Our early attachment relationships form the blueprint for how we relate with other people for the rest of our lives. They also influence how safe we feel in the world, how we handle conflict, and the expectations we hold about ourselves and others.

Attachment work offers a way of changing these patterns. In this course, we’ll use the Ideal Parent Figure (IPF) Protocol, a clinically developed, research-informed approach created by Dr. Daniel P. Brown and colleagues, to work directly with the unconscious patterns that underlie attachment insecurity.

But development doesn’t stop at attachment security. A secure base also gives us greater freedom to discover who we are, pursue what matters to us, build satisfying relationships, and participate more fully in our lives. This is where Best Self work begins.

From security to development:

While the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol has become rather well known and is now offered by a growing number of teachers, the related Best Self work is much less widely available. To my knowledge, I’m currently the only facilitator offering a course on integrating these two interrelated protocols.

That distinction is important to the organization of this course. We will use attachment security as the foundation for self development: to understand what makes you most you, how to be effective at getting your needs met, and how to feel unconditionally good about who you are.

The Best Self practices focus on three interrelated developmental capacities:

• Self-Definition – developing a clearer sense of who you are and what matters to you, without relying on other people’s expectations

• Self-Agency – developing the ability to act, make choices, get your needs met, and respond effectively in times of impulsiveness and procrastination

• Self-Esteem – developing a stable sense of worth independent of results and learning to carry it into even difficult situations

The course follows a two-part sequence. We begin by building a foundation of attachment security and then explore how to apply that security to our relationships. Then we look at self-definition, self-agency, and self-esteem before bringing the whole process together by looking at how to live a life full of purpose.

These topics are often treated as separate problems, but here we take them as interconnected aspects of development: security gives us a stronger base from which to relate, understand ourselves, and build a life that feels increasingly our own.