Becoming an Attachment Family Therapist with Jim Thomas and Amanda Thomas

This training is designed for clinicians working with individuals involving relational trauma and/or addiction, high reactivity, and complex family dynamics.

It is at a moderate to advanced training level occurring over three 8.5 hour days, with 7 contact hours each day.

Location: Red Mountain Lodge, Sedona, AZ

Dates: November 3 through 5, 2026

Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day (with an hour break for lunch).

Please note, the Eventbrite box below stating 2 days, 8 hours is inaccurate, a quirk of the Eventbrite website system…9 to 5:30 daily, with two 15 minute breaks, and 60 minute lunch is correct. So we are together for 25.5 hours, with 21 training or contact hours.

Your Trainers:

Jim Thomas, LMFT and Amanda Thomas, LMFT

Rates plus a fee that populates when you hit the Registration Button on this page:

Professional Rate: 900.00

Graduate Students: 450.00

Group Rate: 850.00

No refunds, facility is A.D.A. Compliant

Reasonable Accommodations available wherever possible with 10 day notice.

21 hours of C.E.’s have been applied for, approval pending.

The training will emphasize direct clinical application of attachment theory in family work. Content will center on how to engage the full family system, track and respond to attachment processes in real time, and utilize the therapeutic relationship to reduce reactivity and increase coherence within the system.

We begin by zooming out to understand addiction from a wider societal, cultural level. We zoom in to discern both what’s useful and what is missing in viewing addiction as driven by choice, social learning or a disease model. We explore addiction, alcoholism as adaptive strategies for coping with emotional distress, mental load, family dynamics and deeper issues of purpose and agency in a complex world.

Particular attention will be given to working with presentations that often lead to splitting, over-functioning, or premature problem-solving, with an emphasis on maintaining a clinical stance and process orientation.

Participants will focus on learning and skill development in areas such as:

• A wider, expansive and humanistic view of addiction globally, with families and individuals as a misguided yet adaptive strategy.
• Understand and apply shared social neurobiology to our assessments and treatment planning from admissions through discharge planning.
• Welcome & work with individuals, families struggling with addiction and/or traumas in a more curious, accepting, focused and empathic manner in individual sessions, family therapy and programs.
• Identifying and conceptualizing complex patterns across family systems as attachment-driven distress fueled by underlying attachment distress.
• Learn to slow down these distress patterns with therapeutic leadership to make space to guide families in accessing and sharing primary emotions.
• Intervene in real time with process-oriented techniques (i.e. active empathy, leaning in, befriending strategies, prompting sharing).
• Foster increased emotional engagement family therapy in both families and therapists.
• Applying attachment-driven interventions across all levels of care.
• Strengthening clinical use of self, expanding our “therapist’s heart” to welcome and engage with more diverse, wider range of families.

This program provides a comprehensive overview of attachment theory and its application in family therapy. Participants will develop a strong understanding of the research behind attachment theory and its relevance to working with families. They will explore how attachment patterns impact family dynamics and individual well-being, and learn how to apply this knowledge in therapeutic interventions.

The training focuses on real world, experiential learning objectives that arise from a humanistic-systemic-attachment view of families struggling with addiction, the relational impacts and how attachment realities may be turned into attachment resources and support.

We will combine using a systemic lens to view family patterns, interactions and experiences, with a humanistic/accepting view of each involved person including the person of concern, their family and the program staff themselves. The goal is to increase clinician's ability to engage with families as resources, to view behaviors and patterns as adaptive, and to leverage attachment bonds for change.

1. Participants will integrate a more compassionate view of addiction and trauma by understanding these as adaptive responses to social and cultural stressors.

2. Participants will develop ability to frame individual behaviors and reactive family patterns as arising from attachment distress and ruptures to essential emotional bonds.

3. Participants applied and demonstrated active expressed empathy, compassion and caring to families and individuals struggling with addiction and/or trauma understanding my role in meeting them where they are to build alliance as one side of “social synapses” with clients.

4. Participants will be able to move from content to process, and from pathology views to possibilities by understanding overt behaviors as expressions of attachment-distress in families.

5. Participants will gain or improve their ability to slow down reactive processes, use skills from 1 through 4 above through applying the C.A.F.E. approach, leaning in to distress, lingering there and befriending adaptive strategies as they emerged in role play scenarios.

6. Participants learn and apply skills in surfacing underlying vulnerable emotions by slowing down and attending to distressed/reactive persons empathically moving away from trying to fix or problem-solve with persons struggling and their families.

7. Related to #6 above, participants learn to go beneath surface presentations to access wounded hearts, fears, shame and longing both individuals and families in distress.

8. Participants expand their professional “therapist heart” allowing more emotional engagement, compassion and connection with struggling clients and their families.

9. Having practiced surfacing underlying primary experiences, vulnerable emotions, participants learn and use skills for prompting the vulnerable sharing of newly uncovered emotional experience with family members/spouses-partners in family therapy.

10. Participants view of the treatment process from admission through treatment and into discharge planning shifts through a greater understanding of their clients, their therapist use of self and clinician and programs through an a lens of shared social neurobiology and applied attachment theory across therapy/counseling relationship.

The training involves exploring therapist use of self, our own attachment histories and our relationship to primary emotions. Sharing and exploring these areas that may impact and support your professional development can be done at a level of vulnerability and risk that feels safe to you as a participant.

