Attach Together

What happens to attachment patterns when therapy moves from a one-to-one relationship into a group?

In this episode of Attached Together, attachment-based psychotherapist and supervisor Georgina Sturmer is joined by psychotherapist, author and group facilitator Sarah Dosanjh, widely known as The Binge Eating Therapist.

Drawing on Sarah’s experience of running therapy groups, support groups, courses and workshops, they explore attachment in group therapy and the extraordinary amount that can become visible when people are relating not only to a therapist, but to one another.

Sarah describes the importance of creating a clear purpose for a group and preparing people for what participation will actually involve. She also shares one of the questions she asks new members: “Who are you in a group?”

It is a deceptively simple question.

People arrive in groups with a lifetime of experience of belonging, adapting, caregiving, staying quiet, taking up space, managing conflict and protecting themselves. For some of Sarah’s clients, people-pleasing and caregiving can create a warm and supportive group while also making it easier to focus on everyone else rather than themselves.

The conversation explores what makes a therapy group different from a support group, including Sarah’s repeated invitation to notice what is happening internally even while somebody else is speaking.

Georgina and Sarah also consider rupture and conflict, the therapist’s own reactions when tensions emerge, and the things that may remain unsaid when group members find disagreement difficult to tolerate.

They look at the particular experience of online groups, boundaries around contact outside the group, and why an emotionally intimate connection created within therapy does not necessarily translate easily into friendship elsewhere.

And then there are endings.

Sarah describes what can happen when somebody announces that they are leaving: the group member whose immediate thought is, “Was it me?”, the different ways people approach goodbye, and the therapist’s own attachment responses to departures.

There is also an unusually candid exploration of therapist fallibility. Sarah recalls making a comment to a group member that she intended as teasing but realised had landed with a bite. Rather than allowing the moment to disappear, she returned to it, acknowledged what had happened and invited the group to explore its impact.

The episode offers a thoughtful reminder that therapeutic safety does not require a therapist to become a perfect facilitator. Rupture, uncertainty, endings and mistakes can themselves become part of the work.

For therapists curious about starting a group, Sarah also shares practical observations from years of group work, from defining a clear niche and setting a start date to establishing boundaries and commitment.

Above all, the conversation explores why group therapy can offer something that individual therapy cannot quite replicate: attachment patterns unfolding between peers, in real time.

Optima Attachment Training:
UK: https://www.optimaattachment.co.uk/
AUS: https://www.optimaattachment.com.au/

Listeners can access a CPD certificate and reflection pack for this episode here.

What happens when attachment theory is applied without enough attention to culture, faith, migration, identity or power?

In this episode of Attached Together, Optima lecturer, psychotherapist and supervisor Uruj Anjum is joined by Myira Khan, an award-winning accredited counsellor, supervisor, coach, trainer, author and founder of the Muslim Counsellor and Psychotherapist Network (MCAPN).

Together, they explore attachment theory and culture through an anti-oppressive lens, asking what can be missed when ideas about secure attachment are applied too literally or through culturally dominant assumptions.

Myira considers attachment as something shaped within a much broader relational world. What changes when a child grows up with several caregivers rather than one primary caregiver? How might migration, displacement, racism, Islamophobia or a changing sense of home affect experiences of safety, rejection and belonging? And what happens when therapists either fail to ask about identity at all, or focus so heavily on one part of a client’s identity that the rest of the person disappears from view?

The conversation also explores culturally attuned therapy with Muslim clients. Myira challenges the assumption that sharing a faith identity makes people’s experiences of that faith the same, and discusses why clients should not have to become their therapist’s teacher on Islam, culture or identity.

An ethical dilemma brings these ideas into the counselling room. If a Muslim client facing loss, infertility or a difficult diagnosis says they are “leaving it in Allah’s hands”, should a therapist understand this as avoidance? Or might faith be offering hope, security and an active way of relating to something beyond the client’s control?

Rather than reaching too quickly for a label, Myira invites therapists to become curious about what the belief means to that individual and what their decision to come to therapy already tells us.

The episode closes with a deceptively simple challenge to therapeutic neutrality: the work happens between two whole people. Culture, identity, attachment patterns and lived experience do not stay outside the counselling room.

