Attachment Therapy
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Do you find that creating and maintaining secure relationships is a struggle?
Do you find yourself…
In a pattern of avoiding emotional intimacy and vulnerability in your connections with others?
Becoming anxious about emotional intimacy in your relationships, even when there is evidence that your loved ones are reliable and supportive?
Finding it hard to express your needs and emotions openly in your relationships?
Having challenges forming and maintaining close relationships, because you find navigating any relationship problems that happen to be overwhelming?
If you found yourself agreeing with some of these questions, you may be struggling with attachment issues.
You aren’t alone - many other individuals experience challenges because of an insecure attachment style. Your attachment style can have a big impact on the health and stability of your relationships, and can be a key indicator to why certain repeated patterns can show up in your relationship dynamics. Our attachment style influences the way we communicate and handle intimacy and vulnerability in our connections.
What is an “Attachment Style?”
Attachment therapy is about understanding your attachment style, which describes how the relationships you have with parents or caregivers shapes how you understand the world around you.. This, in turn, shapes your sense of safety, ability to trust, and understanding of yourself, and is outwardly expressed by the way you emotionally bond and connect with others in significant relationships. Our attachment style is formed in early childhood based on the availability of our caregivers and how they responded to our needs. There are four attachment styles, with each characterized by repeated patterns of behavior and emotional responses in relationships.
A Secure Attachment Style…
Describes an individual who forms stable and healthy attachment with others. Their relationships are characterized by stability and feeling the emotions of safety and satisfaction within personal relationships.
Other Attachment Styles…
The other three attachment styles are disorganized attachment, avoidant attachment, and anxious attachment. Disorganized, avoidant and anxious attachments describe individuals who received a lack of, or inconsistent level of affection and attention from caregivers. These attachment styles are characterized by relationships that lack security and produce difficult and turbulent emotions.
Insecure attachment styles are characterized by dysregulated emotions and unhealthy patterns of behaviour that strain the health and functionality of their relationships.
How is Attachment Therapy approached? What is the Process?
Attachment therapy is approached in stages using an Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) and Emotion Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), a therapeutic approach that emphasizes the role of emotions on mental health. In the context of Attachment therapy, the EFT approach helps individuals, couples and family members understand and respond to each other's emotions more effectively, fostering stronger and more secure relationships.
In the First Stage
We help guide you to become aware of emerging patterns that are occurring in your life by understanding how foundational attachment building experiences in early life shape the way you approach relationships today.
In the Second Stage
We provide compassionate guidance on approaching painful experiences. By building up the ability to name the uncomfortable experiences, you are able to make the pain more manageable within the experience of the emotion.
In the Third Stage
We explore the painful experience to process emotions that are brought up through memories of the event. We then work to assemble these memories in a way to observe and recall them without adding negative emotions such as shame and guilt to reactions about the events.
In the Fourth Stage
Stage four allows you to reclaim your understanding of self and release the built up emotions, through this assembly of understanding and forgiveness towards self while challenging old patterns of behaviour. This process is done with individuals, couples or families. When tackling attachment issues for couples working on their relationship, we look at the emotions we experience in the relationship, and the patterns that are interrupting trust and security between loved ones.
How can Attachment Therapy help me work on my Attachment Issues?
Attachment therapy works under the understanding that people act in patterns and these patterns are responses to experiences. By understanding the subconscious nature that these patterns play out through, attachment therapy helps us understand that not every problem is responded to, or can be solved by using a rational mind.
We can’t out-think our emotions, yet we often try to rationalize or suppress emotions to help us stay safe from painful emotional experiences. Through experiencing these emotions and listening to how these patterns, even though unhelpful, are trying to keep us safe, your therapist will work together with you to gain insight into why you are experiencing certain emotions in relationships, and how these emotional reactions may drive you to behave in specific and repetitive ways towards others. Attachment issues are often linked to past traumas or wounds. Attachment Therapy provides a safe space to address and process these experiences, facilitating healing and reducing the impact of unresolved issues on current relationships.
Attachment Therapy encourages deep exploration of emotional experiences, allowing individuals to connect with and understand their feelings. This process helps uncover the root causes of attachment issues by fostering self-awareness and insight by proactively working through uncomfortable emotions.
Questions you might have about Attachment Therapy
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Neither a health diagnosis or a formal test result on attachment style is necessary to successfully engage in Attachment Therapy. Attachment therapy/EFT/EFIT are non-pathologizing modalities - this means that you do not need medication or a diagnosis to begin working from this perspective. Your therapist will focus on your unique experiences so that you can learn new ways of understanding yourself, and through this, be less fearful of the variety of emotions you can experience when engaging in your relationships.
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You may benefit if you find that you are having difficulty changing how you are feeling in situations despite having an objective understanding of a relationship experience. If you feel uncertainty or have fear about your relationships, or instead feel hyper independent and carry guilt or shame about behaviours, this is normally a good indicator that some attachment therapy could be a good fit.
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You do not need to have your parents, caregivers, or partner in the session with you to participate in the attachment work. There is value in participating in Attachment Therapy through individual sessions as you can gain important insights and tools into your own emotional landscape, allowing you increased emotional regulation and the ability to be more authentic to yourself. As you develop the ability to identify and express your emotions, these tools become valuable both for self-understanding and for improving the interactions you have within relationships.
Why do a free, 15-minute consultation?
The free 15-minute consultation gives you an opportunity to discuss your circumstances with one of our compassionate therapists. We will go over your current concerns and set your therapeutic goals. By speaking with your therapist, you are taking the first step to resolving these challenges so that you can take charge of your wellbeing and live a life of fulfillment.
Begin the process of healing today.
Healing Voices Psychotherapy can empower you with valuable insights and hone your mental health tool kit through guidance and effective communication. We want to support your journey to create lasting positive changes. It takes strength to recognize the need for support, and through the compassionate team at Healing Voices Psychotherapy, you are taking action to create a future of success and well-being for you and the relationships you care about.
Attachment patterns from early childhood can greatly affect relationships into adulthood. Styles of attachment are formed in the first few years of our lives. These patterns carry over into our intimate relationships and even how we parent our own children.