Red Mountain Lodge is hosting the training, but Jim Thomas, LMFT, Amanda Thomas, LMFT and the Institute for Change, P.C. is solely responsible for the contents.

Red Mountain Lodge is A.D.A. accessible. Institute for Change will make reasonable accommodations wherever possible if requests are made within 14 days of the event.

We practice and encourage co-created learning community during our training, cell-phone free, and only very limited stepping out for personal needs or emergency calls are allowed. Certificates of Completion are given out at the end of day three. Please treat all involved with respect, tolerance and acceptance in alignment with our professional ethical codes and congruent with various 12 Step and Trauma/Addiction Recovery groups polices of respect, acceptance, understanding and tolerance.

Institute for Change endeavors to provide all trainings/workshops in a responsible, ethical manner in compliance with the Codes of Ethics for the Licensed Professional Counselors and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist including confidentiality. Your participation in the workshop is consider private information which we will not share without your permission. This includes photographs or social media postings by Institute for Change.

We also seek to comply with applicable local, state and federal requirements covering an event of this nature.

For all participants completing the entire workshop, we will distribute to you directly in-person a Certificate of Completion showing 21 hours of continuing education contact hours at the end of the workshop. For participants who need to leave early for health or emergency reasons or who miss a portion of the training, we will mail a Certificate reflecting the lower C.E. hours within 5 business days of the workshop’s last day.

If you need special accommodations or have questions, please contact us: [email protected] or 303-933-9104

7112 W Jefferson Ave, Lakewood, CO 80235 (mailing address, not the workshop location)

1) Sign-in required in morning and sign out at end of training day, and absences longer than those needed for taking care of basic needs such as restroom, pumping for breast milk, are discouraged. And longer absences may result in reduction of C.E’.s received for workshop.

2) We promote a policy of respect, tolerance and acceptance parallel to those in the recovery community such as 12 Step Groups, and ask that participants treat each other with mutual respect throughout the training. Sexual harassment, intimidation or other hostile behaviors will not be tolerated.

3) We have a no refund policy for this workshop.

4) Red Mountain Lodge is hosting, but Institute for Change is solely responsible for the contents of the program. We thank them profusely for hosting.

5) Laptops, IPads and cell phones are not allowed to be used during the training, and no recording other than written notes are allowed.

6) Video work shared is with written permission from the clients, but this permission to share their information is limited to either Jim Thomas or Amanda Thomas accordingly. Thus, recording their names, recording a session with audio or video, or sharing specifics about them outside of this workshop is prohibited.

7) Please share concerns, feel free to ask questions, and give feedback to either Jim or Amanda or to the hosts throughout the training.

8) If you have a serious complaint following the workshop, you may contact Institute for Change, or make a written grievance by emailing [email protected], we make every effort to resolve such grievances up to and including a full or partial refund of your registration fee if warranted by mutual agreement.

9) Please do not make photographs or videos of other participants without their express permission as participation in the training is private information.

10) We do not share with other parties that you attended the workshop, and you will receive a certificate of completion to use for your records at the end of the training.

11) We keep a record of your attendance for a minimum of 5 years of the event.

12)This will be a cell-phone, screen free learning environment for participants so we ask that cell phones by silenced and put out of sight (in bags, backpacks etc) and that there be no use of iPads, laptops and other such devices during our training time in the room together.

Power points and other written materials shared with participants during the training are intended for their use only unless otherwise stated. Materials such as the power point presentation are copyright protect, Institute for Change and Jim Thomas, LMFT

We are co-creating a learning community over three days and look forward to getting to know you. As your presenters Amanda and Jim welcome your feedback and questions throughout the workshop. We will also endeavor to seek feedback from the group at least twice a day throughout the 3 days.

We are committed to providing high-quality educational experiences. If a participant has a concern or complaint, we will address it promptly, respectfully, and without retaliation.

1. Filing a Complaint: Complaints must be submitted in writing (email or letter) within 30 days of the workshop’s conclusion. Include your name, contact information, the workshop title/date, and a detailed description of the concern related to the workshop or trainers in workshop.
2. Acknowledgment: We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 5 business days.
3. Review Proces: The Program Coordinator will review the complaint and, if necessary, consult with the instructor(s) or other relevant staff. Additional information may be requested from the complainant to clarify the issue.
4. Resolution: A written response outlining findings and any corrective actions will be provided within 15 business days of acknowledgment. Possible resolutions may include: clarification of content, provision of supplemental materials, partial/full refund, or other appropriate remedies.
5. Appeal – if you feel the resolution to be inadequate, we will offer a meeting with a third-party mental health professional for a online/Zoom meeting of up to 2 hours to address your concern, and assure we at the Institute for Change hear and understand your concern. In the meeting, we will work together to find a resolution of your concerns. If you are not satisfied with the resolution, you may submit a written appeal to the N.B.C.C. for N.B.C.C. C.E. approved events.

All complaints will be handled confidentially to the extent possible, with information shared only as necessary to resolve the matter.

Patricia A Thomas – Program Coordinator, Institute for Change, [email protected], 303-933-9014

Event venue & nearby stays

Red Mountain Sedona, 6050 Arizona 179, Sedona, United States

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