Attachment and Sexual Development Across the Lifespan (4 CE Hours)

Description

This training is designed to help clinicians understand how caregiver and partner attachment shape sexual development from infancy through later life. Using a framework of seven areas of sexual development (body knowledge, shame versus comfort, emotional literacy, boundaries and consent, help-seeking and disclosure, self-soothing, and sexual scripts and desire), participants will learn how secure and insecure attachment support or disrupt healthy sexual development at each stage of life.

The course moves through five life stages (early childhood, school age, adolescence, adulthood, and midlife and aging), highlighting typical development and the attachment patterns that shape it at each stage.

Drawing on attachment theory, EFT, and EFFT, participants will learn practical, attachment-informed interventions and explore how patterns and repair pass across generations.

This course is appropriate for licensed clinicians, sex therapists, and professionals in training.

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe typical sexual development across five life stages.
2. Explain how caregiver and partner attachment can support or disrupt seven areas of sexual development: body knowledge, comfort with the body, feelings, consent, help-seeking, self-soothing, and desire.
3. Differentiate normative from concerning sexual behaviors in children, and identify two indicators that warrant referral.
4. Apply attachment-informed interventions, including caregiver consultation, Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT), and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), to clinical cases where attachment has been insecure.
5. Explain how attachment patterns and sexual scripts are transmitted across generations.
6. Describe two age-related changes in sexual function, and explain how secure partner attachment supports adaptation to them.

Activity Schedule

Hour 1: Introduction, Early Childhood (Ages 0–5)

Hour 2: School Age (Ages 6–12), Adolescence (Ages 13–18+)

Hour 3: Adulthood

Hour 4: Midlife and Aging, Integration and Wrap-Up

Speaker Bios

Amanda Trujillo, PhD, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who integrates attachment and systemic theory with her specialties in sex therapy, play therapy, and couples therapy. She holds a PhD in Clinical Sexology from Modern Sex Therapy Institutes. She is an ICEEFT Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist and Emotionally Focused Family Therapist, a Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor, and an AAMFT Approved Supervisor. By weaving these specialties together, she supports clients from early childhood through later life and has worked with couples, families, and young children for more than 20 years. Dr. Trujillo created What’s That…? And Why? A Game about Bodies, Boundaries and Big Questions, a play-based early childhood sex education game. Across all of her work, she helps caregivers, children, and couples create connection through secure, attuned interactions around bodies, sexuality, and relationships. She has taught family and play therapy at the Denver Family Institute and couples and family therapy at the University of Colorado Denver. After years in clinical leadership, including regional director for a community mental health agency and board member for the Colorado and New England Associations for Play Therapy, she now maintains a private practice in Lakewood, Colorado. There, she provides therapy, clinical supervision, and consultation. Her website is www.atrujillolmft.com.

Class originally recorded: 10/1/2026

Social workers completing this course receive 4 clinical continuing education credits.