July 8th, 2025 Webinar - "Our Refuge and Strength: Transforming Attachment to the Living God" with Geoff Goodman

Please join us in Zoom on Friday, July 8th, 2025 from 3 - 4:30 PM EDT!

Description:

This presentation contends that a discernible pattern exists between a person’s attachment relationships to their primary caregivers and their attachment relationship (or nonattachment relationship) to the living God—the God of personal spiritual experience. Each of the four attachment relationship patterns has implications for how therapists work with spiritually curious or spiritually grounded clients. How can therapists talk about a client’s attachment relationship to God as a displacement of—or defense against—their attachment relationships to parents? How can therapists talk about a client’s attachment relationships to parents as a displacement of—or defense against—their attachment relationship to God? Transforming these attachment relationships to restore wholeness and unity is a crucial treatment goal of Attachment-Informed Psychotherapy (AIP) and the central topic of this presentation. I will demonstrate how therapists can use AIP to enhance clients’ understanding and lived practice of their attachment relationships to God and to significant others. For AIP is uniquely positioned to address the underlying relationship wounds that so often derail a client’s spiritual journey and their everyday relationships. The goal of AIP is to uncover and work through resentment and guilt toward parents, often coinciding with a need for their approval, and often carried over into one’s relationship to God as a parent figure. The client’s latent spirituality can become a lever of both psychological and spiritual transformation. Although there are many methods of harnessing clients’ spirituality, this presentation references the principles of attachment theory to articulate one specific approach that audience members will find easy to comprehend and apply to their own clients. This approach leverages our understanding of the four attachment relationship patterns that govern the construction and maintenance of all relationships, both to God and to significant others. A case illustration of AIP applied to a client’s relationship to God is offered. 

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will describe the four attachment relationship patterns and how each one might determine the quality of a client's interactions with the therapist.

2. Participants will explain the correspondence and compensation hypotheses as they are applied to the associations between a client's attachment relationship to parents and their attachment relationship to God.

3. Participants will identify how the therapist's knowledge of the spiritually curious or spiritually grounded client's specific attachment relationship pattern might impact their treatment of such clients.

4. Participants will identify how the therapist's own attachment relationship impacts the intervention strategies used with clients.

Continuing Education Credit Available: 1.5 credit hours

ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care & Education has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7004. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care & Education is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

ACPE Provider 2045, is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved as ACE providers. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. ACPE maintains responsibility for this course. ACE provider approval period: 11/01/2024-11/01/2025. Social workers completing this course receive 15.0 Social Work Clinical continuing education credits.

Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, 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 mental health counselors. #MHC-0301.

Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, 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 social workers. #SW-0852.

Accommodations:

Please let us know if you have need of any accommodations.