As Myira puts it: “human first, therapist second.”

Learn more about Optima Attachment Training:
https://www.optimaattachment.co.uk/

Listeners can also access a CPD certificate for this episode.

What happens when an AI relationship starts to feel safer, easier or more dependable than a relationship with another person?

In this episode of Attached Together, Jo, psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, is joined by Georgina Sturmer, an integrative attachment-based therapist, supervisor and lecturer in counselling and on Optima Attachment Training’s Level 5 Diploma.

Their conversation looks at AI relationships and attachment from an unusually human angle. What begins with chatbots offering encouragement soon moves into AI companions, romantic partners and avatars designed to recreate people who have died.

That raises some uncomfortable questions.

If somebody can recreate the voice and characteristics of a person they have lost, could that support a continuing bond in grief - or make it harder to face the reality of the loss? And what happens when somebody creates an AI version of an ex-partner, or potentially even their therapist?

The conversation considers why AI and attachment styles may be particularly interesting for therapists. Someone with anxious attachment might be drawn to the reassurance of something that is always available. Someone with avoidant attachment may find closeness easier when it does not require the same interpersonal vulnerability. For someone with disorganised attachment, the predictability of AI may offer relief from relationships that have previously felt chaotic or unsafe.

Jo and Georgina also consider what AI cannot easily reproduce.

Therapy is not simply about receiving empathic words. It involves two separate minds, embodied co-regulation, boundaries, misunderstanding, transference and countertransference - and the experience of rupture and repair.

The episode introduces the provocative idea of AI becoming a “pseudo-secure base”: something that appears to offer reliable soothing and security while potentially leaving the person increasingly dependent on something that cannot participate in a reciprocal human relationship.

The discussion includes:

• AI companions, avatars and romantic relationships
• grief, continuing bonds and recreating someone who has died
• the Eliza effect and attributing human qualities to technology
• anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment patterns
• reassurance, emotional regulation and dependency
• mentalisation and the importance of a genuinely separate mind
• human co-regulation and embodied relationships
• transference, fantasy and AI versions of therapists
• rupture and repair
• how therapists can respond without shame or premature judgement

Rather than deciding whether these relationships are simply good or bad, the episode returns to a more useful clinical position: curiosity about what the relationship provides and what need the person may be trying to meet.

Optima Attachment Training:
Optima Attachment Training

Listeners can also access a CPD certificate for this episode:
Access the CPD certificate

Dreams can reveal parts of a client’s inner world that are not always easy to reach through conversation alone. Through attachment theory, they may offer clues about attachment styles, relationships and what a client expects when they feel vulnerable or need someone.

In this episode of The Attach Together Podcast, Jane is joined by Gav McKee to explore attachment dreams in therapy.

Rather than treating dreams as puzzles to decode, Gav looks at the relationships within them: who is there when the client is frightened, what happens when they need help, and whether others feel available, distant or unsafe.

The conversation explores how anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment may appear in dream themes, while avoiding fixed interpretations. Gav also shares practical ways therapists can work with dream material with curiosity, without imposing meaning.

You'll hear about:

• Retelling a dream in the present tense
• Listening for emotions and relational patterns
• Exploring significant figures through an IFS-informed lens
• Experimenting with different perspectives within a dream
• Working with unfinished or recurring dreams
• Noticing what happens when the therapist appears in the client's dream
• Recognising possible shifts towards earned secure attachment

Gav also considers how dreams may change during therapy. A client who once faced everything alone might begin asking for help. Someone may arrive when they're distressed. A frightening figure may lose some of its threat.

We can't treat those changes as proof of earned security, but they may give us another glimpse of an internal working model beginning to shift.

The episode closes with a clinical dilemma: what happens when a recurring dream is so frightening that talking about it overwhelms the client?

However rich the material may be, there are times when exploration needs to wait.

If a client is becoming dysregulated, our first task is to offer enough relational safety for them to remain present. Gav describes this as trying to read a map in the middle of a storm. The map may contain something useful, but first we need shelter.

