Jim Thomas
LMFT, ICEEFT EFT Trainer

Jim has worked with couples and families across a wide range of presenting problems, family types, and diverse populations.  As an EFT Trainer, Jim presented on attachment-driven (including EFT) approaches to treating addiction, addressing trauma and working with shame to therapists across 4 continents.

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Attachment-Driven Treatment of Addiction With Couples and Families

Friday | May 2, 2025
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
(1.5 CEs)

Session Description:

Attendees gain an expansive, humanistic, attachment-driven view of addiction.  As a result, their awareness of the impact of addiction on those in their own clinical practice, increases.  Whether this be struggles of an individual client, a substance impacting a couples relationship, or the chaotic tragedies in families impacted by alcoholism and substance abuse, clinicians gain a pathway towards having a transformative impact through their work.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Attendees be able to explain and evaluate their own work around addiction with the key differences between three overall organizing implicit assumptions in addiction treatment: attachment-averse, attachment-neutral and attachment-driven approaches to working with addiction.
2. Attendees can identify and describe the three key principles that underlie and inform attachment-driven approaches addressing addiction in couples and family therapy.
3. Attendees will identify and apply to their work, three key tools in working with couples and families struggling with addiction’s impact: empathic engagement, humanistic validating support, and emotional-processing (this will be demonstrated in two short video clips of session work with 2 different couples).