Saturday 4 December 2010 (10.00am-5.15pm, registration 9.30-10.00am)
ATTACHMENT DIFFICULTIES IN ADOLESCENCE with International Speaker Dr Karl Heinz Brisch (identifying and working with teenagers who have insecure, disorganised and disordered attachment patterns)
Cost: £160.00 (includes a complimentary buffet lunch)

Attachment has a major impact in terms of whether the teenage years go well or result in misery and torment for self and others. With secure attachment, the transition to adulthood often means that the teenager is able to fully engage with their drive and creativity, discover their sexuality in the context of a loving relationship, and develop a sophisticated level of social and emotional intelligence. But when teenagers have attachment difficulties, they can find themselves living with crippling feelings of shame, anxiety, depression, anger, low self-esteem, disturbance in personal identity and relationship breakdown with both family and friends.

Dr Karl Heinz Brisch, our internationally acclaimed attachment expert, will explore the debilitating effects of insecure attachment in adolescence. He will then offer a wealth of tried and tested relational tools, techniques and ways of being, which can be used to successfully alleviate the problems associated with this stage of life, e.g. anti-social behaviour, teenage pregnancy, eating disorders, alcohol/drug abuse and suicide attempts. In particular he will present attachment-informed interventions, illustrating with fascinating and moving case material and film footage.

In presenting his groundbreaking work, Brisch will inspire participants with a wealth of ways of connecting with teenagers who seem so unreachable, lost in defensive anger, bitterness, lethargy, depression.

Benefits from attending this conference

• Understand how so many problems in adolescence can be traced to attachment difficulties or attachment disorders
• Learn why insecurely attached teenagers can move so easily into anti-social behaviour, depression, neurotic or psychosomatic symptoms
  
• Feel empowered to skilfully manage the feelings that teenagers with attachment issues evoke in you
• Gain essential knowledge about effective attachment based interventions with troubled teenagers
• Understand the road from childhood pain to teenage violence
• Understand the vulnerability behind all the bravado and aggression
• Understand the depths of teenage turbulence and torment and how to reach out
• Understand how to empower a parent to address a teenager’s unmet attachment needs
• Take away a wealth of ideas and new ways of relating to teenagers in order to foster secure attachment
• Hear fascinating and moving case material with teenagers where attachment based interventions have worked

Speaker

Dr Karl Heinz Brisch
Specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychosomatic medicine. Head of the Department of Paediatric Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. Lecturer at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. Research in early child development and attachment processes and disorders, as well as prevention. Published widely on attachment development of high-risk infants and clinical attachment research. Author: Treating Attachment Disorders - From Theory to Therapy.

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