This self-study course is worth 1.5 continuing education contact hours for LCATs and LMHCs in New York state.
If you’re a practitioner working with adults who struggle with love addiction, codependency and/or attachment trauma, and want to help your clients avoid falling into yet another unhealthy relationship with an emotionally unavailable partner, this course is for you!
This course illuminated for me the difficulties my clients have in getting stuck in unhealthy relationship patterns, and how they are affected on a neurochemical level. I know these insights will be a tremendous help in treatment.
- Linus Miller LCSW
How This Course Can Help You...
Are you a practitioner who works with adults that struggle with love addiction...
And feel passionately about helping your clients escape the anxious-avoidant trap that keeps them stuck in addictive cycles with their partners?
But you’re constantly butting up against feelings of frustration and failure, when they wind up in the same unhealthy relationships, and are not able to make significant changes in their lives?
And no matter how hard you try, it seems like all the insight in the world goes in one ear and out the other.
This leaves you feeling defeated, helpless, hopeless, and maybe a bit cynical. It might also sap your motivation and feel like you’re just spinning your wheels, in session. Or maybe even doubting if you are helping your client at all!
If this sounds like you, you’re gonna love this special, self-study course, “Love Addiction and the Anxious-Avoidant Trap: Examining Attachment Hunger in Adulthood”, worth 1.5 continuing education contact hours for licensed creative arts therapists, in New York State.
You Will Learn...
In this presentation, Briana will discuss the research supporting the “dependency paradox” which suggests the more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent they become...
However, for individuals caught in the anxious-avoidant trap, neurological studies suggest a susceptibility to love addiction and complicated grief which can disrupt that process.
The Course Learning Objectives Include…
- Participants will be able to identify 3 characteristics of avoidant attachment.
- Participants will be able to identify 3 characteristics of anxious attachment.
- Participants will be able to list 3 elements that contribute to a sense of safety and wellbeing when implementing guided visualizations in art therapy interventions.
More specifically, in this course...
- You will learn how to use mindfulness-based art interventions to help your clients overcome “attachment hunger.”
- You’ll gain the ability to spot the dreaded Anxious-Avoidant Trap that holds your clients back from experiencing lots of eligible, healthy, and emotionally available partners.
- You'll gain a deep understanding on the psychological impact of trauma on attachment in adulthood, and the role fantasy has to play when we dissociate in relationships, which can look like getting hung up on a partner's "potential" instead of making healthier choices in partnership.
This is a very insightful class on how. Love addiction and complicated grief are interrelated and how the brain and chemicals effect our thoughts. Feelings and behaviors. And our perceptions of reality that have an impact on how we. Experience our most intimate relationships.
-H. Rubins, LCAT
Example Curriculum
How This Course Will Help You Help Your Clients...
As a practitioner, this is going to help you help your clients understand the impact of attachment styles on their addictive patterns in love, with greater ease and enjoyment, without them slipping into self-sabotaging patterns that leave them stuck in cyclical negative beliefs that they are fundamentally flawed.
For example, in Briana MacWilliam’s clinical practice, clients that are made aware of the impact of attachment styles, and how to work with them mindfully, have experienced tremendous results…
- Increased clarity around their own needs and desires, and that their partners were much more receptive to how they expressed them.
- An increased sense of respect, admiration, and personal agency in the relationship.
- Increased clarity around what they felt was their "intuition" versus a "triggered" emotional response, which helped them make better discerning decisions about compatible vs incompatible partners.
- Deep insight into how and why you may be attracting (and attracted to) the same types of partners into your life, even when you've been doing everything "right" and it seemed like this time, they would be different.
- The ability to spot The Anxious-Avoidant Trap, so you can avoid falling into yet another toxic relationship with an emotionally unavailable partner.
- Feeling safe, secure, trusting, and more self confident.
- The ability to bounce back easily from an incompatible relationship, without taking on all the blame or responsibility for what "went wrong."
- Experiencing lots of eligible, healthy, emotionally available partners showing an interest.
- Having a toolbox of practices that will help ground and focus their energy when they are feeling stressed or anxious.
- No more wasting time beating themselves up for things (situations and people) they cannot control, so they can excel and take command of the things that they can!
