Explore why therapy endings begin long before the final session, and how attachment, loss and separation shape the way clients leave.

Endings in therapy matter. We know this.

The BACP Ethical Framework reminds us to inform clients well in advance of approaching endings and to be sensitive to their expectations and concerns. BACP’s own resources also highlight that endings can be deeply meaningful for clients, sometimes healing and affirming, and at other times painful or even re-traumatising when handled poorly.

But here is the question that inspired this workshop:

**What does a “good ending” actually mean?**

Because it is one thing to say that endings should be managed well. It is another thing entirely to understand what is being activated in the client’s attachment system when therapy begins to move towards goodbye.

For many clients, the ending is not just an administrative process, a final review, or a neat closing session with a summary and a smile.

It may touch the very places where loss, abandonment, rejection, disappointment, separation, protest, anger, compliance, shame or emotional shutdown already live.

And this is why the last session starts early.

From the first enquiry, the first contract, the first moment of trust, the ending is already somewhere in the room. Not necessarily loudly. Not always consciously. But it is there.

In this one-hour workshop, we will explore how attachment shapes the ending process, and why different clients may experience endings in profoundly different ways.

We will look at what gets stirred up when therapy begins to close, how clients may communicate distress indirectly, and how therapists can recognise the difference between readiness, compliance, avoidance, rupture, fear of dependency, fear of loss, or an old relational template being replayed.

Together, we will explore:

- How the ending process begins at the start of therapy

- Why attachment makes endings different for different clients, and how your own attachment impacts endings

- What a “good ending” might really need to include

- How loss, separation and dependency show up in the final phase of therapy

- Why some clients disappear, comply, collapse, become angry, idealise, dismiss, or suddenly “feel fine”

- How to work ethically and relationally with planned and unplanned endings

- How to make endings part of the therapeutic process rather than an awkward administrative afterthought

- What makes my approach unique is that we do not teach endings as a tidy final-session checklist.

- We teach endings as an attachment process.

That means we pay attention not only to what is said, but to what is defended against. Not only to whether the client agrees to end, but to how their nervous system experiences separation. Not only to the practicalities, but to the emotional, relational and developmental meaning of goodbye.

This workshop brings together attachment theory, clinical practice, ethical awareness and real-world therapeutic complexity in a way that is practical, compassionate and deeply human.

It is for therapists who want to feel more confident, thoughtful and attuned when therapy comes to an end, and who know that goodbye is rarely just goodbye.

If you have ever found yourself wondering whether a client is genuinely ready to end, avoiding the pain of ending, trying to please you, suddenly withdrawing, or communicating something important through the way they leave, this workshop is for you.

**The Last Session Starts Early** is a one-hour workshop for practitioners who want to make endings safer, clearer, more meaningful and more attachment-informed.

Because a good ending is not just about closing the work.

Sometimes, it is the work.

Description supplied by the event organiser.