Course 1 of 12 · Fall Season
Healing Adverse Attraction Patterns
Healing Adverse Attraction Patterns
Healing Adverse Attraction Patterns
Using attachment theory and experiential interventions to explore relational reenactment, projection, and romantic attraction.
Why do some clients keep choosing the same unavailable partner, even when they know better? This course gives you the magnet, mirror, and mold framework, plus experiential tools to help clients tell chemistry from compatibility, name the "healing fantasy," and make relational choices from self-trust.
3.0 CE Contact Hours
(NYS) LCAT + LMHC
Self-Study
Or get all three Fall courses for $194 →
About this course
This continuing education course explores adverse attraction patterns through an attachment-informed and expressive arts lens. Participants will examine how early relational experiences, conditional love, inconsistent caregiving, and unresolved self-worth wounds may shape adult patterns of attraction, reenactment, projection, and relational dysregulation. The course introduces the clinical metaphors of the magnet, mirror, and mold to help practitioners conceptualize how clients may be drawn toward familiar relational dynamics, interpret partners through core attachment beliefs, and use relational challenges as opportunities for insight, boundaries, and growth.
Through case examples, reflective inquiry, guided visualization, and an art-based mandala exercise, participants will learn practical methods for helping clients differentiate chemistry from compatibility, identify the "healing fantasy," distinguish what is and is not within their control, and reframe emotional triggers as opportunities for self-awareness and secure functioning. The course emphasizes trauma-sensitive pacing, somatic awareness, emotional discernment, and the use of creative process to support insight, integration, and relational agency.
How this course follows the SEED Framework
Across three lectures and an experiential art activities, this course moves through every step of the SEED Framework, so you experience the process yourself before you guide clients through it.
S – Soulful Inquiry
Begins with one guiding question: "What patterns keep popping up in my life, and how might they represent an opportunity to evolve my strengths into something life-affirming and soul-expanding?"
E – Exploration
Introduces relationships as a magnet, mirror, and mold, then sorts what clients can and cannot control. Releasing what was never theirs to manage opens a grief process the course frames as a path to sovereignty, where anxiety softens into agency.
E – Expression
The Magnet, Mirror, and Mold Mandala moves the work out of the intellect and into color, line, shape, and texture. Clients then speak from the finished image as a whole: I am… I help you… I need… I want to trust that…
D – Deep Receiving
Clients name the beliefs behind their healing fantasy, honor the protection each one once offered, and reframe it, anchoring the new belief through a scripted EFT tapping practice. "I can have anxiety and still be secure."
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
OBJECTIVE 1
Identify three ways early attachment experiences may contribute to adverse attraction patterns.
OBJECTIVE 2
Describe the three parts of the magnet, mirror, and mold framework as it applies to relational patterns.
OBJECTIVE 3
Identify two experiential interventions that support clients in exploring attraction patterns, differentiating fantasy from emotional availability, and reclaiming self-trust.
This is for you...
This is for practitioners who…
✓ Work with clients navigating attachment wounds, relational anxiety, self-abandonment, or repetitive attraction patterns.
✓ Want to help clients understand why certain relationship dynamics feel familiar, compelling, or hard to release.
✓ Use or want to integrate attachment theory, expressive arts, somatic awareness, guided visualization, and belief reframing.
✓ Support clients around chemistry, fantasy, projection, people-pleasing, boundaries, or emotionally unavailable partners.
✓ Want practical experiential tools for helping clients move from relational reactivity into discernment and self-trust.
This will help your clients…
✓ Recognize the difference between chemistry, compatibility, and reenactment.
✓ Understand how early attachment wounds can shape adult attraction patterns.
✓ Identify the "healing fantasy" and beliefs such as "I have to earn love."
✓ Explore relational patterns through art-making, guided visualization, somatic inquiry, and reflective prompts.
✓ Practice clearer boundaries, grounded communication, emotional regulation, and more secure relational choices.
Tools to use in practice
A self-assessment, based on the lesson topics
Guided visualization and expressive arts exercise
A story-based scripted EFT Tapping Practice
Downloadable guidebook and lesson summaries
TESTIMONIALS
What practitioners are saying...
"Invigorates my practice."
"As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with over a decade of experience, finding continuing education that not only meets my licensure requirements but also invigorates my practice is rare. The courses offered by Briana’s continuing education school have been so helpful. Her psycho-spiritual approach deeply resonates with my work, and I've been able to integrate the concepts into therapy with profound results."
- Lena M. LMHC
"A rich tapestry of insight."
"As an art therapist, I'm always seeking ways to deepen my skill set and offer more to my clients. The workshops and seminars at Briana's school are exceptional; each course is a rich tapestry of insight, practical skill-building, and transformative knowledge."
-Michelle C. LCAT
"Fills a gap in the field."
"Holding licenses in both clinical social work and art therapy, I find Briana's continuing education offerings to be unparalleled in their depth and relevance. Her unique blend of traditional psychotherapy with spiritual and creative modalities fills a gap in our field."
- Patricia M. LCSW, LCAT
ENROLLMENT
Choose Your Plan
SINGLE COURSE
$97
Healing Adverse Attraction Patterns
3 Contact Hours for LCATs and LMHCs in New York State
Self-Study
NO REFUNDS
BEST VALUE
THE FALL SEASON
$194
Courses 1, 2 & 3 · buy two, get one free
9 Contact Hours for LCATs and LMHCs in New York State
Self-Study
NO REFUNDS
About your instructor
My name is Briana MacWilliam, and I’m a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist (LCAT), Board Certified Registered Art Therapist (ATR-BC), educator, and the founder of Soul-Centered Security®.
I didn’t come to this work because my own relationships were easy. Divorce, grief, and heartbreak brought me face to face with the same attachment patterns I was helping my clients understand. What helped was building a deeper relationship with my body, emotions, creativity, and spirituality.
Over the last 20 years, I’ve served more than 6,000 clients and students across inpatient psychiatry, community mental health, higher education, and private practice. My work weaves together attachment theory, creative arts therapy, embodied practice, and spiritual growth.
I also have additional training in trauma-informed somatic therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), hypnotherapy, and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. And I am the author of Secure in the Spark: A Spiritual Path to Heal Attachment Wounds, available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.
My courses for practitioners share the tools and creative processes that supported my own growth, and the healing of the people I’ve had the privilege of serving.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to take the 12-part courses in order? No. Each course stands alone and is designed to be entered at any point. That said, we recommend starting with Course 1 if you're new.
How will I receive my certificate? After completing your course work, there will be a learning evaluation, instructor evaluation, and webform to complete. After submitting your webform, your certificate will automatically be emailed to you.
How long will I have access to the course? Your purchase includes lifetime access, including to any updates we might make in the future. If a course is retired in the future, we will email you the digital files to download to your own device.
Which boards approve these courses? Briana MacWilliam, 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 creative arts therapists (#CAT-0014) and licensed mental health counselors (#MHC-0224). The ATCB has also accepted our courses in the past, because of our state approval, however, we recommend contacting the ATCB directly if you have a concern.
What if I have further questions? You can contact us at [email protected].
Start where your clients are stuck.
PROVIDER INFORMATION
Briana MacWilliam, 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 creative arts therapists; #CAT-0014, and is also an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors; #MHC-0224.
PLEASE NOTE:
While some subject areas overlap in education, a course that includes art therapy directives does not qualify a counselor to practice art therapy, and similarly an art therapist is not qualified to practice as a counselor, without proper licensing.
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