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Karen Pando-Mars, LMFT
Karen Pando-Mars, MFT is senior faculty at the AEDP Institute and has a clinical and consultation practice in San Anselmo, CA. She teaches across the United States and internationally. She is known for her presence, warmth, and the clarity of her presentations. Videotapes of her clinical work are moving and inspiring examples of how AEDP®'s explicit relational and precise experiential practices can help patients heal relational trauma As adjunct faculty at Dominican University, in San Rafael, California, she taught AEDP® as the overarching theoretical model in the Alternative and Innovative Psychotherapies course. Her publications include Tailoring AEDP Interventions to Attachment Style (2016), a chapter in Undoing Aloneness & the Transformation of Suffering into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0 (2021) APA press. She and Diana Fosha co-authored Tailoring Treatment to Attachment Patterns: Healing Trauma in Relationship (2025) Norton, NY.
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Description:
Our attachment behavioral systems are innate and hardwired, and as Bowlby wisely said, they operate “from the cradle to the grave.” When they go well, they nourish growth and wellbeing. When they go awry, they are a source of wounding and suffering. AEDP® is a healing-oriented, transformation-based psychotherapy model which is ideally suited to treat attachment trauma. AEDP’s therapeutic stance is radically relational. From the beginning of treatment we seek to create a secure attachment with our patients as a basis for healing attachment wounding. We aim to set conditions for establishing safety and undoing aloneness, explicitly and experientially, with loads of sensitivity and responsiveness. To encourage safety, we meet our patients where they are. To foster growth and transformation, we help our patients explore what happens between us and inside themselves in the present moment.
Yet, to enter this kind of explicit relational connection can be disturbing for patients with insecure attachment and can bring overwhelming emotions, defenses and anxiety which inhibit the flow of treatment. And therapists may encounter common reactivities to their patient’s attachment patterns which interfere with therapeutic effectiveness. This presentation will provide therapists with a comprehensive picture of secure and insecure attachment. It will introduce material from three grids developed by Pando-Mars (2025) i) the configuration of the secure attachment pattern, ii) the configurations of insecure attachment patterns: avoidant, ambivalent/resistant and disorganized, and iii) clinical markers and interventions to treat avoidant, ambivalent/resistant and disorganized patterns.
Using clinical video footage we will examine how dismissive, ambivalent/resistant, and disorganized attachment patterns present in therapy—and how each pattern calls for a specific, tailored approach. After this presentation, participants will be able to identify markers of each insecure attachment pattern. They will recognize metaskills therapists can draw upon to counter the characteristic behavioral hallmarks of caregivers and common therapist reactivities to each pattern. They will be able to evaluate how to intervene with specificity to avoidant, ambivalent/resistant and disorganized relational patterns. Video illustration of particular interventions will show how therapists can meet clients where they are, deepening trust and helping them expand their capacity for regulation and connection. Grounded in attachment research, neuroscience and clinical wisdom, this presentation invites therapists to fine-tune their responsiveness and engage more precisely and effectively to help clients heal relational trauma.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:
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