Understanding Attachment-Based Therapy

Restoring safe connections to reset, release, and heal

What is Attachment-Based Therapy

Attachment-based therapy works to repair the emotional wounds that may have developed in our early years. Based on the idea that a strong, safe, and loving bond with our primary caregivers as a child can impact how our minds and emotions function into adulthood. Attachment-based therapy can help us reset, release, and heal. 

In the 1960s, psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth developed Attachment Theory, which forms the basis for Attachment-based therapy. Attachment theory gives us three different insecure attachment styles:

  • Avoidant attachment style — when deep-seated trust issues arising from family dysfunction or childhood trauma create later avoidance of relationships or intimacy

  • Anxious attachment style — a fear of being abandoned, born from inconsistent caregiving in childhood, abuse, or neglect

  • Disorganized attachment style — a mixture of anxious and avoidant attachment that is often caused by emotional neglect or trauma as a child

Attachment-based therapy helps us understand our emotional attachments, exploring how stability, chaos, or insecurity in childhood affects how we see and experience future relationships, process emotions, and relate to ourselves and others. Attachment-based therapy allows us to identify and move past old coping mechanisms by repairing our thoughts and behaviors on a neurological level.

How Attachment-Based Therapy Works

This type of therapy is intended to help repair the “internal” family relationship. It begins with building a secure bond of trust between the client and the therapist. This relationship will be the bridge to exploring how current feelings, habits, and needs are related to childhood experiences. Attachment-based therapy creates a safe space in which we can revisit our early memories with a new perspective, gain clarity on needs that weren’t met in the past, and draw on new skills and resources to meet these needs in the present. With a strong therapeutic relationship and new abilities to self-resource, we can develop a new, “secure” attachment style to improve and heal our adult relationships with self and others.

Attachment-based therapy can be combined with other modalities, and is effective in individual, couples, and family counseling.

Why Attachment-Based Therapy is Effective

By healing the insecure attachments we may have developed as children, this type of therapy rebuilds our inner and outer sense of trust. Attachment-based therapy offers a pathway to reset how we suppress or amplify our thoughts, feelings, and actions based on early experiences. From the secure relationship with our therapist, to “reparenting” our inner child and reclaiming our capacity for resilience, it supports an evolved and holistic sense of self, improved intimate relationships, and a more effective, authentic means of moving forward through life.

What Attachment-Based Therapy Helps Address

Attachment-based therapy can help address the causes and symptoms of many different mental health challenges related to adverse childhood experiences.

It is effective in helping to treat:

  • Depression and mood disorders

  • Anxiety

  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder

  • Unresolved trauma or complex trauma

  • Relationship issues or family issues

  • Addiction and substance dependency

  • Codependency or fear of abandonment

  • Struggles with emotional regulation or expression

The potential benefits of Attachment-based therapy can include:

  • Feelings of security and stability

  • Increased optimism and positivity

  • Improved emotional regulation

  • Better social and communication skills

  • Healthier relationships with less conflict

  • Improved relationships between children and parents/caregivers

  • Relief for symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges

Do you feel like Attachment-Based Therapy might be right for you?

Discover the transformative power of attachment-based therapy with our experienced attachment therapists. Heal childhood wounds and step into a more confident, secure sense of self.