01:28 Why dreams matter in therapy
04:15 Why do we dream?
07:16 Dreams and attachment theory
09:23 Attachment styles in dreams
12:52 Working creatively with dreams
17:44 When a client dreams about their therapist
20:20 Dreams and earned secure attachment
23:31 Curiosity rather than interpretation
26:15 Recurring and frightening dreams
28:50 Regulation, safety and the secure base

What can dreams reveal about attachment?
They may offer clues about what a person expects from relationships, particularly when they need comfort, protection or connection.

Should therapists interpret clients' dreams?
The approach explored here is less about finding the “correct” meaning and more about helping the client become curious about their own experience.

What if dream work overwhelms the client?
Slow down. Safety and regulation come before exploration.

A CPD Reflection Pack accompanies this episode, with reflective questions, supervision prompts and ideas for bringing dream work into attachment-informed practice.

If this conversation brings a colleague, supervisee or fellow trainee to mind, please share the episode with them.

Attachment theory child therapy looks beyond a child’s behaviour to the relationships and systems around them. In this episode of Attach Together, Georgina Sturmer and child and adolescent psychotherapist Alix Hearn explore attachment, play, intergenerational patterns, place and therapeutic relationships.

A systemic approach to attachment looks at the relationships, histories and environments surrounding a child, rather than locating difficulty within the child alone. Alix explores how family, education, culture, trauma and wider systems can shape a child’s experience, drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model to support attachment-informed formulation.

Georgina and Alix explore:

• Why attachment needs to be understood relationally and systemically
• The limitations of focusing solely on a child’s behaviour
• Intergenerational attachment patterns and trauma
• Therapeutic relationships with parents and carers
• Play as a language of relationship in child therapy
• Attachment, belonging and the “more-than-human world”
• Place attachment and physical environments
• Children’s agency and choice in therapy
• How systems can recreate relational difficulties
• The ethics of very short-term therapeutic work

Alix also raises an important clinical question: when a child has experienced repeated loss, disruption or relational trauma, is offering six sessions necessarily better than offering no therapy at that point? Might supporting an adult or another part of the child’s wider system sometimes be more appropriate?

The discussion leaves space for practitioners to think about these questions rather than suggesting a universal answer.

What is attachment theory in child therapy?
Attachment theory in child therapy helps us consider how experiences of safety, connection, separation and relationships may shape how a child relates to themselves and others.

How do attachment styles affect relationships?
Attachment patterns can influence expectations of closeness, safety, care and connection. Alix encourages curiosity about these patterns without reducing people to fixed categories.

Why consider the wider system?
A child’s difficulties may make more sense when considered alongside family relationships, intergenerational experiences, education, culture, professional systems and environment.

What role does play have in attachment-informed therapy?
For younger children in particular, play can be a primary language through which relationship, emotion and experience are communicated.

00:00 Welcome to Attach Together
01:40 Rethinking attachment through systems and environment
04:22 Intergenerational attachment and family formulation
05:46 The circles and systems surrounding a child
09:34 Building trust with parents and carers
11:19 Working therapeutically with families
12:32 Play as the language of child therapy
17:25 Children’s agency and choice in therapy
19:16 Place attachment and the more-than-human world
23:37 Ethical dilemma: is short-term therapy always helpful?

Alix Hearn: alixhearn.co.uk
Book: Places of Safety: How Attachment Shapes Our Parenting
Optima: OptimaAttachment.co.uk

Listeners can also access a CPD certificate to record their professional learning.

Attachment and burnout in therapy raises an uncomfortable question: why can therapists be so good at noticing distress in other people, yet struggle to recognise when they’re becoming depleted themselves?

In this episode of The Attachment in Practice Podcast, Wendy Widdrington is joined by counsellor, couple therapist and supervisor Phil Pinchen to explore attachment theory, attachment styles, relationships and therapy through the lens of therapist burnout.

And there’s a personal reason for the conversation.

After Wendy and Phil spent months researching attachment and burnout as part of their Level 7 work, Phil gently wondered whether Wendy herself might be experiencing some burnout.

Her internal response was essentially: Absolutely not. I’m coping very well, thank you.

So why can burnout be so difficult to recognise — and even harder to admit?

