Transformative Therapy for Attachment & Relationship Stress with LGBTQ+ Adults and Adult Children of Immigrants in Oakland & Online in California
From caretaking to people-pleasing to attempting to control the uncontrollable, I work with LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants learn how to find safety inside of themselves so that they can balance independence and interdependence.
How Attachment Wounds Can Emerge in LGBTQ+ Adults & Second Generation Immigrants
For LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants, patterns of codependency, avoidance, and anxiety can develop from imperfect attempts to secure acceptance and safety in environments where emotional nurturing was not given freely.
To feel secure in our relationships, we over-achieve, caretake, suppress our wants and needs, seek validation outside of ourselves, and manage people’s emotions. We hope that this will help us feel more connected or at the very least, help us feel needed.
More often than not, we end up feeling lonely, unmet, and far away from the people who we want to connect with the most.
There is great wisdom in our survival strategies. What we are left to carry, however, is our biggest wound:
Our disconnection from ourselves.
What Attachment & Relationship Stress Can Look & Feel Like
Years of being disconnected from ourselves can keep us stuck in emotional and relational patterns that feel confusing and out of alignment with how we want to show up in our relationships. Individual therapy can help if:
You value working through conflict, but when the time comes, you lose the plot. You get defensive, minimize your feelings, and/or stay silent about what’s bothering you, leaving you feeling even more disconnected.
You crave closeness and intimacy, but when you start to feel too vulnerable or exposed, you withdraw, cling, attack, or shut down.
You mostly trust your partner to be honest with you, but you can’t stop scanning the relationship for warning signs.
You know that everyone is responsible for their own emotions, but you keep trying to control how other people think, feel, and act. You feel resentful for doing “everything” in the relationship and judge your partner, friends, and family for not doing “enough.”
You’re not alone in worrying about why you seem to be the most out of sorts in the relationships that mean so much to you.
Whether we’re meeting in Oakland or online for virtual therapy in California, I can help you understand your attachment patterns so that you can make conscious decisions to re-align your behaviors with your values, opening yourself up to being the present partner, friend, and family member you want to be.
How Therapy For Insecure Attachment and Relationship Stress Can Help
Self-abandonment and codependency leave us aching for meaningful connection that can feel out of reach. It can be scary to be vulnerable, admit our wants and needs, communicate feelings directly, and receive love outside of abuse and neglect.
For LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants, individual therapy for attachment wounds & relationship stress can be a place to put your defenses down and return to the authentic connection with yourself. I offer a grounded, emotionally present space to connect more meaningfully from the inside out, starting with your most important relationship: the one with yourself.
What emerges from our work together is a more compassionate, fuller picture of how you relate to love, safety, and closeness. From there, you can experience greater clarity about what you want and need, communicate more honestly, and open yourself up to nourishing connections.
“At our core, we are social beings who regulate through connection with others.”
Diane Poole Heller
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I am a huge fan of couples therapy, and I do not work with couples and other relationship units in my practice.
I encourage clients to utilize my practice as an additional resource to couples therapy. I value holding individual space for people to process their relationship challenges outside of their partner(s) or friends. There are some things that your partner does not need to know when it comes to your biases, assumptions, and judgments about them or the relationship. I’m not advocating for secrecy—just privacy.
In my practice in Oakland and online across California, I create an engaging and inviting space where you can process your relationship concerns, clarify your feelings, regulate your emotions, work through triggers, and be the present partner you want to be.
My job is to help you identify your role in the emotional and behavioral dynamics with your partner(s), friends, and family members. From there, you can take appropriate responsibility for your part and figure out what changes you might want to make to better support your relationships.
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Yes! In my work with LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants, I help people explore how they relate to themselves and others in all kinds of relationship structures and arrangements.
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You might benefit from therapy for attachment and relationship stress if you:
Question your worthiness and lovability no matter how much reassurance you get
Feel like you’re both too much and not enough
Suffer from anxiety about the relationship
Avoid conflict and setting boundaries
Feel like you do “everything” for your relationship
Go along with what others want because it’s easier than figuring out your own feelings
Try to manage your partner’s behaviors or emotions (if they could just… if only he… why can’t she…)
Struggle to take responsibility for your part of a dynamic
Want to attack, pull away, or shut down when you feel too vulnerable
Scan for signs of trouble in the relationship (surely this means they’re leaving… he didn’t do that for me because he doesn’t care about me...)
Offer more of yourself than what feels good in order to maintain a sense of security, usefulness, or worthiness
If any of this sounds like you, then individual therapy in Oakland for attachment and relationship stress could be a good fit for you.
In my in-person and online practice with LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants, I support people with re-patterning their attachment anxiety, feeling more confident about what they want and need, and building relationships based on equality, respect, and mutual care.
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Yes! Attachment styles—avoidant, anxious, disorganized, and secure—can change from relationship to relationship. I can help you better understand your early attachment patterns with your caregivers, and your current patterns within existing or previous relationships.
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Yes! The ending of relationships can give us an opportunity to see the bigger picture and gently explore your part of the dynamic.
Do you seek out connection and reassurance when you’re anxious? Do you withdraw or push away when you feel vulnerable? Do you alternate between wanting closeness and creating distance?
Therapy for attachment & relationship stress makes room for the grief that comes with a breakup (even when it’s amicable), and compassion for the earnest, if imperfect, strategies you used to navigate the complexities of building connection with another person (or people).
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As an integrative therapist, I use a combination of relational psychodynamic therapy, IFS therapy, and somatic therapy in my work with LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants as they navigate attachment and relationship challenges.
IFS therapy helps to identify parts that hold stories about relationship expectations, and work with parts that get activated by conflict.
Somatic therapy helps us explore what safety, connection, trust, panic, fear, and anger feel like inside of you. From there, you can experience greater clarity about what you need and make intentional decisions about how to act within the relationship.
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As a relational therapist, I use the therapy relationship to help you build trust in a safe container. How you feel and act in our relationship can give us insight into the ways you relate with people outside of the relationship. Our attachment styles get expressed even in safe, trusting relationships! This is something we get to talk about openly together.
We also explore your early attachment experiences with caregivers to better understand your internal map for seeking safety and security.
Within our relationship, you can learn to:
Receive care without needing to compromise yourself
Practice vulnerability in a safe container
Express your feelings more freely
Lower your defenses
Develop greater capacity for vulnerability
Decrease shame about having needs
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Yes! Sometimes it’s when we’re outside of romantic and sexual relationships that we can look at our patterns more closely.
In our individual therapy together, I support you with being honest about your triggers in relationships, the coping skills you use to manage those intense feelings, and changes you’d like to make so that you can be the loving, respectful, and present partner you want to be.
I also work with adults who identify as asexual and aromantic. Attachment wounds, codependency, and relationship patterns occur in all kinds of relationships, romantic or otherwise.
Therapy That Affirms Our Desire For Healthy & Loving Relationships—Especially With Ourselves
When we surrender to the process of healing our childhood wounds beneath the defenses that once kept us safe, we can connect more authentically with ourselves and the important people in our lives.
We begin to act from love and self-respect instead of fear and control. We turn toward intimacy and connection instead of relying on avoidance and disconnection.
Cultivating the deep, mutually loving & supportive relationships you want starts with a 20-minute consultation. We get to explore what’s not working in your relationships, and decide together on the changes that would help re-align your patterns with your values.