Details
CPCAB Level 5 Diploma Integrating Attachment-Based
Psychotherapy into Clinical Practice
This advanced Level 5 Diploma is specifically designed for qualified counsellors and psychotherapists (Level 4 or above) who are ready to take the next step in their professional development. It’s designed to support those who are:
- Driven by a deep curiosity about attachment and developmental trauma, If you’ve found yourself repeatedly drawn to understanding the impact of early relationships on human development and psychological resilience, this course will meet you there—offering a rich, integrated, and clinically grounded exploration of attachment theory across the lifespan.
- Eager to work more relationally and intuitively. This programme will help you refine your capacity to work with the relational dynamics beneath the surface—those unconscious patterns shaped by early attachments that drive client struggles with intimacy, identity, shame, and safety.
- Hungry for depth beyond technical tools. If you’ve sensed that something deeper lies behind technique—an inner resonance, a therapeutic presence, an empathic “felt sense” of your client’s inner world—this diploma gives language, theory, and structure to those instincts.
- Seeking to build or refine a specialist private practice. Whether you’re already in private practice or planning to launch one, this diploma offers both the theoretical credibility and reflective capacity to help you position yourself as a relational, attachment-informed therapist—with confidence, clarity, and ethical grounding.
- Looking to work effectively in schools, colleges, or university settings. The lifespan attachment model provides insight into working with children, adolescents, and emerging adults. This course equips you to navigate the complex emotional worlds of younger clients with compassion, clarity, and evidence-informed strategy.
- Working toward professional accreditation. As you work toward full accreditation with professional bodies such as the BACP, UKCP, or NCS, this diploma demonstrates advanced commitment to ethical practice, continued professional development, and clinical depth—making it an excellent foundation or supplement for your accreditation pathway.
This course is for therapists who feel the pull—a desire to go deeper, to understand clients with more clarity and care, and to show up in the therapy room with confidence, humility, and wisdom born of both theory and lived insight.
If that sounds like you, this might just be the course of a lifetime.
Information
Level 5 Diploma in
Attachment-Based Psychotherapy
Online
Participants will gain a good knowledge and understanding of:
- Classical attachment theory and research
- Assessment in Private Practice
- How the particular qualities of early relational experiences influence the developing mind and brain
- How this is expressed in relationships with other people and with oneself
- The impact of social, cultural, and historical context on family dynamics
- Attachment needs throughout the life-cycle: the increasing complexity of attachment behaviours throughout life
- Working somatically with trauma
- Understanding Child Development
- Focusing on Complex Issues
- Working at Relational Depth
- How these processes have been expressed in the participant's own life
This Diploma covers 120 guided learning hours
Attachment Course Content
Attachment CPD offers a unique theoretical understanding of attachment theory, throughout the lifespan and how to integrate it into clinical practice to gain a deep empathic comprehension of our client's internal world
- Historical Perspectives of Theory
- Contemporary Attachment Theory
- Attachment throughout the lifespan
- Using an Attachment-Based Psychotherapeutic model
- Neuroscience - Attachment Body and Brain
- Biological Survival Responses
- Attachment Loss and Bereavement
- Defences and Affect Regulation
- Mind Mindedness
- Working with Dismissing Attachment
- Working with Preoccupied Attachment
Working with Attachment in the Consulting Room in respect of:-
- Depression and Suicide
- Anxiety
- Eating Disorders
- Addiction
- Trauma
- Working somatically with Unresolved Trauma and Loss
- Assessments and Private Practice
- Attachment and Ethical Practice
- Attachment in the Therapy Room
- Attachment and Dreams
APPLICATIONS FOR 2025-2026 INTAKE IS NOW OPEN
Dates:
- September 2025 - June 2026
(Term time only)
- 33 live online sessions with reading and study weeks
- Options of:-
Monday Morning 10:00 - 14:00 - Uruj
or
Wednesday Morning from 9:30 – 13:30 - Jo and Gav
or
Thursday Evening 17:00 - 21:00 - Joanne
or
Friday Morning from 09:30 - 13:30 - Darren
Meet your Tutors
Delegate Commitment
- Attending weekly online training sessions.
- Maintaining a reflective journal of progress and self-awareness.
- Attending tutorials.
- Completing three assignments including:- An Attachment and Loss Assignment, a Case Presentation
based on a Case Study and your own Attachment Story.
- Reading from the required reading list.
- Completion of a portfolio of written work.
- Completion of a minimum of 20 hours of supervised clinical practice
- Completion of 20 hours of Attachment-Based personal counselling.
- A commitment of approximately 4 – 6 hours per week for study, reading, research and written work
in addition to the training sessions.
- Membership of a professional counselling body
Course Requirements
- Prior completion of a recognised Level 4 Counselling Diploma course or higher (with a min 420 guided learning hours (GLH)).
- Currently in clinical practice.
- Full completion of the course application form (available on request).
- Write a pre-course essay on your clinical experience and your motivation for applying for this course. (approx. 1000 words).
- You will be invited to attend a pre-course interview.
Progression
Onto our CPCAB Level 7 Qualification - click here for more information
How to Apply