Attachment trauma, relational trauma, or CPTSD, is a big deal and quite an ordeal to unpack. Trauma that’s happened to you again and again, within relationships that were meant to be safe and protective, impacts your growing brain and sense of self well into adulthood. Maybe there was chronic misattunement with your needs, maybe your caregivers were inconsistent, unavailable, frightening or intrusive. Perhaps the love they gave you was conditional and based upon performance, or maybe you experienced early separation from caretakers during key stages of development. In all of these cases, the emotions of a young person are generally neglected, forging a wounded attachment system that fails to develop a belief that closeness with others equals safety, repair and predictability. I believe emotional neglect is at the core of many mental health disorders and the world is in dire need of therapists who can support the healing of these psychological wounds.

Attachment trauma often shows up in adulthood as confusion inside relationships- feeling anxious when someone pulls away, shutting down when things get too close, or constantly scanning for signs that something is wrong. It’s also full of struggle with emotional dysregulation, hyper-vigilance, avoidance, procrastination, perfectionism, negative self concept, and possible dissociation. All of these symptoms are strategies created to survive what would have otherwise been unbearable to experience in our younger years, and need to be respected. These are intelligent adaptations that are simply no longer serving you.

Therapy becomes a place to slow these patterns down with curiosity instead of judgment. We begin to notice what gets activated in relationships, what younger parts of you learned to expect, and how these expectations continue to shape your present-day connections. We might incorporate body based modalities such as Brainspotting to bypass the thinking brain and release stored trauma from the body at the core level where your trauma is held. Over time, this creates room for something new; not just insight about your attachment patterns, but a different internal experience of safety with yourself and others.

Investment: 150$ per 53 min. session