers, teachers, emergency response teams, medical, corrections, mental health, hospice, volunteers, caregivers and more.

Overview

Increasingly, research from the neurosciences, psychological resilience studies, and trauma research, highlights the need for connection for human thriving. When that connection is lost through death or permanent separation, it is natural to feel intense grief. However, the deeper the attachment we feel to the one we have lost, the more resilient we will be in the face of such loss.

In this webinar we will explore the application of Dr Gordon Neufeld’s attachment-based developmental approach to understanding how death and loss are mitigated by secure attachment. We will examine how healthy attachment develops or can get ‘stuck’ and what impact this has on grief. We will learn that attachment has the power to transcend death, and explore how an ‘earned secure attachment’ (Lyons-Ruth 1998) can be possible even after the loved one is gone. This will be through the application of Internal Family Systems theory to the loss of an attachment figure.

Key learning points

• An introduction to Neufeld’s attachment-based developmental paradigm.
• How healthy attachment develops through six progressive levels or stages of attachment.
• How grief can get ‘stuck’ and how to heal the attachment roots to help clients get ‘unstuck’.
• The clinical application of attachment principles blended with insights from Internal Family Systems for working therapeutically with clients facing grief due to the death of a loved one.

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