Attachment Theory

I integrate attachment theory to help clients understand how early relationships impact their current emotional and relational patterns. By exploring attachment styles, we uncover the roots of trust, intimacy, and dependency issues. My approach aims to heal attachment wounds, foster secure relationships, and enhance emotional regulation. Through this understanding, clients can develop healthier connections and build more fulfilling, stable relationships in their personal and professional lives.

We are born utterly helpless. In order to get our basic needs met--for food, swaddling, sleep, basic comforts--we send out various signals. We learn very early which of these signals get results. These early lessons form the basis of attachment theory--that how we learned to relate to our first caregivers find echoes in how we relate to others. Four styles--secure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized—inform a lifetime of behaviors and can be understood and transformed.

Zach uses Attachment Theory to help clients understand how early relationships shape their emotional bonds and behavior in adulthood. By exploring attachment styles, he helps individuals recognize patterns in their relationships and develop healthier ways of connecting with others. This approach fosters emotional growth, improves communication, and supports clients in building secure, fulfilling relationships with themselves and others.

Understanding one's attachment style alongside other attachment styles, generally known as anxious, avoidant, and secure attachment styles, helps illuminate great opportunities for interpersonal and personal growth in one's life. This is determined through assessment, bibliotherapy, insight into one's condition, and experiencing growth through the integration of one's Self within their efforts to connect and bond with others.

Attachment theory suggests that infants form bonds with their caretakers instinctively to ensure safety and survival. These early bonds, known as attachment styles, continue to impact a person's relationships throughout their life. By understanding attachment theory, we can gain insight into a person's emotional and physiological bonds when it comes to forming relationships, particularly with romantic partners.

I have completed an Interpersonal Neurobiology training from Dr. Dan Siegel that combines understanding of attachment theory with mindfulness practice.

Attachment-Based Family works by rebuilding trust within the parent-child relationship—providing a solid foundation that promotes authentic connection and enhances teen mental health. This type of family counseling provides a clear path to achieving what both parents and children want most: closer, more meaningful relationships with one another. As a result, teens feel safe turning to their parents for support—and that leads to improvements in teen mental health and reductions in suicide risk.

I utilize attachment theory in my practice to help you understand the bond with your newborn, addressing any attachment challenges or disruptions. By exploring early experiences and attachment styles, I guide you in fostering secure attachments, promoting healthy bonding, and resolving issues like postpartum depression or anxiety, ultimately supporting the parent-child relationship.

I have worked extensively with families where attachment trauma has impacted relationships and connectedness. I work with families to identify where attachment styles may be harming the relationship and addressing alternative approaches.

I am a Certified Becoming Safely Embodied practitioner, taught by Deirdre Fay. It is a program that is grounded in attachment theory research. Brainspotting is also a powerful modality in supporting clients who struggle with attachment and relationship challenges and wounds.

Understanding your attachment style is helpful in managing our mental health. How we behave when we depend on another, and how we move towards or away from others is important data to consider in relations. When we understand ourselves and those we love, we can provide a higher level of care.

My approach is kind and thoughtful, but I am relentless in seeking to understand how a client's attachment patterns hold sway over their relational life. The words I use with clients are intentionally attuned to give voice to their deepest longings. When clients express these needs and experience validation is when the deep healing begins. Hidden push-pull forces of anxiety and disconnection give way to vulnerable requests and acceptance.

In my work with clients facing sex addiction, I employ attachment theory to understand the condition as an intimacy disorder. By exploring the roots of attachment patterns, I help clients recognize how these influence their behaviors and relationships. This approach fosters empathy and understanding, aiding in the healing process for both the individual and their partner. Through compassionate guidance, we aim to rebuild connections, promoting resilience and hope for a healthier future.

How we show up in relationships can be greatly impacted by how we were treated and cared for as young children. Attachment theory teaches that how we participate in relationships, both romantic and platonic, is affected by how we were treated as children. I help clients learn how to be in relationships that are both healthy and honoring to who they are. As humans, we are created to be in deep and meaningful relationships and I can help clients have them.

I specialize in Attachment Theory, helping clients understand how early relational experiences shape their current patterns in love, trust, and connection. I guide individuals and couples in identifying insecure attachment styles, healing past wounds, and fostering secure, fulfilling relationships. My approach integrates deep emotional work with practical tools, supporting clients in developing healthier bonds, enhancing intimacy, and breaking cycles of anxiety, avoidance, or disconnection.

As a relational therapist, my priority is to create a safe space for you to process attachment trauma and have a healing, corrective emotional experience. The relationship you have with your therapist is the most important component when it comes to successful outcomes in therapy, which is why it is so important to find a therapist who is a good fit.

Attachment-based therapy specifically targets those thoughts, feelings, communications, behaviors, and interpersonal exchanges that clients have learned either to suppress and avoid or to amplify and overemphasize because of early attachment experiences. Attachment theory helps us examine early experiences with caregivers in order to better understand how strategies and patterns developed and heal from those early relationships so that we can build the relationships we want in our life now.

Attachment theory explores the inner working model of how you relate to yourself, others, and the world. When you are aware of your attachment style, you can understand the reasons you feel the way you do and act the way you do in relationships. Working from an attachment lens in therapy gives you the power to understand the core beliefs influencing your experiences in relationships and shift those beliefs and experiences to being more secure.

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.

Attachment Theory is about discovering that how a person was cared for & related to in their early years still effects them today especially in close relationships. When we were young we learned if the world was safe or not. To make us feel safe we isolated or became people pleasers. These patterns continue on into adulthood & can be very disruptive in all relationships. There are ways to feel emotionally safe so you can thrive.