Would You Like To Experience More Satisfying Relationships?
Have you struggled to maintain stable and secure relationships throughout your life? Perhaps your relationships tend to be unbalanced—where you give more than you take—or often lack healthy boundaries. Maybe you struggle opening up to others and find that establishing trust and vulnerability has always been elusive.
Experiencing trauma, inconsistency, or emotional unavailability in our formative relationships can set the stage for how we show up for others as adults. Sometimes, our early childhood experiences make it harder for us to be emotionally present and engaged, perpetuating anxious, avoidant, or insecure relational styles. Early attachment experiences can also inform our ability to feel, regulate, and metabolize emotions.
Some of the patterns and experiences of attachment trauma I often notice in the clients I work with include:
Anxiety or fear of abandonment
Difficulty being emotionally present or vulnerable with others
Codependent, unbalanced relationships that lack appropriate boundaries
Dependence on others for validation and reassurance
Excessive self-doubt and fear of being unliked or undesired
Lack of trust and security.
If you are unhappy with the current state of your relationships, attachment therapy offers an effective way to heal emotional wounds and find an increased sense of security and resilience. Attachment therapy can help you better understand how your early experiences shape how you develop and interact in relationships now. As you work closely with a therapist, you’ll begin to see the effects of attachment-based therapy and how it can guide you toward more beneficial ways of relating to others.
Understanding How Attachment Therapy Works
Attachment-focused therapy for adults is about creating a space for you to be curious so that you can explore and practice new ways of showing up in relationships. The discoveries made in therapy can then be applied to real-world relationships.
Attachment trauma is challenging to treat without a stable and consistent relational presence. This is why engaging in attachment-focused trauma therapy with a therapist can provide support that can be hard to come by from friends or family. As an attachment-based therapist, the relationship formed in therapy is a foundational part of the work we do together. Building trust, rapport, and safety with you is my primary goal so that the therapeutic relationship can function as a container for you to process and heal attachment wounds.
As we explore the relational needs and patterns that developed in childhood, we will also remain curious about how you perceive yourself. What is the narrative you tell yourself? Is there an inner bully, critic, or fearful child needing more attention and care? Often, these parts of ourselves are there for a good reason. Before we try to change anything, our first task is to welcome what arises and understand its function. With gentleness, care, and curiosity, we will bring the stories of feeling unseen, unheard, or abandoned forward so we can listen, validate, and invite change.
Attachment-focused therapy involves vulnerable and transformative work. Some of the most rewarding progress I’ve witnessed is when a client begins to shift their relationship with themselves, becoming more compassionate and understanding. As a result of this work, they are often inspired to make big changes in their relationships, such as setting boundaries, changing communication, repairing ruptured relationships, or, conversely, letting go of unhealthy ones.
Who Can Benefit From Attachment-Based Psychotherapy?
Attachment-oriented therapy can benefit anyone who has experienced relational trauma—for example, emotional unavailability, intrusion, misattunement, or inconsistent care from a primary attachment figure in their childhood—and now struggles to make strong connections with others. My practice primarily focuses on supporting women by providing a relational container to help process the vulnerable, painful, and often overwhelming emotions related to their relationships with others and themselves.
Because so much development happens at an early age, in therapy, we are often undoing years of established patterns, self-fulfilling behaviors, and neural connections. Creating change takes practice, consistency, and a commitment to the process. Attachment therapy acts as a practice space to experience a different way of being in a relationship. In sessions, you get to unpack and unlearn current attachment tendencies that don’t serve you and relearn how to relate to others more effectively.
With a commitment to attachment therapy, you can expect to make both short- and long-term improvements in your relationships, including:
Building deeper connection and closeness with others
Gaining awareness of boundaries and the ability to communicate them
Developing a secure attachment style
Improving your emotional regulation while decreasing reliance on others for reassurance
Expanding your emotional availability and engagement with others
Cultivating more self-compassion and self-acceptance.
Once you strike a healthy balance of vulnerability and boundaries in your relationships, you will experience more happiness, satisfaction, and contentment. For some, this might look like forming a close relationship with someone for the first time.
Contact Me
Why I Incorporate Attachment Therapy Into My Practice
I've been utilizing attachment theory in my work since 2017. What I have learned through studying the science behind attachment-based interventions for adults has instilled hope about the human ability to make meaningful transformations that benefit our well-being. Even though we may have experienced a lack of security and stability as children, we have the ability to heal those attachment ruptures and gain security in adulthood.
Even if you have identified yourself as having an insecure attachment style, it's possible to develop a secure attachment in adulthood with another secure adult present. [1] Dan Siegel’s neuroplasticity research “shows that the brain continues to develop neurons and neurological pathways throughout life, evidence that interpersonal neurobiology has the power to transform emotions and interpersonal relationships.” [2]
In addition to incorporating attachment-based therapy into my practice with individuals and couples, I have taught attachment theory and human development at the graduate level. I have also experienced healing through my own journey in therapy, working with an attachment-based therapist who was emotionally present, and created a safe space for me to grieve, explore, and ultimately nurture the relationships I wanted.
The good news is that we can heal from relational trauma. Attachment therapy helps build the scaffolding for healthy and secure attachments through the consistency and predictability of regular therapy sessions. The framework of attachment-based therapy invites exploration, curiosity, self-compassion, and an opportunity to practice new ways of being in a relationship with yourself and others.
Learn How Attachment Therapy Can Help You
If you struggle to feel present, at ease, and engaged with the people close to you, it is both courageous and kind to hope for another way of being. To find out more about attachment-based therapy for adults, please call or visit my contact page to set up a free 20-minute consultation.
[1] https://traumaresearchfoundation.org/research/scientific-publications/
[2] https://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/daniel-siegel.html#:
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