Primary Attachment Therapy Training (In Person, Portland, Oregon)

P.A.T. therapists support clients in building secure relationships using mindful, immediate engagement processes in a safe and loving therapeutic container.

Primary Attachment Therapy (P.A.T.) provides a comprehensive map for exploring the implicit learning from our earliest development, resolving early attachment wounding and supporting the pursuit of satisfying adult relationship with self, others, and the world. 

P.A.T. builds on the principles, tools, and techniques of Hakomi, and is deeply informed by Interpersonal Neurobiology and CIMBS (Complex Integration of Multiples Brain Systems), developed by Beatrix & Terry Sheldon. Working with attachment states as fluid rather than fixed, P.A.T. blends brain science and deep limbic attunement to evolve individual, coupled, and other intimate relationships toward greater stability and satisfaction.

P.A.T. is distinct in locating much of the process in the immediate relationship between client and therapist, deliberately eliciting attachment states and bringing close, caring attention to moment-to-moment dynamics. We often work in mindfulness with eyes open and focus on attachment needs and indicators that arise in the transpiring present moment — in the “room,” within the client, and between the client and therapist — limiting exploration of historic, future, or outside the current context material. This supports brain repatterning and the development of new neural pathways.

Our trainings offer a supportive context for refining your own attachment responses and deepening your capacity for professional intimacy, which can enhance practitioner effectiveness in a range of helping contexts. 

P.A.T. is creative, optimistic, loving, simple, nuanced, forgiving, surprising, sometimes paradoxical, and always exceedingly human.

Please join us for five days of live, in-person training plus an online integration session.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
You will learn to:

1. Recognize your attachment-connected responses as a therapist and training participant.
2. Understand foundational aspects of developmental and adult attachment theory.
3. Understand professional intimacy and the ethics of P.A.T.
4. Create a safe, right-here-right-now, limbic environment.
5. Use, induce, and support eyes-open (and closed) mindfulness in yourself and clients, and work in the transpiring present moment.
6. Support security in the therapeutic relationship by naming and exploring any power, race, ethnicity, culture, SES, gender, and/or sexual orientation differences between yourself and clients.
7. Intentionally access and explore client habitual attachment states/patterns and any attachment breaches with the therapist.
8. Process core attachment material.
9. Assess and integrate increased attachment security, as well as reduced attachment insecurity.

Donna Roy, MS, L.P.C., CHT, Hakomi Trainer, is a licensed professional counselor and a Certified Hakomi Therapist and Trainer, serves on the Hakomi Institute board of directors, and has had a private counseling and consulting practice in Portland, Oregon, for 25 years. She continues to offer Hakomi certification support and to teach in Hakomi trainings in the Pacific NW and with other global Hakomi teams. In 2011, she spearheaded the co-development of Primary Attachment Therapy (P.A.T.) and offers P.A.T. trainings locally and internationally. Her background includes teaching in Portland State University’s Department of Counselor Education, founding a local affordable counseling clinic, and authoring a chapter entitled, “Body-Centered Counseling & Psychotherapy” in Theories and Interventions in Counseling and Psychotherapy, published by Prentice Hall. She has advanced training in couples, marriage, and family therapy, experiential dreamwork, and clinical supervision.

Jessica Montgomery, M.S.W., CHT, Hakomi Trainer is a somatic counselor, Hakomi Trainer and catalyst. Blending brain science with mindful experiential techniques and profound regard for the unbroken wisdom within, Jessica facilitates individuals, couples and communities toward greater wholeness. Based in Portland Oregon, she has taught internationally in diverse settings from integrative medicine to wilderness retreats to bodyworker and counselor education. As co-developer of the Primary Attachment model, she supports practitioners in expanding capacity for professional intimacy. Jessica is skilled at synthesizing key information across disciplines and brings a strong social justice perspective to her work, inspiring embodied approaches to personal and social evolution.

If you are interested in sampling this work, we invite you to attend an introduction to The Power of the Transpiring Present Moment, on August 18 from 11am to 1:30pm (PST) and learn how to bring greater clinical intimacy to any helping relationship.