INDIVIDUAL ATTACHMENT-BASED THERAPY
Transform your relationships into the loving, mutually supportive connections you want and need without overstepping your boundaries or abandoning yourself.
1:1 Attachment therapy
When self-reliance goes into overdrive, we can feel frozen between our need for self-protection and our innate desire for connection. We get stuck in patterns that feel confusing and out of alignment with how we want to show up in our relationships. Individual relationship therapy can be a place to heal from attachment wounds, feel secure in ourselves, and create mutually loving forms of connection.
when the armor starts to hurt
For high-functioning folks used to solely relying on themselves, learning to be vulnerable and receive love can feel terrifying.
Maybe you:
Question your worthiness and lovability
Feel like you’re both too much and not enough
Avoid conflict, including expressing when something bothers you or being honest about your needs
Intellectualize your feelings to minimize their impact
Feel like you do “everything” for your relationship
Try to manage your partner’s behaviors or emotions (if they could just… if only they… why can’t they…)
Judge your partner for not showing up in the way you do
Evade responsibility for your part of a dynamic
Ignore signs that you need more support than what you’re currently getting
Want to attack, pull away, or shut down when you feel too vulnerable or exposed
Loop through painful, unchecked stories in your head about what’s happening in the relationship
Scan for perceived threats to your relationship
Offer more of yourself than what feels good in order to maintain a sense of security / usefulness / worthiness
Individual relationship therapy can help you connect more meaningfully from the inside out.
“Each attachment pattern has gifts: Anxious attachment teaches deep care, avoidant attachment fosters independence, and even disorganized attachment holds resilience.”
Kai Cheng Thom
healing through the therapy relationship
Through relational psychodynamic therapy, 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. 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 also learn to:
Receive care without needing to compromise yourself in order to be met with support
Practice vulnerability in a safe container
Express your feelings more freely
Lower your defenses
Develop greater capacity for vulnerability
Decrease shame about having needs
the body negotiates intimacy
By connecting with your body through somatic work, you can learn what safety, connection, trust, panic, fear, and anger feel like inside of you. Tuning into your bodily sensations and what they mean will allow you to:
Tend to your emotional triggers as they relate to intimacy, sex, vulnerability, closeness, and responsibility
Communicate boundaries from a place of respect, love, and integrity instead of fear and control
Self-soothe and co-regulate
Re-pattern emotionally harmful dynamics wherein you might shut down, attack, evade, or flee
parts can guide connection
With Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, I help you identify and acknowledge the parts of yourself that get activated in relationships. Some examples are: parts that want closeness, parts that feel betrayed, parts that feel like “too much.” These parts also hold stories about relationships, including expectations, assumptions, and cautionary tales. Through working with your parts, you can:
Clarify your desired roles and expectations in relationships
Demystify stories and narratives about “normal” relationships
Build conflict resolution skills and repair relational wounds
Identify your relationship to pleasure (may or may not include sex), what it means to you, and what it means in your partnership(s)
Lean into areas of strength you bring as a partner / friend
Feel more confident navigating changes in relationships
“At our core, we are social beings who regulate through connection with others.”
Diane Poole Heller
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM COUPLES THERAPY?
I am a huge fan of couples therapy and encourage folks to utilize it as an additional resource. At the same time, 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.
Individual relationship therapy can help you process your concerns, clarify your feelings, regulate your emotions, 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) and friends. From there, you can take responsibility for your part and figure out what changes you might want to make to better support your relationship.
reach out for support
Relationships are often where we are the most confronted with unresolved emotions and conflicts—whether it’s with our partners, friends, kids, or coworkers. It’s okay to need additional support to work through what comes up.
Book your 25-minute consultation and begin to cultivate the mutually loving and supportive relationships you want in your life.