286 - Transforming addictive processes through Attachment and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

Session Description: After a century of treatment and enormous advances in understanding the neurological impact of addictive processes on the brain, addiction treatment remains highly ineffective with some of the worst efficacy rates within the mental health field. Have we been barking up the wrong tree? We live in context of relationship: with the world, community, friends, family and significant others. We are wounded in relationship; research indicates that we heal in relationship. However, talk therapies fall short of accessing the neural networks that hold deep distress. This workshop demonstrates how to use in-vivo systemic and attachment-based interventions in session to not only heal the deep wounds that drive addictive processes, but simultaneously create a substitute-replacement for self-medicating with substances: secure attachment. Through using the clinical skills and interventions of attachment theory from Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) participants will learn how to access systemic doorways into the neural networks that hold traumatic distress beneath addictive processes and utilize relationship as a curative factor. Participants will learn didactic information as well as explore this approach to addiction treatment through viewing an actual therapy session demonstrating working with addiction using EFT. The workshop will demonstrate clear, basic EFT interventions that can be immediately applied to clinician's practices that elicit therapeutic opportunities for healing emotional distress within the context of their client's relationships.