Attachment Theory

We’ll explore where you learned to protect yourself emotionally and how those early experiences shape current relationships. By understanding these protective strategies, we'll shift old patterns and create healthier, more secure connections. This process builds emotional resilience, deepens trust, and opens the door to richer, more fulfilling relationships. You’ll learn to navigate relationships with more clarity, safety, and confidence, leading to deeper and more meaningful bonds.

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 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. We are beings who thrive in healthy and safe relationships. Sometimes, our caregivers failed to meet those needs. I can help you learn skills to meet your needs as an adult.

Everyone has strategies to get their needs met. Often times these once essential strategies become patterns in our life that keep us from connecting and turning toward one another. Attachment and emotion-focused therapy invites us to understand and build compassion for our old patterns, while building new, healthier strategies for connection by identifying our emotions and giving voice to our needs.

Our relationship with our selves and others begins with our experience of attachment to our caregivers. Attachment is a huge influential part of our behaviors in relationship with everyone in our lives- our partners, children, parents, families, and friends.

The attachment work I do is deep and transformative and sometimes escapes words. I have received specialized Somatic training with Kathy Kain and Stephen J. Terrell which approaches attachment theory work from the bottom up versus the top down. This means bringing my attention to healing the early age physiology first before approaching the adult cognitive brain, which comes second. I also include consciousness and intention around my own attachment style when working on this deep level with clients.

I have studied and trained in attachment theory models including Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT.) I am a pre-certified professional in EFT meaning I have completed all the training necessary for certification and am in the final stages of certification.

Through my work and training as a couples therapist I have come to understand that we are social creatures and we need to feel safe. The way we were nurtured as children impact the way we form attachments now and they affect every aspect of our identity especially our relationships with others. One of the main approaches I use comes from an attachment lens. As a couples counselor I work with couples to strengthen their connection with their partner to heal attachment wounds.

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.

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.

Attachment theory is central to my approach for folks looking to work on communication, relationships, trauma, and better understanding themselves.

I have been interested in and doing attachment work since the late 90's. How we are connected to people and the impact that this has on our relationships is fascinating. Attachment work takes a step back to explore early relationship dynamics and resulting coping strategies being used in relationships today. Gaining a healthy understanding of relationship expectations and boundaries is one of the first steps in forming a healthy attachment.

Our attachment styles with original caretakers inform the way we relate to others as adults, including partners, friends, and even coworkers. I help patients untangle their feelings and experiences located in the past from their present relational patterns, decide what’s still needed and useful, and what they can let go of.

An attachment-based approach to therapy looks at the connection between a client's early attachment experiences with primary caregivers and the client's ability to form healthy emotional and physical relationships as an adult. Attachment-based therapy aims to build a trusting, supportive relationship between the client and counselor that will be used as a blueprint for other relationships and to alleviate mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.

As humans we are biologically wired to attach to our parents when we are babies. How we experience this attunement of safety, love and connection stays with us through our childhood and into adulthood. We unconsciously carry our attachment style into relationships as adults. The main styles of attachment are anxious, avoidant, disorganized and secure. In healthy relationships both adults strive for secure attachment, but attachment injuries from childhood or past relationships can prevent se

I became enamored with Attachment Theory in graduate school including joining a group of psychologists studying Daniel Siegel's book The Developing Mind (one of the earliest books on interpersonal neurobiology). Afterwards I sought out trainings from Daniel Siegel as well as others like Carol George and Diana Fosha for years. Attachment theory is the foundation of my approach to therapy, particularly the centrality of safety in relationships in order to explore, expand, and face challenges.

Attachment theory focuses on the ways early relationships shape how we connect with others and view ourselves. I use this framework to help clients explore how their attachment experiences influence patterns like self-doubt, avoidance, or seeking reassurance. By understanding these dynamics, clients can build more secure connections and self-compassion. If you’re seeking a therapist who can help you uncover and heal relational wounds, I’d be honored to support your journey toward growth.