Attachment Therapy for Relational Stress
Most of us (if not all of us) want to have healthy, balanced relationships, even if life and/or ourselves can’t ever be “perfect.” That doesn’t make desiring to have successful relationships far fetched, though. Sure, of course, no relationship can be flawless. Relationships always naturally have times that are more challenging and times that feel more like being on “cloud 9.” We could likely all agree on that.
What we really mean is that we want to be able to feel comfortable, connected, seen, heard, loved, and secure with others. Oh, and being able to have effective communication skills.
In my approach as a therapist, I help my clients build healthy, successful relationships by first becoming comfortable, connected, seen, heard, loved, and secure with themselves. No, I don’t mean that cliche saying, “you must first be who you want your partner (or friends) to be.” I’m talking about attachment.
Attachment describes the way we learned to relate, behave, and connect with others based on our previous relationships throughout our life (primarily our childhood) — and, what perceptions we hold of ourselves and others based on those past relational experiences.
Whether we have experienced childhood trauma or a one-off confusing relationship, it’s possible that regardless, we walked away from it with unconscious learned beliefs and behaviors…ultimately, hindering our ability to connect securely with others. You might experience this as:
anxiousness about your worth in the relationship
feeling on edge or concerned about the stability of your relationship(s)
struggling to let people in
being unable to express yourself and your emotions effectively
constantly feeling consumed by spiraling thoughts about all of the above
I emphasis a “learning” approach when working with clients who are seeking out support for relational stress. I give my clients the opportunity to thoroughly understand themselves in the context of relationships through an evidenced-based approach — Attachment Theory.
Attachment Theory goes deeper than just the four “attachment styles,” which is often where we’ll start. To be able to confidently build healthy connections with people, we must understand ourselves in an unbiased, broad perspective…in order to truly know ourselves. A lot of this information is stored in the parts of our body that we don’t have access to. Bring this “hidden information” to the surface allows one to become aware of who they are, why they are the way we are, and how they have came to be. When we get to do that, we are able to heal and develop trust, security, and stability in ourselves. Then, we can foster fulfilling and prosperous relationships with others. This is what I mean by feeling secure in ourselves first.
Attachment Theory helps us comprehend how, 1) both our conscious and unconscious beliefs guide our mental responses to common relational situations, 2) how that response dictates our actions after, and, 3) what resulting beliefs (helpful or unhelpful) are then being translated back into our identity.
Through learning about attachment’s role in your life, you get to fully “see” the “lens” in which you have and are viewing the world through. Just because we have to understand ourselves more deeply doesn’t mean that unhealthy or challenging relationships were our fault. Rather, we become familiar with ourselves in a way we haven’t before, equipping us more abundantly for the complexities of relationships. Think about dropping your dog off at a doggy daycare (if you have one)…your dog is going to have a different personality and “take” on the environment than that of another dog, and that other dog will differ from another, and so forth. Using Attachment Theory to see “who we may be if we were a dog dropped off with a bunch of other dogs” is a learning experience about ourselves, that helps us really get to know the details of our story and re-write where we want to.