Being someone who went through a “love addition” phase I appreciated the way it was presented and I connected with it. I also like how characteristics of the secure attachment were given as well so we can compare the differences between the healthy and unhealthy. I also like Briana's own unique labeling system, and find it very helpful.
- A. King LCAT
Imagine How It Would Feel...
- To have a comprehensive understanding of why all the insight and emotional processing in the world isn’t resulting in any real changes in your client’s relationships.
- To be able to help your clients recognize self sabotaging impulses for what they are, on the body level, and offer a fun and creative intervention for shifting their emotional energy around it.
- To have a box of useful tools and practices that can help enliven your sessions and throw a wrench in the mental hamster wheel of cyclical negative thinking and dissociative chatter that often deflects from affecting real energetic and emotional transformations in treatment.
- To feel excited about being a therapist, and increasingly confident and masterful while fine-tuning an effective treatment approach and philosophy.
If this sounds appealing, you are going to love this course!
Plus, when you purchase this course, you are eligible for a special bonus offer...
Special Bonus Offer
When you purchase “Anxious-Avoidant Trap: Examining Attachment Hunger In Adulthood”, you will also receive a 30% off discount to another special course on the topic of adult love addiction, called, Insecure Attachment in Adulthood, 6 Easy Steps to Encourage Emotionally Honest Conversations also presented by Briana MacWilliam MPS, ATR-BC, LCAT.
In this bonus course, you’ll examine a case study and break down the difference between surface structure and deep structure communications. You will also examine when it is safe and unsafe to practice emotional vulnerability, and use a multi-modal exercise to tap into intuition.
More specifically, in this course you’ll…
- Learn the basic definition of insecure attachment, and how it manifests in “anxious-avoidant” relationships in adulthood.
- Breakdown a case study, and in 6 easy steps, examine how the deep structure vs. surface structure communications could be modified to promote emotional honesty.
- Examine 4 steps to know when it is safe to be emotionally vulnerable, and when it is not.
- Participate in a multi-modal experiential to quell a reactive nervous system, reduce defensiveness, and promote intuitive reflection.
This is a bonus course that is not to be missed!
I found the visual aids and case studies very helpful. The supplemental materials were also very useful. The information about the different types of attachment styles and love addicted characteristics and how they interact with each other was very enlightening. Briana is also a very lively presenter!
-M. Giuseppe, LCAT
Frequently Asked Questions
How will I receive the certificate?
Certificates are automatically generated when you complete a webform inside your dashboard, after you have taken an online assessment and course evaluation. The certificate is sent to you in the form of an email, which you can later save or download as a PDF, if you desire.
With what credentialing bodies is this course valid for continuing education?
This self-study course is worth 1.5 continuing education contact hours for licensed creative arts therapists and licensed mental health counselors in New York state.
What if I change my mind and want a refund?
We only offer refunds if you request it within 24 hours of purchase, and you have NOT received a certificate.
What if I have more questions?
If you have any problems or technical difficulties, please contact support at [email protected].
Your Instructor
Briana MacWilliam MPS, ATR-BC, LCAT
Briana MacWilliam has over 15 years of clinical experience as a creative arts therapist, and is the Founder and Director of CreativeArtsTherapiesOnline.com. She has held two directorial positions in community-based and day-treatment settings, and was a research outcomes coordinator for four years, at the Amen Clinics, Inc.—a brain research and diagnostic facility. She has also edited and co-authored two books on the subjects of attachment and complicated grief, and working with LGBTQ populations. Currently, she offers psychoeducation in self help and personal development through BrianaMacWilliam.com, and continuing education for practitioners through CreativeArtsTherapiesOnline.com. She is also a thesis advisor for Pratt Institute's Creative Arts Therapies Department, and maintains a small private practice.
If you’re a practitioner working with adults who struggle with love addiction, and want to help your clients spot the Anxious-Avoidant Trap so they can avoid falling into yet another unhealthy relationship with an emotionally unavailable partner, sign up for this course, today!
Briana MacWilliam, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed creative arts therapists; #CAT-0014, and is also an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors; #MHC-0224.
PLEASE NOTE: While some subject areas overlap in education, a course that includes art therapy directives does not qualify a counselor to practice art therapy, and similarly an art therapist is not qualified to practice as a counselor, without proper licensing. This is a completely self-directed course. Your continuing education contact hours will be attributed on the date that you submit the webform for your certificate of completion.