The Clinician Training · For licensed therapists & associates
Treating early loss as attachment trauma
An 8-week live training in the method Angela built from both sides of the couch: assess early loss developmentally, recognize the trauma responses your clients mistake for personality, and treat the break in the bond through the body, the story, and co-regulation. Then stand in a round pen in Malibu and feel the method work on your own nervous system.
Dragonfly LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 8039. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Dragonfly LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. NBCC hours are earned by attending the eight live sessions; see the NBCC details below.
The premise
Most of us were trained in grief or in trauma. Almost none of us were trained in the seam between them. So the client who lost a parent while growing up arrives in your office decades later with "anxiety," "attachment issues," or "perfectionism," and the loss underneath never gets treated as what it was: a rupture in the system her nervous system was organized around.
This training teaches a complete clinical method for that client. It is humanistic in stance, attachment-based in theory, and trauma-informed in practice. It draws on John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, Erik Erikson's developmental stages, Pauline Boss and Kenneth Doka on the losses nobody names, the body work of Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, and Stephen Porges, Laurel Parnell's attachment-focused use of bilateral stimulation, and narrative therapy's re-authoring practices. And it is organized around two questions you will ask for the rest of your career:
Question one
The age of the loss determines the shape of the wound. You will learn to map any loss onto the developmental tasks it interrupted, and to see what the same loss does at 5, at 11, at 16, and at 22.
Question two
Hyper-independence, over-functioning, being strong too soon. Your clients built identities on survival responses and call them personality. You will learn to help them tell the difference.
The curriculum · 8 live weeks
Each week is a 2-hour live, interactive session: teaching, a live demonstration, and case consultation on the real (de-identified) case you carry through the whole training. Every week closes with an "...and a Horse" segment, filmed at Shakti Ranch, showing that week's concept in the round pen.
Week 01
Attachment as a biological regulatory system, and loss as a rupture in it. Why the field split grief from trauma, the clients who fall through the seam, and the humanistic, trauma-informed stance the whole method stands on.
...and a horse: Horses are herd animals. What a herd does when it loses a member. Attachment is not a human invention; it is biology.
Week 02
Primary, secondary, ambiguous, and disenfranchised losses, and the structured inventory that surfaces the ones your client has never named. Anxiety as unrecognized grief. Early loss as a lifelong arc, not an event.
...and a horse: The horse responds to what is present, not what is admitted. The ungrieved loss walks into the arena with the client.
Week 03
Erikson's stages as your assessment grid. What caregiver loss interrupts at each age, the double loss of a parent lost first to illness and then to death, and re-grief at weddings, births, and milestone ages.
...and a horse: The younger self surfaces in the round pen. Why the horse meets the client at the age the wound happened.
Week 04
Safe haven, secure base, proximity, and the working model: the functions an attachment figure carries, and how to assess which ones your client lost or never received. The love received, the love not received, and what the child did with the gap.
...and a horse: Safe haven and secure base made visible, with a 1,200-pound co-regulator.
Week 05
Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn in adult form. How trauma is stored in the nervous system and why early loss produces symptoms decades later. Polyvagal theory in plain clinical language, and the window of tolerance in session.
...and a horse: The prey animal as master class: detect the threat, then discharge it instead of storing it.
Week 06
The grief that never moved because it never had a witness, and the shame that keeps it still. "I should be over this." "I never really knew her, so I can't grieve her." Naming what was actually lost beyond the person.
...and a horse: A witness with no opinion. Why shame loses its grip in front of an animal that cannot judge and will not look away.
Week 07
Affect labeling as regulation, then the bigger story: narrative therapy's externalizing and re-authoring practices applied to loss. The problem story as a grieving child's explanation, revised from the adult's chair. A truer story, not a prettier one.
...and a horse: Congruence. The horse responds when the body and the story finally match, and ignores the performance until they do.
Week 08
Bilateral stimulation and its attachment-focused use, demonstrated live, with clear scope-of-practice boundaries. The regulated other as the intervention. Community as clinical modality, your own grief in the room, and the bridge to the ranch.
