Attachment

The heart of what I do is support couples and relationships in our community. When I work with individuals, I'm interested in helping you sink into being fully you while being in relationship with others. That might mean learning more about who you are, discovering your needs in relationship, getting support with boundaries and saying "no," processing your childhood and past, or growing your ability to being more vulnerable with others. I want to support you in being your full, authentic self.

My foundational approach works on relational connection as a tool for healing embedded trauma. Many of my clients have suffered disruption in their ability to properly connect with others, and live in a constant state of activation which can manifest as stress, depression, disorganization, loss of executive function, overwhelm, and isolation. We will work together to find your sense of safety in order to restore your nervous system's natural ability to heal and connect with others.

Some people say that unresolved attachment issues are at the root of most of our relational issues. Underneath fights with your partner and unsatisfying dating relationships is a desire to feel safe and secure in your relationship. Fights happen because we don't feel safe and connected. Using attachment-based approaches, I help clients identify, own and express important feelings, needs, and desires, leading to greater connection with themselves and others.

Attachment lies at the core of everything we say and do. It's impossible to talk about good mental health without it.

Sometimes you wonder, "Is there something about ME that makes me unlovable to my mom, or is there something about HER and she is not able to show love in a way that feels like love." An infant's ability to trust her mother to meet her needs affects the parent/child relationship through their life. The need for connection, acceptance, and consistent love & support from a mom does not go away when a child moves out. If your relationship with your mom hurts, I can help. I've been there myself.

Our relationship with those closest to us affects how we form our own identities, and impacts how we interact with everyone else around us. Attachment and trauma experiences go hand in hand, and play a huge role in how and why one experiences mental health concerns, including anxiety, depression, low self-worth, anger, dissociation, and so much more. I aim to help you recognize how you identify attachment concerns and how they affect you, and work through them in sessions.

I work with clients struggling with insecure attachment and codependency affecting their relationships with friends, family, and romantic partners.

I have completed EFT externship with Sue Johnson, PhD as well as EFIT training where I have learned to address the impact of adult attachment styles on one's ability to build and maintain interpersonal relationships in personal and professional areas of life.

How we attach to others has to do with who we are attaching to, how we see ourselves and what connection has looked like in the past. We often what to ascribe responsibility to someone for the level of discomfort and hurt that comes as a result of attachment challenges but the work of therapy is to shift from blaming or shaming to a place of care, curiosity and emotional security. Regardless of what causes the attachment wound, each situation is an opportunity for a correct experience.

We all have attachments and all have attachment wounds. It is my experience that these inform and impact how we show up for ourselves and within relationships with friends, romantic partners, and family. I use my training and experience to bring these attachment patterns and wounds into the therapy experience to help clients increase awareness and understanding, as well as working towards healing these patterns and wounds.

As my entry to the field began in research and theory, I enjoy incorporating Attachment Theory into the way I treat relationship issues, emotion regulation, and coping strategies. Maybe you find your mind waiting for the second shoe to drop when things are calm. Maybe conflict makes you shrink up and want to run the other way. Maybe you struggle to engage with the risk inherent to relationship. Attachment-based interventions can help us practice secure attachment behaviors (when it *is* safe).

No matter what type of therapy we are doing, the through line is our own attachment relationship; in the therapeutic relationship, we build safety and trust, understanding your past relationships in new ways and building new experiences in our own relationship, so that you can reshape your current and future relationships outside of therapy into secure, authentic connections.

Attachment to me is the ways in which we show up in our relationship with ourself and others. The way in which we show up in our relationships can tell us a lot about our attachment system. Do you find yourself avoiding conflict or affection? Do you find yourself feeling anxious and dependent on someone else to feel validated? Or is it a combination of both. Together, we can explore the messages you received throughout your life to better understand your attachment style.

I support client in learning about their attachment styles and how it formed in childhood. This often looks like taking an attachment style quiz and looking at your relationships to see how your attachment style effects your relationships. We will also work on healing towards a more secure attachment style.

Working from an attachment framework means I have a deep understanding of how our early caregiver connections affected our ability to soothe ourselves, to ask for help when we need it and to connect with ourselves and others. These early attachments can show up in our adult life even if we are not yet conscious of it. While many of us were hurt by not receiving the love and nurturance we deserved as little ones, we also heal in loving supportive authentic relationships. These are possible.

Lastly, while training in Somatic Experiencing®, I was introduced to the work of Dr. Diane Poole Heller.I have completed Modules I – IV of Dr. Heller’s Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning experience (DARe). DARe is an approach that focuses on helping individuals create more meaning, connection, and emotional intimacy in their relationships by processing early attachment wounds and identifying individual attachment styles.

Families are doing their best....but so often, their best is still pretty damn harmful. I am trained to help you get to the root of your attachment injuries and heal them for good. Once you start to re-wire your internal attachment system and relearn your own inherent worth and value, you will see major changes in the way you relate to yourself and to the people in your life.

A key task of infancy and childhood -- an essential element in growing up to feel secure, confident, with high self-esteem -- is the formation of secure attachments to reliable, loving caregivers. I work with those who didn't have this experience growing up, to build what is called "earned secure attachment" -- the work of building those same internal circuits in adulthood, which were not adequately built in childhood.