EMDR and Attachment-Focused Trauma Therapy for Adults (ePub)

Delivers a unique, comprehensive treatment that galvanizes inner resources for reorganizing personality and healing childhood attachment rifts

At the heart of this innovative text is a strengths-based, Attachment-Focused Trauma Therapy for Adults (AFTT-A) that facilitates healthier functioning and attachment patterns for adult clients. This model uses a multimodal, step-by-step approach to restructuring the internal personality system to reclaim the authentic "Self" by providing new attachment experiences for "Child" parts of Self and negotiating new adult-life roles. AFTT-A orients all inner personality components to the present moment in which unmet childhood needs for nurturing and protection can be met within clients themselves. The book delivers a sequence of scripted protocols that accesses and activates the client's own strengths, creating an internal system of resources and using bilateral stimulation to deepen positive affective shifts.

Throughout the book in Pause and Reflect sections, the authors encourage therapists to think about their own attachment patterns that emerge in therapy sessions and implement activities to enhance personal self-awareness and improve attunement to clients. Short vignettes and excerpts from client sessions illustrate the model's application, and end-of-chapter Points to Remember and Troubleshooting tips reinforce key concepts and underscore common therapy challenges and their solutions. The AFTT-A model is useful not only for EMDR therapists but can be easily integrated with non-EMDR models of trauma therapy.

Key Features:

• Presents protocols and protocol scripts for each step of the therapy process


• Uses a PAC (parent-adult-child) model to help clients understand parts of Self and normalize their inner experiences related to attachment trauma


• Delivers a standalone treatment for restructuring personality, healing childhood attachment ruptures, and developing effective adult-life skills


• Integrates preparation and reprocessing phases of EMDR therapy


• Promotes in-depth understanding of client behaviors through attachment and trauma models


• Emphasizes therapist self-reflection to facilitate optimal therapeutic relationships


• Includes treatment vignettes and excerpts from client sessions to deepen understanding of AFTT-A model


• Presents troubleshooting tips, exercises and activities, helpful checklists, templates, worksheets, script examples, and more