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
I work with clients who have experienced attachment trauma through childhood abuse, neglect, abandonment, rejection, or persistent misattunement from caregivers. This relational trauma can result in self-reliance that goes into overdrive, making it difficult for people to develop mutually beneficial ways of connecting. Adults who did not learn how to reliably depend on caregivers when they were kids can express attachment anxiety and/or avoidance. This is not to say that anxiety in relationships necessarily means that there is an issue; it can, in fact, be a sign of healthy attachment. It’s when we find themselves stuck in emotional and behavioral patterns that feel confusing and out of control that we need more help understanding the unresolved conflicts beneath the surface. Thankfully, therapy can be a place to learn how to strengthen the qualities of connecting that work, manage triggers, heal from past attachment-related wounds, and reconnect to yourself and others.
Is this you?
In adults, attachment STRESS CAN SHOW UP in romantic and/or sexual relationships, AND in close friendships. maybe you:
Struggle to receive love from partner(s) or friends
Question your worthiness and lovability
Feel like you’re “too much”
Avoid conflict, including expressing when something bothers you or being honest about your needs
Intellectualize your feelings of hurt
Feel like you do “everything” for your relationship
Try to manage your partner’s behaviors or emotions (“if they could just…” “if only they changed…” “why can’t you…”)
Judge your partner for not showing up in the way you do
Evade responsibility for your part of a dynamic (or feel unclear about it)
Ignore signs that you need more support than what you’re currently getting
Want to pull away when you feel too vulnerable or exposed
Loop through painful, unchecked stories in your head about what’s happening in the relationship
Hold onto things your partner does as evidence that they don’t care about you or your relationship
Scan for perceived threats to your relationship
Care for your partner in hopes that they won’t hurt you
Offer more of yourself than what feels good in order to maintain a sense of security / usefulness / worthiness
“Each attachment pattern has gifts: Anxious attachment teaches deep care, avoidant attachment fosters independence, and even disorganized attachment holds resilience.”
Kai Cheng Thom
How I Can support You
Through a mix of relational psychodynamic therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and somatic therapy, I can help you:
Clarify your (desired) role and expectations in relationships
Demystify stories and narratives about “normal” relationships
Explore your triggers as they relate to intimacy, closeness, connection, and reciprocity
Understand behavioral patterns when you are triggered (do you attack, evade, shut down)
Identify what you need to feel safe in order to re-connect
Accept your needs and limits so that you express when you don’t have capacity and can ask for help when you need it
Set and maintain healthy boundaries
Learn how to self-soothe and co-regulate
Decrease shame about having needs
Develop greater capacity to be vulnerable
Build conflict resolution skills
Lower your defenses
Communicate needs and expectations proactively and effectively
Identify your relationship to 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 waves of change in your relationships
WHAT INDIVIDUAL RELATIONSHIP THERAPY LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE
01
Through relational psychodynamic therapy, I utilize the therapy relationship to help you build trust in a safe container. How you feel and act in the therapy relationship can give us insight into the ways you relate with others. We also explore your early experiences of attachment with caregivers to better understand your internal map for how you seek safety and security in relationships.
02
With Internal Family Systems (IFS), 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,” parts that need space, and parts that need comfort. These parts also hold stories about relationships, including expectations, assumptions, and cautionary tales.
03
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 better identify your emotional triggers, communicate boundaries, make requests for connection, repair wounds, and interrupt emotionally harmful situations.
“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
Sign up for your 25-minute consultation video call by filling out the contact form. I will email you to confirm a time to meet within 2-3 working days.