...and a horse: The full equine bridge, leading directly into your capstone day.
The capstone · Included
After eight weeks of watching the method work in a horse's presence, you experience it from the client's chair. Horses read the nervous system underneath your composure and respond to what is true, not what is performed. You will feel the co-regulation work directly, then debrief it as treatment design: what a session looks like, when equine work is indicated, when it is not, and how to refer or integrate.
The capstone day is included in your enrollment. A private version of this day books at $2,500 for individuals. Clinicians outside Southern California can complete the training through a live-streamed demonstration day, and their ranch-day seat stays open to claim at a future cohort's capstone.
What's included
16 NBCC continuing education hours across eight 2-hour live, interactive sessions on Zoom. Small by design.
You carry one real, de-identified case through the entire method, week by week. You leave having used it, not just heard it.
Nine session-ready instruments: the intake script, Loss Map, Developmental Loss Timeline, Lost Functions grid, Adaptation Audit, What Was Actually Lost protocol, Feelings Ladder, Re-Authoring scripts, and Co-Regulation Treatment Plan.
A full day in Malibu, included. The private version of this day books at $2,500.
60 minutes, scheduled any time during the cohort or up to 90 days after it ends.
Your certificate, plus a listing in the Trained Clinicians directory on this site, where podcast listeners and community members look for a therapist trained in this method.
The monthly case-consultation group that continues after the training, included for your first three months.
Every session recorded, plus all future updates to the workbooks and toolkit. Recordings are for reference and are not eligible for NBCC credit.
A full workbook per module: objectives, the tool, session notes, and a curated reading list from Bowlby to Boss to van der Kolk.
This is a method training, not a webinar series. It sits alongside certification-level clinical trainings, and it is priced for the clinician who wants a complete way of working with early loss: the theory, the tools, the supervision on a live case, and a day at the ranch.
Your trainer
Angela Schellenberg is a licensed grief and trauma therapist based in the Los Angeles area, specializing in mother loss, early loss, and attachment trauma. She grew up wrapped in her mom's love and lost her young. By 22, both of her parents were gone: her father to violence, her mother first to mental illness and then to death. Nobody told her that grief was trauma. She stayed busy, stayed strong, and built a life on the adaptation, which is exactly why she can teach you to recognize it in the chair across from you.
She has sat with more than 200 women as a licensed therapist. Her practice runs on attachment-focused EMDR, somatic work, and equine-assisted intensives at Shakti Ranch in Malibu. This training is the method she built from both sides of the couch, taught to the clinicians her younger self needed and never found.
Mother Hunger® is a registered trademark of Kelly McDaniel, kellymcdanieltherapy.com. This training teaches Angela's own method and does not include Mother Hunger® curriculum.
Continuing education details
Dragonfly LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 8039. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Dragonfly LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
Questions
No. Week 8 demonstrates clinician-safe uses of bilateral stimulation, like resource tapping and the butterfly hug, and is clear about scope: this training orients you to the territory and does not certify you in EMDR. If it sparks something, we point you to the full EMDR training pathway.
Yes. The eight weeks are live on Zoom from anywhere. Clinicians who cannot travel to Malibu complete the capstone through a live-streamed demonstration day, and their ranch-day seat stays open to claim at a future cohort's capstone.
Early 2027, one 2-hour session per week for eight weeks, with the ranch day scheduled after Week 8. People on the application list hear the exact dates first.
Licensed therapists and counselors, and pre-licensed associates working under supervision. If you regularly sit with clients whose histories include the loss of a parent or caregiver, this method was built for your caseload.
You will have the recording so the training keeps moving, and recordings are not eligible for NBCC credit. Your CE certificate reflects the live hours you attended.
Sixteen seats, and the method deserves a room of clinicians who want to use it. Join the application list and you will receive the application, the cohort dates, and first access before anything is announced publicly.
Joining the list is not a commitment. You will get one confirmation email now, then application details when the cohort opens. Unsubscribe any time.