• What burnout can actually look like in therapists
• Attachment styles and different responses to stress
• Why “I’m fine” can sometimes deserve another question
• People-pleasing, striving and self-reliance
• Losing the energy or “spark” that normally makes us feel like ourselves
• Finding your personal “stress signature”
• Wendy’s “work-joy ratio” question
• Why supervision can protect against professional isolation
• Creating enough safety to have courageous conversations about burnout

What is your stress signature?

How would somebody who knows you well recognise that you were becoming stressed?

Would you become quieter? More irritable? Work longer? Worry more about clients? Withdraw? Stop doing the things that normally restore you?

Attachment-informed therapy isn’t only about understanding our clients. Sometimes the attachment lens can help us become more curious about ourselves.

Can attachment styles affect therapist burnout?
Attachment strategies may influence how we respond to stress and whether we seek support, over-function or withdraw. Wendy and Phil discuss research suggesting an association between anxious attachment and burnout, while noting that findings around avoidant attachment were less clear and need further research.

How can supervision help with burnout?
Supervision offers space to notice changes in workload, energy, boundaries and our relationship with the work — particularly changes that may be difficult to see on our own.

00:00 – Introducing Phil and attachment & burnout
01:28 – Researching burnout through an attachment lens
05:58 – What is burnout?
07:37 – Why admitting burnout can feel difficult
08:51 – Burnout as a process
10:10 – When enthusiasm tips into imbalance
11:34 – Feeling frazzled and losing our spark
15:05 – Reflection, supervision and connection
16:06 – Attachment in supervision
17:42 – Anxious and avoidant attachment defences
19:55 – The work-joy ratio
22:08 – Supervision and professional isolation
25:16 – Recognising our own warning signs
27:15 – People-pleasing, striving and asking for help
30:03 – Earned security and self-understanding
32:45 – Willpower, self-reliance and pushing through
34:48 – Courageous conversations

📄 A CPD Reflection Pack accompanies this episode for counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors and trainees who want to take the discussion into reflection, supervision or their CPD record.

How do attachment styles and relationships influence EMDR and trauma therapy? In this episode, Jo Oxley and attachment and relationship therapist Jo Bealey explore EMDR and attachment therapy through the lens of relational safety — particularly what may be happening when trauma processing becomes “stuck”.

EMDR and attachment therapy can be understood as the integration of trauma processing with attention to the attachment strategies, internal working models and relational expectations that a client brings into the therapeutic relationship.

Clients with preoccupied attachment may need to explain and stay connected while processing, while those with avoidant tendencies may prefer less disclosure — raising questions about relational safety, self-reliance and the urge to “just get it done”.

Jo O and Jo B also consider the therapist.

What happens when processing stops and the therapist begins to wonder: Have I done something wrong? Have I chosen the wrong target? Should I rescue the process?

Rather than seeing stuckness simply as a problem to overcome, an attachment-informed approach invites curiosity about what it may be communicating.

• How attachment styles can shape the experience of EMDR
• Core beliefs as possible expressions of internal working models
• Why relational safety may be important before trauma processing
• Anxious/preoccupied and avoidant strategies during EMDR
• What “stuck” processing might communicate
• Therapist attachment responses, shame and the impulse to rescue
• Grief, loss and developing a more coherent story
• Using supervision to explore what is being co-created
• Building a secure relational base when safety has rarely been experienced

00:16 Welcome to Attached Together
01:44 EMDR through an attachment lens
04:17 Core beliefs and internal working models
06:27 Avoidant attachment and “just processing it”
09:11 Creating relational safety
12:27 When processing opens other memories
14:48 Attachment wounds, grief and mourning
18:08 The therapist’s attachment style
19:25 What happens when EMDR gets stuck?
25:12 What stuckness may be communicating

How can attachment affect EMDR?
Attachment strategies may influence how safe a client feels processing difficult material alongside another person, how much they need to talk, and how they experience closeness, dependence and vulnerability.

Why might EMDR processing become stuck?
Jo invites practitioners to consider stuckness as communication: might the client feel unsafe, overwhelmed or uncomfortable? What is happening relationally as well as within the processing?

Why does the therapist’s attachment matter?
A therapist’s own attachment strategies may influence how they respond to uncertainty — including impulses to rescue, withdraw, blame themselves or move the work forwards.

