COURSE 3 OF 12 · FALL SEASON
Fostering Secure
Attachment and
Discernment in Love
Fostering Secure
Attachment and
Discernment in Love
Fostering Secure
Attachment and
Discernment in Love
Using attachment theory and experiential interventions to explore transcendent love, relational discernment, and inner security.
What happens when a client calls it unconditional love, but it looks a lot like self-abandonment? Or calls it self-love, but it looks like hyper-independence? This course helps you guide clients toward transcendent love: keeping the heart open while honoring boundaries, compatibility needs, and relational truth.
3.0 CE Contact Hours
(NYS) LCAT + LMHC
Self-Study
About this course
Participants will examine how early attachment wounds can distort clients’ understanding of love, leading to patterns of self-abandonment, hyper-independence, fear-based attachment, spiritual bypassing, or confusion between love and compatibility. The course introduces transcendent love as love that allows clients to keep their hearts open while honoring boundaries, values, compatibility needs, and relational truth.
The course emphasizes trauma-sensitive pacing, emotional discernment, and the use of story and creative, experiential processes to support clients in releasing misaligned relationships, rewriting limiting beliefs, and developing a more secure relationship to love.
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
Opens with a self-assessment, Is it fear or transcendent love?, followed by the Library of Love Stories visualization. Clients choose one relationship “book” and read it through the eyes of the higher self: What was the love that was present here? What did my soul learn or reclaim?
E – Exploration
Distinguishes fear-based love from transcendent love, and examines where “unconditional love” has become self-abandonment or “self-love” has hardened into hyper-independence. Compatibility needs are reframed as sacred information rather than shame, so clients can let a relationship go without closing their heart.
E – Expression
After The Silver Thread to Your Inner Beloved visualization, clients create an art response that captures the energy of transcendent love through color, line, shape, and symbol, rather than the literal scene or the people involved.
D – Deep Receiving
Clients write a scripted story of releasing attraction patterns that no longer serve them, drawing on the Hero’s Journey, and pair it with EFT tapping so the nervous system can embody a new attraction mindset rooted in self-trust and discernment. My love is real, my limits are real, and both are sacred.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
OBJECTIVE 1
Identify three ways attachment wounds may distort clients’ understanding of love, including
self-abandonment, hyper-independence, and fear-based attachment to incompatible relationships.
OBJECTIVE 2
Differentiate between unconditional love, conditional compatibility needs, and transcendent love as they apply to relational boundaries.
OBJECTIVE 3
Describe at least two experiential or expressive arts interventions that support clients in reconnecting with inner attachment security.
This is for you...
This is for practitioners who…
✓ Work with clients navigating attachment wounds, relational anxiety, avoidance, grief, heartbreak, or difficulty letting go.
✓ Support clients who confuse unconditional love with enduring harm, overgiving, rescuing, or staying in relationships without repair or accountability.
✓ Work with clients who frame emotional distance as “self-love,” “high standards,” or “protecting my peace,” while struggling to remain open to safe intimacy.
✓ Want to help clients honor compatibility needs without
shame, while also maintaining compassion for themselves and others.
✓ Use or want to integrate attachment theory, expressive arts, guided visualization, somatic awareness, spirituality, archetypal storytelling, and belief reframing.
This will help your clients…
✓ Understand that love and compatibility are related, but not the same.
✓ Recognize when “unconditional love” has become self-
abandonment, over-functioning, or attachment anxiety.
✓ Recognize when “self-love” has become hyper-
independence, emotional distancing, or spiritual bypassing.
✓ Identify attachment-based limiting beliefs such as “If I let go, I’ll be alone forever,” “If I depend on anyone, I’ll lose myself,” or “Love is chaotic and dangerous.”
✓ Reconnect with an internal source of love, worth, and spiritual steadiness through the Inner Beloved.
✓ Release misaligned relationships or unmet expectations
without closing the heart.
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
Fostering Secure Attachment and Discernment in Love
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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