EMDR and Attachment-Focused Trauma Therapy for Adults

At the heart of this innovative text is the strengths-based Attachment-Focused Trauma Therapy for Adults (AFTT-A) model 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 access and activate 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 e cerpts 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 also be easily integrated with non-EMDR models of trauma therapy.