A CPD certificate is available for time spent listening to the episode. Visit the Optima Attachment website:

UK Listeners ➡️ www.optimaattachment.co.uk

AUS Listeners ➡️ www.optimaattachment.com.au

For practitioners interested in developing their attachment-informed practice further, Optima delivers Level 5 and Level 7 Diplomas in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy.

Attachment and adoption in therapy requires an understanding of attachment theory, attachment styles, relationships and the ways early separation may emerge within counselling. In this episode of Attached Together, Georgina speaks with attachment-focused psychotherapist Jane about working therapeutically with adults impacted by adoption.

Jane trained alongside Georgina on the Optima Level 5 course and now works in private practice, predominantly with adults affected by adoption. She brings both clinical knowledge and lived experience as an adoptee.

Jane and Georgina explore:

• How adoption practices have changed over time
• Why there is no single adoptee attachment style
• Anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment strategies
• Identity, belonging and genetic mirroring
• Grief, anger and the pressure to feel “lucky”
• Push-pull dynamics in the therapy relationship
• Body-based regulation and “adoption overwhelm”
• The importance of carefully managed breaks and endings
• Therapist self-awareness, competence and supervision

Adoption is not one experience. Some adult adoptees may fear abandonment and seek reassurance, while others may protect themselves through emotional distance, self-sufficiency or withdrawal. Attachment and adoption in therapy therefore requires curiosity rather than assumptions.

The conversation also considers how missing family stories, early disruption and the absence of genetic mirroring may affect identity. Because some experiences originate before language, clients may communicate them through bodily states, metaphors or relational patterns rather than a clear narrative.

Adoption trauma refers to the emotional or relational impact that separation, loss, disrupted caregiving and identity uncertainty may have on an adopted person. Not every adoptee will use this term, so therapists should follow the client’s language.

Early separation, neglect, trauma or changes of caregiver may influence how a person approaches trust, closeness and dependency. Some adoptees may seek connection intensely, while others may rely on compulsive self-reliance.

Adoption may emerge through difficulties with trust, identity, belonging, control, grief, anger or endings. It may also appear through push-pull dynamics between therapist and client.

Use the client’s preferred terminology, avoid assumptions, build relational safety, notice attachment dynamics and plan carefully for absences and endings.

00:00 Introduction
01:51 The changing history of adoption
05:11 Attachment strategies in adult adoptees
07:15 Identity and genetic mirroring
09:35 Adoption-informed therapy
10:19 Language, grief and the “lucky” narrative
13:29 Push-pull dynamics in therapy
15:20 Building a secure therapeutic base
15:41 Body-based work and adoption overwhelm
17:49 Breaks and therapeutic endings
19:58 Competence, supervision and self-awareness
21:08 Final reflections and CPD information

FREE CPD Certificate & Reflection Pack

You can download the FREE CPD Certificate for this episode via our website www.optimahealthservices.co.uk and join our listener list to receive the Reflection Pack for future episodes.

In this episode of Attach Together, Joanne Kay is joined by Lyn Coombs and Alison Cunningham to explore what therapists need to understand when working with parents of neurodivergent children.

Attachment-informed therapy for neurodivergent parents is an approach that offers relational safety, curiosity and non-judgement while helping parents explore their own emotional needs, attachment responses and experiences of caregiving.

The conversation considers how parents can become highly attuned to sensory, emotional and behavioural cues that others may not notice. This attunement can become a strength, but it may also leave parents feeling as though they are constantly anticipating difficulties, managing risk or “firefighting”.

• Why believing a parent’s experience is clinically important
• How societal judgement can become internalised as shame
• The difference between loving a child and enjoying every part of parenting
• Why parents may grieve expectations without rejecting their child
• How neurodivergent parenting can affect partners, siblings and wider relationships
• Why talking about the child may be a necessary starting point in therapy
• How therapists can notice body language, dysregulation and unspoken emotion
• The importance of allowing anger, guilt, pride, grief and love to coexist
• How attachment-informed therapy for neurodivergent parents can provide a secure, accepting base

Lyn Coombs is an attachment-based and person-centred counsellor specialising in bereavement, domestic abuse and work with parents of neurodivergent children and carers.

Alison Cunningham is an integrative counsellor who works with young people, including those with care experience, and with neurodivergent people.

