Attach Together

About Attach Together

Attached Together is a podcast exploring attachment theory, attachment styles, and psychotherapy in clinical practice. Created by the therapists and tutors at Optima Health Services, this podcast is for counsellors, psychotherapists, and mental health professionals who want grounded, thoughtful conversations about attachment, trauma, relationships, and everyday therapeutic work. Each episode examines how attachment shapes the way we love, cope, regulate, and connect - both in our personal lives and in the therapy room. Expect practical insights, reflective discussion, and training-level knowledge that bridges theory and practice without unnecessary jargon. Listeners can also receive a CPD certificate for each episode, making it easy to integrate ongoing professional development into your week while deepening your understanding of attachment-informed practice. Whether you’re working with anxious, avoidant, or disorganised attachment, supporting couples, or strengthening your clinical formulation skills, Attached Together offers thoughtful, experience-based conversations rooted in real therapeutic work.

Publisher

Optima Health Services

Category

education · health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

22 Feb 2026

Latest episode

29 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

25 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   29 Sept 2026

   What Happens to Our Attachment Patterns When We’re in a Group?

   What happens to attachment patterns when therapy moves from a one-to-one relationship into a group? In this episode of Attached Together, attachment-based psychotherapist and supervisor Georgina Sturmer is joined by psychotherapist, author and group facilitator Sarah Dosanjh, widely known as The Binge Eating Therapist. Drawing on Sarah’s experience of running therapy groups, support groups, courses and workshops, they explore attachment in group therapy and the extraordinary amount that can become visible when people are relating not only to a therapist, but to one another. Sarah describes the importance of creating a clear purpose for a group and preparing people for what participation will actually involve. She also shares one of the questions she asks new members: “Who are you in a group?” It is a deceptively simple question. People arrive in groups with a lifetime of experience of belonging, adapting, caregiving, staying quiet, taking up space, managing conflict and protecting themselves. For some of Sarah’s clients, people-pleasing and caregiving can create a warm and supportive group while also making it easier to focus on everyone else rather than themselves. The conversation explores what makes a therapy group different from a support group, including Sarah’s repeated invitation to notice what is happening internally even while somebody else is speaking. Georgina and Sarah also consider rupture and conflict, the therapist’s own reactions when tensions emerge, and the things that may remain unsaid when group members find disagreement difficult to tolerate. They look at the particular experience of online groups, boundaries around contact outside the group, and why an emotionally intimate connection created within therapy does not necessarily translate easily into friendship elsewhere. And then there are endings. Sarah describes what can happen when somebody announces that they are leaving: the group member whose immediate thought is, “Was it me?”, the different ways people approach goodbye, and the therapist’s own attachment responses to departures. There is also an unusually candid exploration of therapist fallibility. Sarah recalls making a comment to a group member that she intended as teasing but realised had landed with a bite. Rather than allowing the moment to disappear, she returned to it, acknowledged what had happened and invited the group to explore its impact. The episode offers a thoughtful reminder that therapeutic safety does not require a therapist to become a perfect facilitator. Rupture, uncertainty, endings and mistakes can themselves become part of the work. For therapists curious about starting a group, Sarah also shares practical observations from years of group work, from defining a clear niche and setting a start date to establishing boundaries and commitment. Above all, the conversation explores why group therapy can offer something that individual therapy cannot quite replicate: attachment patterns unfolding between peers, in real time. Optima Attachment Training: UK: https://www.optimaattachment.co.uk/ (https://www.optimaattachment.co.uk/) AUS: https://www.optimaattachment.com.au/ (https://www.optimaattachment.com.au/) Listeners can access a CPD certificate and reflection pack for this episode here (https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/form/4m6wB1KJnv1hsGVeBGPm).

2. 

