Deepening the Attachment Narrative: Integrating Attachment-Based Family Therapy and Schema Therapy
Speaker:
Paul DelGrosso, LICSW LCSW-C
90 minute webinar recorded on May 12, 2026
Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) helps youth and caregivers repair ruptured relationships by addressing intrapsychic processes (Tasks 2 and 3) to prepare family members for new, more productive interpersonal conversations (Tasks 4 and 5). These conversations not only help family members work through relational trauma, but also create corrective attachment experiences where parents care, and children seek care. ABFT draws on multiple psychotherapy strategies, including psychoeducation, mentalization, exposure, and enactment.
Schema Therapy (ST) offers powerful experiential techniques that help clients access vulnerable emotions central to ABFT. ST is an integrative emotion-focused, experiential therapy that addresses self-defeating life patterns (schemas) that develop in childhood in reaction to emotional needs not being met, elaborate over life, and become ingrained in adulthood. When core emotional needs are consistently not met in childhood, dysfunctional ways of coping emerge (modes) that, over time, correlate with specific schema activation (schema-modes). When family members attempt to engage while in reactive mode states (mode clashes) relational engagement becomes difficult.
ABFT provides an essential frame to help caregivers and youth recognize and modify schema-mode activation in their family relationships. ST expands the language of ABFT to include a conceptualization of what underpins attachment-ruptures and how they can be expressed in therapy. ST also provides specific techniques to help reduce resistance and help youth or caregivers explore episodic memories of attachment ruptures uncovering vulnerable emotions.
This webinar presents core ST concepts, explain the rationale for integrating ST with ABFT, demonstrate how to apply specific ST techniques to augment the goals of Task 2 and 3 in ABFT, (through live role plays), and answer questions from attendees.
The target audience for this webinar includes Counselors, Couple and Family Therapists, Mental Health Professionals, Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Psychotherapists, and Social Workers.
- Describe the intrapsychic and interpersonal components of ABFT;
- Define a schema, schema-mode, and mode clash;
- Identify at least 2 factors explaining the rationale for integrating aspects of ST into ABFT;
- Discuss how to apply ST imagery rescripting and mode dialogues to Tasks 2 and 3.
2pm-3:00pm – Background on ABFT & Schema Therapy
Discussion of ST Techniques
3:00pm-3:15pm – Live Demonstration
3:15pm-3:30pm – Q & A
Paul DelGrosso LICSW LCSW-C is a psychotherapist in private practice in Washington, DC where he provides individual, family and group therapy in both regular outpatient and intensive outpatient settings.
Paul is certified in Attachment-Based Family Therapy and advanced certified in Schema Therapy. He also completed four years of post-graduate study in Bowen Family Systems theory and psychotherapy at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family in Washington, DC. Paul recently participated in a research study sponsored by the Yale LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative comparing outcomes using ABFT and CBT for young adults with at least one non-supportive parent.
Paul is particularly interested in the role family dynamics plays in human development. Through his work with youth and parents in a wide array of settings, he has developed insight into how unaddressed attachment ruptures in childhood result in problematic schema-mode formation that later contributes to unsatisfactory life patterns in adulthood. Paul is passionate about addressing this dynamic early through family therapy to foster a better life trajectory.
Paul is available to provide clinical supervision to those interested in the ABFT-ST model.
Regular Registration: $35 per person
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