Attachment Theory

I read about attachment theory and this immediately changed the game for me. I routinely use this to help you understand and validate your patterns in relationships. We can explore early family dynamics and learn how these have shaped your adult behaviors. I also love incorporating Schema Therapy.

Often in relationships, we are bringing our past into our present. Learn how to consciously build a healthy relationship from a place that is grounded in the present.

Through early attachments, we create a template that governs how we interact with others for the rest of our lives. This template can change, if we're lucky enough to find a loving relationship or if we work to change it in therapy. Too often, we're attracted to people who end up reinforcing old attachment wounds, which means that therapy is likely the pathway to healing for most people. I use a psychobiological approach to healing attachment woundings, to help you create a new template.

I work with clients through an attachment lens to work through issues relating to self, family, and community

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.

I start with the Dynamic Maturation Model of attachment, which treats all forms of attachment behavior as adaptive within specific threat/relational contexts. I apply this understanding of the DMM when working with clients to guide therapy and help clients to design attachment responses to better fit their current environment.

Attachment therapy aims to help individuals who have issues with relationships stemming from childhood experiences such as neglect, abuse, or trauma. These experiences can affect a person's ability to form healthy and secure connections in adulthood, leading to problems like anxiety, depression, and difficulty in forming and maintaining close relationships. The goal is to help individuals develop a more secure attachment style, leading to better relationships and overall emotional well-being.

As babies, we come into the world quickly forming relationships with our caregivers. Those caregivers can either be a source of safety and connection or a distant or harsh parent. As children dependent on our caregivers we begin to create safety for ourselves in any way we can. As we grow older we carry these ways of survival with us which plays out in our adult relationships. These may manifest in us as codependency, low self-esteem, and people-pleasing.

Your attachment style matters! Exploring my clients' behavior patterns with partners as well as their past experiences with caregivers can shed light on relationship problems and create a road map to healthier functioning.

Attachment theory focuses on the how we have learned to experience ourselves and others through the relationships that we were raised in, and can help to inform who some people struggle with trust, intimacy and communication in intimate partner relationships as well as how these struggles may be improved through therapy and couples therapy. Attachment theory is closely related to both family systems and object relations models of psychotherapy.

I have graduate-level education in attachment theory, and have utilized techniques associated with this modality throughout my professional career.

All of our counselors focus in attachment theory. Not only is the relationship in counseling important but the relationships to those around us. Oftentimes issues arise when our caregivers weren't there for us and caused issues that still plague people as adults. Let's heal together!

Attachment work originally began with John Bowlby and was defined as "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings." Attachment theory explains how the relationship between a parent and child emerges and how that relationship then influences an individual's development. I work with individuals to get a thorough understanding of their attachment development to understand more about what they may be encountering emotionally and cognitively; as individuals and within relationships.

Attachment and relationship; the foundations of life and the wellsprings out of which we continually experience ourselves and the world around us. Exploring systemic and family of origin influence gets us in touch with our most deeply rooted and core emotions informing our minds and our bodies. We will explore how these two interface at a neurobiological level within and interpersonally.

Like Family Systems Theory, I use Attachment Theory as a way to help clients process their relationships to their parents and their partners. This approach I use less frequently, but it is something I employ when there is significant anxiety around relationships with parents or partners.

Understanding attachment theory and add in the PloyVagal theory you get a sense of greater ways to regulate yourself in and out of your relationships. The pattern you learned in the styles of attachment in your multigenerational linage can play a large part in the way your body responds to conflict and connection. Over time we get to explore and heal these old patterns to bring on more thrive in your life.