COURSE 10 OF 12 · summer SEASON
Compassionate
Communication:
Decoding Mixed Signals in Love
Compassionate
Communication:
Decoding Mixed Signals in Love
Compassionate
Communication:
Decoding Mixed Signals in Love
Helping clients move from self-silencing to clear, grounded, and embodied self-expression.
What a client says and what their body says don’t always match, and partners notice. This course helps you decode mixed signals through an attachment lens and teaches safe and soft communication strategies that help clients speak with more clarity, compassion, and self-respect.
3.0 CE Contact Hours
(NYS) LCAT + LMHC
Self-Study
About this course
This continuing education course explores mixed signals in intimate relationships through an attachment-informed, somatic, and experiential framework. Participants will examine how attachment styles shape perception, nervous system responses, and verbal and nonverbal communication, contributing to incongruence between what clients feel internally and what they express outwardly.
Clinicians will learn to identify how defensive, head-centered communication can escalate conflict, distinguish it from more emotionally honest heart-centered communication, and apply “safe” and “soft” communication strategies based on the relational threat present in the moment. Expressive arts, guided visualization, body-based reflection, and EFT tapping are used to help clients identify triggers, uncover unmet needs, increase coherence between inner experience and outward expression, and communicate with greater clarity, compassion, self-respect, and relational
flexibility.
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
Asks clients to notice where their words and their body tell different stories, using a mixed-signals checklist and gentle inquiry: What does my partner say? What does my partner do? What does my body sense?
E – Exploration
Explores attachment styles from a somatic perspective, how attachment filters shape perception, and how head-centered communication fuels defensive spirals. The Crowned Heart visualization helps clients drop beneath the surface story: What am I really feeling? What do I really need?
E – Expression
The Inside/Outside Mask externalizes the gap between inner experience and outer expression, and the Emotional Triggers Body Map gives conflict responses color, line, shape, and a place in the body.
D – Deep Receiving
Clients learn safe strategies that offer reassurance and soft strategies that preserve autonomy, then practice an EFT sequence that brings the lesson out of the thinking mind and into the body, pausing before reacting to discern whether a moment calls for safety, softness, or both.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
OBJECTIVE 1
Identify at least three ways attachment-related beliefs and nervous system responses can
contribute to mixed verbal and nonverbal signals in intimate relationships.
OBJECTIVE 2
Differentiate head-centered, heart-centered, safe, and soft communication strategies and
describe when each may contribute to conflict escalation, reassurance, autonomy, or relational repair.
OBJECTIVE 3
Apply at least two experiential interventions to help clients identify emotional triggers, unmet needs, and protective communication responses and formulate more coherent, attachment-informed ways of communicating.
This is for you...
This is for practitioners who…
✓ Work with clients caught in anxious-avoidant, pursuer-
withdrawer, or other push-pull communication dynamics.
✓ Support clients who say one thing while their tone, behavior, body language, or emotional energy communicates something different.
✓ Want practical ways to help clients move from criticism,
withdrawal, defensiveness, or over-explaining toward more emotionally honest communication.
✓Are interested in integrating attachment theory with somatic awareness, expressive arts, guided imagery, and EFT.
✓ Want to help clients communicate more securely without teaching them to suppress their own needs or over-regulate another person.
This will help your clients…
✓ Recognize how attachment beliefs can shape interpretations of ambiguous relational moments and fuel mixed signals.
✓ Increase coherence between what they feel, need, say, and Communicate nonverbally.
✓ Identify the vulnerable feelings and unmet needs underneath criticism, withdrawal, protest, or shutdown.
✓ Learn when communication may require more reassurance and safety, more autonomy and softness, or a balance of both.
✓ Communicate with greater emotional honesty, clarity,
compassion, and self-respect while preserving healthy
boundaries.
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
Compassionate
Communication:
Decoding Mixed Signals
in Love
3 Contact Hours for LCATs and LMHCs in New York State
Self-Study
NO REFUNDS
BEST VALUE
THE SUMMER 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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