One day workshop
Drawn to What Hurts
Understanding why clients return to harmful relationships.
A one day clinical training for registered therapists, counsellors, psychologists, and social workers, delivered by Angela M Carter.
This workshop explores why clients are drawn to what hurts rather than what heals, and how the nervous system organises itself around familiar threat rather than genuine safety. Through an IFS informed and polyvagal lens, it examines the protective patterns that keep clients returning to harmful relationships and how these show up in the therapy room.
Why clients choose what hurts over what heals.
Many clients return, again and again, to relationships that harm them. From the outside this can look like poor judgement or a failure to learn. Beneath the surface, something far more understandable is happening. The nervous system organises itself around what is familiar, and for a client shaped by early relational wounding, familiar threat can feel safer than genuine safety.
This one day training helps clinicians make sense of this pattern with clarity and compassion.
Drawing on Internal Family Systems, attachment theory, and polyvagal theory, the workshop explores how protective parts and survival responses keep clients bound to painful dynamics, how these patterns present in the therapy room, and how practitioners can work with them in a way that is steady, relational, and safe.
Who this workshop is for
This training is designed for registered professionals who want a compassionate, clinically grounded way to understand why clients return to harmful relationships.
Registered therapists.
Counsellors.
Psychologists.
Social workers.
Psychotherapists.
Mental health clinicians.
Trauma informed practitioners.
Practitioners working with relational trauma, attachment wounding, and harmful relationship patterns.
This workshop is intended as professional development and does not replace formal training, clinical supervision, or working within your professional scope of practice.
What this training covers
The safety seeking system
Understand how the nervous system organises itself around familiar threat rather than genuine safety, and why clients choose what hurts over what heals.
An IFS framework for clinicians
Learn to identify managers, firefighters, exiles, and Self in a clinical context, and how to use parts based language in session.
Attachment wounding as protection
Explore how early relational wounding creates the blueprint clients use to select and sustain harmful relationships, and how this shows up in the therapy room.
The three relational configurations
Work with the pursuer and the distancer, two pursuers, and two distancers. See how each presents clinically and how polyvagal theory explains the sub-types within each.
Five clinical tools
Parts based inquiry, unblending, somatic tracking, working with consent and the body, and relational safety mapping, each with its clinical purpose and in-session application.
The therapist's own system
Understand how a client's relational pattern activates the therapist's own system, and why this is the most important clinical awareness in relational trauma work.
Why attend this workshop
When a client keeps returning to a relationship that harms them, it can be one of the most challenging patterns to work with clinically. Approached only through insight or advice, the pattern often persists, leaving both client and therapist feeling stuck.
This workshop offers a deeper, more relational way of understanding what is happening beneath the surface, and practical tools for working with it safely.
Move beyond judgement towards understanding why clients return to what harms them.
Recognise harmful relationship patterns as protective, nervous system driven strategies.
Apply an IFS informed framework directly in clinical work.
Understand attachment wounding as the blueprint for relationship selection.
See how polyvagal states shape the different relational configurations.
Work with the pursuer, the distancer, and the sub-types within each.
Notice how a client relational pattern activates your own system in session.
Leave with five practical clinical tools to bring into your practice.
9:30am – 4:30pm · Live online
Places are limited. Reserve yours today.
What is included and why it matters
Experienced facilitator
Learn with Angela M Carter, an experienced IFS informed trauma therapist, advanced IFIO couples therapist, supervisor, and trainer. Angela brings decades of clinical experience, relational steadiness, and compassionate teaching to her professional trainings.
Live demonstration and clinical application
Observe how these principles apply in real time and engage with structured clinical examples and reflection to build confidence in bringing this understanding into your own practice.
The workshop includes teaching, demonstration, reflection, discussion, and guided clinical application. The learning environment is professional, respectful, and intentionally paced.
How the workshop works
Reserve your place
Register your interest or reserve your place when dates are confirmed. Group size is limited to support depth, interaction, and relational safety.
Learn and reflect live
You will explore the safety seeking system, IFS and attachment, the relational configurations, and five clinical tools through teaching, demonstration, and guided reflection.
Apply with care
You will leave with a clearer framework and practical tools that can be integrated into your existing professional practice within your scope.
Training with Angela M Carter
Angela M Carter is a Level 3 trained Internal Family Systems therapist, advanced IFIO couples therapist, trauma therapist, HeartMath practitioner, supervisor, trainer, and founder of Trauma Release Centre.
With more than thirty years of experience across therapy, social work, trauma recovery, relational healing, and professional training, Angela brings a grounded and compassionate approach to teaching.
Her training style is clear, relational, practical, and deeply respectful of the learning process. In this workshop, Angela supports practitioners to understand why clients are drawn to harmful relationships through the lens of protection, attachment, nervous system survival, and compassionate parts work.
Training informed by clinical depth and ongoing professional development
Angela's teaching is informed by advanced professional training, clinical experience, and a commitment to safe, compassionate, trauma informed practice.
What participants have shared
"This training finally gave me a framework for something I see constantly but could never quite name. Understanding the safety seeking system changed how I sit with these clients."
Rachel, Psychotherapist
"The section on the therapist's own relational system was the most valuable clinical learning I have had in years. I left with tools I could use the very next day."
David, Counsellor
Secure your place
Purchase Drawn to What Hurts
Held live online on Monday 30 November 2026, 9:30am to 4:30pm. Secure your place in this one-day training. Your registration is confirmed once your payment is complete.
Payments are processed securely through Stripe.
Register your interest
Once new dates are confirmed, you will be contacted with the workshop details and registration link.