   22 Sept 2026

   When Culture and Faith Change the Attachment Story

   What happens when attachment theory is applied without enough attention to culture, faith, migration, identity or power? In this episode of Attached Together, Optima lecturer, psychotherapist and supervisor Uruj Anjum is joined by Myira Khan, an award-winning accredited counsellor, supervisor, coach, trainer, author and founder of the Muslim Counsellor and Psychotherapist Network (MCAPN). Together, they explore attachment theory and culture through an anti-oppressive lens, asking what can be missed when ideas about secure attachment are applied too literally or through culturally dominant assumptions. Myira considers attachment as something shaped within a much broader relational world. What changes when a child grows up with several caregivers rather than one primary caregiver? How might migration, displacement, racism, Islamophobia or a changing sense of home affect experiences of safety, rejection and belonging? And what happens when therapists either fail to ask about identity at all, or focus so heavily on one part of a client’s identity that the rest of the person disappears from view? The conversation also explores culturally attuned therapy with Muslim clients. Myira challenges the assumption that sharing a faith identity makes people’s experiences of that faith the same, and discusses why clients should not have to become their therapist’s teacher on Islam, culture or identity. An ethical dilemma brings these ideas into the counselling room. If a Muslim client facing loss, infertility or a difficult diagnosis says they are “leaving it in Allah’s hands”, should a therapist understand this as avoidance? Or might faith be offering hope, security and an active way of relating to something beyond the client’s control? Rather than reaching too quickly for a label, Myira invites therapists to become curious about what the belief means to that individual and what their decision to come to therapy already tells us. The episode closes with a deceptively simple challenge to therapeutic neutrality: the work happens between two whole people. Culture, identity, attachment patterns and lived experience do not stay outside the counselling room. As Myira puts it: “human first, therapist second.” Learn more about Optima Attachment Training: https://www.optimaattachment.co.uk/ (https://www.optimaattachment.co.uk/) Listeners can also access a CPD certificate (https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/form/4m6wB1KJnv1hsGVeBGPm) for this episode.

3. 

   15 Sept 2026

   What Happens When We Start Getting Attached to AI?

   What happens when an AI relationship starts to feel safer, easier or more dependable than a relationship with another person? In this episode of Attached Together, Jo, psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, is joined by Georgina Sturmer, an integrative attachment-based therapist, supervisor and lecturer in counselling and on Optima Attachment Training’s Level 5 Diploma. Their conversation looks at AI relationships and attachment from an unusually human angle. What begins with chatbots offering encouragement soon moves into AI companions, romantic partners and avatars designed to recreate people who have died. That raises some uncomfortable questions. If somebody can recreate the voice and characteristics of a person they have lost, could that support a continuing bond in grief - or make it harder to face the reality of the loss? And what happens when somebody creates an AI version of an ex-partner, or potentially even their therapist? The conversation considers why AI and attachment styles may be particularly interesting for therapists. Someone with anxious attachment might be drawn to the reassurance of something that is always available. Someone with avoidant attachment may find closeness easier when it does not require the same interpersonal vulnerability. For someone with disorganised attachment, the predictability of AI may offer relief from relationships that have previously felt chaotic or unsafe. Jo and Georgina also consider what AI cannot easily reproduce. Therapy is not simply about receiving empathic words. It involves two separate minds, embodied co-regulation, boundaries, misunderstanding, transference and countertransference - and the experience of rupture and repair. The episode introduces the provocative idea of AI becoming a “pseudo-secure base”: something that appears to offer reliable soothing and security while potentially leaving the person increasingly dependent on something that cannot participate in a reciprocal human relationship. The discussion includes: • AI companions, avatars and romantic relationships • grief, continuing bonds and recreating someone who has died • the Eliza effect and attributing human qualities to technology • anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment patterns • reassurance, emotional regulation and dependency • mentalisation and the importance of a genuinely separate mind • human co-regulation and embodied relationships • transference, fantasy and AI versions of therapists • rupture and repair • how therapists can respond without shame or premature judgement Rather than deciding whether these relationships are simply good or bad, the episode returns to a more useful clinical position: curiosity about what the relationship provides and what need the person may be trying to meet. Optima Attachment Training: Optima Attachment Training (https://www.optimaattachment.co.uk/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) Listeners can also access a CPD certificate for this episode: Access the CPD certificate (https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/form/4m6wB1KJnv1hsGVeBGPm?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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