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When You're Still Someone’s Child: CBT for Adult Clients Navigating Parental Relationships

This course is aimed at therapists who want to support their adult clients deal with their own parents.

With adults living longer than ever in history, it is more common now for adults to still have live ongoing relationships with one or both parents.

This Adult-Childhood can impact of the adult's wellbeing in positive and negative ways. While most traditional psychological models assume that the experience of a relationship with parents ends in the 20s, the demographic reality is that many adults have relationships with one or more of their parents into their 40s 50s and beyond.

This unique course will highlight the key psychology and practical aspects of a older adult having to engage with, navigate and ideally benefit from, relationships with their parents.

Module 1: Understanding the Lifelong Impact of Parent-Child Dynamics

Explore how early attachment patterns influence adult relationships with parents.

Distinguish between secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganised patterns.

Examine the continuity and plasticity of attachment into adulthood.

Module 2: Identifying Core Beliefs and Maladaptive Schemas

Introduce common schemas (e.g., defectiveness, emotional deprivation, subjugation).

Link schema development to early parental interactions.

Show how these schemas drive current cognitive and emotional responses.

Module 3: The Role of Trauma and Emotional Memory

Identify the difference between developmental trauma and event trauma.

Discuss how implicit memory and emotional flashbacks can get triggered by parents.

Integrate trauma-informed CBT approaches for safety and pacing.

Module 4: Present-Focused CBT: Working with Triggers and Patterns

Use the 5-areas model to explore current conflict or distress with parents.

Teach clients to spot triggering behaviours and automatic thoughts.

Focus on shifting from reactive patterns to responsive behaviour.

Module 5: Acceptance, Defusion, and Values-Based Work (ACT Integration)

Use defusion techniques to create distance from painful schema-driven thoughts.

Explore values around family, identity, and boundaries.

Help clients make values-consistent choices even amid difficult emotions.

Module 6: Assertiveness, Boundaries, and Communication

Teach assertive communication skills tailored to parent-child power dynamics.

Practice scripts for common scenarios (criticism, guilt trips, emotional withdrawal).

Address fear of retaliation, rejection, or guilt associated with setting boundaries.

Module 7: Moving Forward with Clarity and Compassion

Support clients in redefining the meaning of "connection" or “closure.”

Explore grief, forgiveness, and limits of change within the parent.

Build a personalised maintenance and relapse prevention plan.

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Helping Adult Clients Deal with Parents

By Practical CBT

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