Attachment Theory

Attachment styles form during our childhoods and we all have them. These styles are very important as they form the way we view ourselves & others, impact all of our relationships. When we are exposed to adverse experiences during our formative years, we can end up with insecure or avoidant attachment styles. I use inner-child work to facilitate change, which often includes childhood trauma work. This powerful approach leads to lasting transformation rather than temporary symptom relief.

I work from an attachment lens, which just means I think about problems from a more relational and systems lens. I believe dysfunctional or oppressive systems and social environments are at the root of much of our suffering and am looking to identify, unpack, explore, and expand my clients' self-understanding within this context.

Some of the best research in the psychological field was able to help understand what we all now is crucial to our lives - connection. Understanding how we connect to others and ourselves helps us have the kind of healthy relationships we all want to have.

I believe attachment theory is an essential part of understanding humans and how we relate to ourselves and others. Attachment is a powerful connection we experience with others including our relationships with our caregivers, our friends, and our romantic partners. In order to preserve these connections, we develop patterns of relating to ourselves and other. Therapy is a space to understand these patterns and sort through which patterns are working for us and which ones are not.

Attachment-based Therapy (ABT) is an evidence-based therapeutic approach that helps individuals create secure attachments with themselves and those they care about. Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on building secure, trusting relationships between the therapist and their client. ABT works to deepen the client’s understanding of their past experiences and how these experiences connect to their current relationships.

I work from an attachment perspective to de-escalate the problematic interactional cycle maintaining attachment insecurity and relationship distress by creating a therapeutic alliance and accessing unacknowledged primary emotions. Working from an attachment perspective allows individuals and couples access in underlying attachment-related emotions and the needs associated with these emotions opens the individual, couple, and/or family to address needs in new ways.

Attachment therapy submits that the bonds between caregivers and children in early life significantly influence emotional and relational patterns throughout an individual's life. This approach aims to address and repair disruptions in these early attachment relationships. It emphasizes the therapeutic relationship as a secure base from which clients can explore & understand their attachment patterns. This trusting relationship with the therapist helps clients heal past attachment disruptions.

I understand the profound impact early relationships have on our well-being. I will create a secure and empathetic therapeutic space, mirroring the dependable support of a secure attachment. Through attentive listening and validation, I help clients explore and understand their attachment patterns, unraveling any past wounds that may affect current relationships. Together, we work towards fostering a more secure sense of self-worth, allowing for healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

Whether it's with a family member, friend, or intimate partner, relationships are an integral part of life. How those relationships add or extract value from our lives also depends on how we connect with others. This connection, or attachment, is developed in early infancy between a child and their caregiver and impacts our ability to both receive and give love, safety, comfort as well as impacts our thoughts, feelings, and expectations. Understanding attachment expands awareness and growth.

Often, the relationships in our lives follow the pattern of the relationships we have witnessed or experienced in our past. The importance of how we form these attachments to others and whether or not those attachments are secure cannot be overstated. Bowlby's work and others that followed demonstrated the importance of how we connect with other human beings and the significance of what happens to us psychologically if these attachments are unhealthy. This is crucial to one's health.

I see people from the perspective of how they form attachments to others and help them see the root cause and to heal from past attachment trauma. Most often this happens with our parents.

Attachment theory suggests that the relationships we had with our caretakers early in life create an attachment style which is then carried into all subsequent relationships throughout the lifespan. About half of the population has developed an insecure attachment style as a result of attachment wounds in their primary relationships. These wounds are then carried into relationships and prevent them from finding the security they desire.

My philosophy is based on the idea that harm happens within relationship and heals within relationship. I have spent much of my clinical work focused on attachment, attachment theory and attachment wounds.

Attachment theory, the psychological basis of relationship creation and fracture, has been my focus for decades, resulting in my new book, Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development, available on Amazon. It offers a new psychoanalytic understanding of trauma and its effect on attachment. Consciously or unconsciously, we have all been traumatized. It helps us to effectively treat anxiety, depression, crisis, trauma, addictions, eating disorders, affairs/infidelities, and relational patterns.

Our attachments in childhood play a significant role in how we create relationships in adulthood. I use my knowledge about attachment to treat clients and to help them understand how their decisions are impacted by the attachments from their childhood.

I have been studying and using attachment theory in my work with clients for 5 years.