Therapy can offer a place where parents do not need to minimise, edit or justify their experiences. It can help them identify their own feelings, needs and attachment responses while remaining compassionate towards their child.

Yes. Love, pride, grief, frustration and exhaustion can exist at the same time. Conflicting emotions do not make someone a bad parent.

Talking about the child may help the parent process experiences they have not previously felt safe enough to express. As trust develops, their own feelings and needs may become more accessible.

00:00 Introduction to Attach Together
01:07 Meet Lyn Coombs and Alison Cunningham
02:27 Why parents need to be believed
04:43 Societal judgement and parenting blame
05:44 ADHD medication and the “marbles” analogy
07:43 Parenting styles, attachment and research
09:56 External pressures and parental guilt
11:31 Isolation and the shrinking village
13:00 Rethinking secure attachment in neurodivergent families
15:38 Parental self-doubt and intense attunement
18:00 Clinical dilemma: keeping therapy focused on the parent
19:30 Creating space for mixed emotions
22:30 Reading what is not being said
23:38 Shame, anger, grief and love
25:23 Effects on partners and siblings
26:13 Closing reflections

FREE CPD Certificate & Reflection Pack

You can download the FREE CPD Certificate for this episode via our website www.optimahealthservices.co.uk and join our listener list to receive the Reflection Pack for future episodes.

Attachment rupture and repair sits at the heart of attachment theory, attachment styles, relationships and therapy. But what happens when a client feels misunderstood, rejected or even judged by their therapist?

In this episode of Attached Together, attachment-based psychotherapist Uruj Anjum is joined by Gav, an attachment-based and IFS-trained therapist, to explore why ruptures are not a sign that therapy has failed. In fact, when they are recognised and repaired, they can become some of the most meaningful moments in the therapeutic relationship.

A missed detail. A difficult question. A cancelled session. A boundary that feels like rejection.

These moments may seem small, but for a client with a history of abandonment, criticism or emotional disconnection, they can reactivate much older attachment wounds.

Together, Uruj and Gav discuss how therapists can notice these shifts, stay present when things feel uncomfortable, and respond without becoming defensive or rushing to make everything feel better.

Attachment rupture and repair is the process of recognising a break in emotional connection and working together to restore safety, trust and understanding.

You will hear why secure attachment is not built through perfect attunement, but through repeated experiences of disconnection followed by repair. The conversation also explores how clients may internalise shame when conflict has never been safely resolved, and how therapy can offer a different experience: one in which hurt can be expressed without the relationship ending.

The episode includes a powerful ethical dilemma:

What do you say when a client tells you, “I felt judged by you last week”?

Gav considers how therapists can hold two truths at once: that they may not have intended to judge the client, while also taking the client’s experience seriously.

• Why rupture is inevitable in meaningful therapeutic relationships
• How attachment styles shape responses to boundaries and misunderstanding
• The link between unrepaired conflict, shame and self-blame
• How to recognise withdrawal, anger and disconnection in the room
• Why therapist defensiveness can deepen a rupture
• How supervision and personal therapy support relational work
• How attachment rupture and repair can contribute to earned secure attachment

Does a rupture mean therapy has gone wrong?
No. Ruptures are a natural part of close relationships. What matters is whether they can be recognised and explored.

How does attachment affect rupture in therapy?
A client’s attachment history may shape how they experience mistakes, boundaries, absences and changes in the therapist’s tone or availability.

How can a therapist begin repair?
By noticing the shift, regulating their own response, acknowledging the client’s experience and becoming curious about what happened between them.

00:16 Introduction
02:04 Gav’s background
03:10 Why rupture and repair matters
04:07 How secure attachment develops
06:42 Rupture in the therapeutic relationship
08:58 Why ruptures are inevitable
12:55 What repair looks like
14:16 When repair is a new experience
16:47 Working with shame
18:47 Supporting the therapist
20:46 Earned secure attachment
23:06 “I felt judged by you”
26:05 Final reflections

FREE CPD Certificate & Reflection Pack

You can download the FREE CPD Certificate for this episode via our website www.optimahealthservices.co.uk and join our listener list to receive the Reflection Pack for future episodes.