AEDP Institute DBEI Speaker Series
Our Speaker Series brings together voices and perspectives that broaden how we understand ourselves, our clients, and the world we practice in. Curated by the AEDP Institute DBEI Committee, the series is free and open to therapists in the AEDP community and beyond.
Secure Enough: War, Displacement, and a Wider Template for Secure Attachment
Presented by Linda Thai, LMSW
Friday, January 29, 2027 | 11:00 am – 12:15 pm ET
1 CE Hour (APA, ASWB, NBCC & NYS) (details here)
Description:
What does “secure enough” attachment mean for a client whose family is from a collectivistic or indigenous culture that was scattered by war?
Attachment theory grew up studying white, Western, nuclear families. It hands a few early caregivers the whole weight of a person’s security.
Then it gets applied to families from collectivistic and indigenous cultures who survived war, genocide, and forced displacement, and their survival adaptations end up in the chart as pathology: the parent who can’t rest, the child who learned to read every room, the adult client who over-functions or under-functions and can’t say why. Some of what these clients carry is grief our training has no name for. Ambiguous loss. Traumatic homesickness. Ancestral grief for a country that carried on without them.
In this presentation, trauma therapist, somatic educator, and former child refugee Linda Thai looks at how war, forced displacement, and structural-isms, including colonialism, racism, and economic pressure, shape a person’s felt sense of safety, across one lifetime and across generations. She then offers a more expansive conceptualization of the secure attachment template, built on 5 portals: nature, ancestors, culture, body, and time. Lineage, land, and culture take their place in the secure base, beside the people who raised us. Expect clear teaching, a short guided practice, and room to bring your own family’s story into the conversation.
Meet the Presenter Linda Thai, LMSW
About the Presenter:
Linda Thai, LMSW ERYT-200 is a trauma therapist and educator who specializes in brain and body-based modalities for addressing complex developmental trauma. Linda has worked with thousands of people from all over the world to promote mindfulness, recover from trauma, and tend to grief as a means of self care.
Linda’s work centers on healing with a special focus on the experiences of adult children of refugees and immigrants.Her teaching is infused with empathy, storytelling, humor, research, practical tools, applied knowledge, and experiential wisdom. She has assisted internationally renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, with his private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma. She has a Master of Social Work with an emphasis on the neurobiology of attachment and trauma.
Read full bio Here