Attachment

Having worked with children, teenager, young adults, and adults; I have utilized attachment based theories to assist in working through past trauma and current issues with relation to attachment concerns. I offer a safe space where we can work together to process and work through past attachment issues in order to develop healthier relationships.

Attachment is one of those pieces that we can carry for a long time, and struggle to understand. I use EMDR, IFS, and brainspotting to help you lean in and gain an in-depth understanding of yourself so that you can learn how you adapt and function. In this process, you also learn to see yourself as human and love the human that is inside.

I use inner child work to heal and re-parent.

This is my greatest area of mental health training. I worked for five years in early childhood development with attachment specialists, have a graduate certificate in infant mental health, have been endorsed at two levels in infant mental health practice (Level II and Level III), and was an infant mental health therapist for three years. What this means is that I deeply understand and have seen how our experiences from in-utero onward shape our development and sense of self.

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.

My practice is based in attachment science and theory. I started my career with a focus on attachment-based modalities and have continued to receive specialized, on-going training rooted in attachment theory. I am heavily influenced, personally and professionally, by the work of Jude Cassidy, Phillip Shaver, Sue Johnson, Kent Hoffman & the Circle of Security founders, Dan Siegel, Mary Ainsworth, and John Bowlby.

The therapeutic relationship can serve as a microcosm for other relationships in our lives. I strive to establish a connection with my clients that allows space for experimentation, exploration of early and repetitive relational patterns, and practicing rupture and repair.

As babies, we come into the world quickly forming relationships with our caregivers. Those caregivers can either be a source of safety and connection or a distant or harsh parent. As children dependent on our caregivers we begin to create safety for ourselves in any way we can. As we grow older we carry these ways of survival with us which plays out in our adult relationships. These may manifest in us as codependency, low self-esteem, and people-pleasing.

Together we will explore early life experiences to understand more about how you came to be who you are today. The way we attach, or do not attach, to our primary caregivers as a child has a huge impact on our adult relationships. We will identify your personal attachment style, and examine how this plays out in your past and current relationships. We can work together to assist you in developing a healthier attachment style to improve your relationships, and feel more secure in them.

At the foundation of all of our lives is the way we connect to others. When you were an infant (and through out your life) certain neurobiological patterns got set up that influence your relationships to others, to your world, and to yourself.

I believe attachment begins at the moment of your conception. Together, let's explore the roots of how you feel within relationships and help you build a more secure attachment within yourself so that you can feel more secure in relation to people in your life.

Attachment experiences generate deep ways in which we experience ourselves and others. Exploring our attachment patterns can bring deep acceptance, clarity and new ways of experiencing our own selves and others.

I will help you navigate your needs and wants in your current relationships. There are many different types of relationships that attachment issues can interfere with.

It is my belief that attachment style formulates from childhood and can be influenced and repaired well into our senior years. Creating a consistent trusting safe haven space for a client to experience a new way of being in relationship is critical. Additionally, I have participated in specific Somatic training to work with the younger physiology underneath a client's attachment style first versus from the cognitive brain. This has the potential to create longer lasting results.

I have additional training in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy which utilizes and attachment perspective to help heal the bonds between you and your partner(s).

Humans are social creatures, but as we learn to protect ourselves emotionally we tend to keep others out. Some of us keep others at a distance. We rely on the strength of our fierce independence though inside we might be suffering on our own. Still others of us try very hard to connect, maybe trying too hard and pushing others away or maybe just quietly doubting that others actually like us. My approach explicitly focuses on building security within ourselves and closeness with others.

Aversion to touch and physical affection? Control issues? Anger problems? Difficulty showing genuine care and affection? Lack of inhibition? Struggling with a sense of self or conscience? This might be related to attachment. If you related to these descriptors or find yourself to be struggling within relationships, let's talk.

My clinical training has been largely in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic modalities, which place emphasis on early relationships, rupture and repair, and the intersubjective space between client and therapist.