Attachment-Based Psychotherapy

Attachment-based therapy is an approach that targets thoughts, feelings, communications, behaviors, and interpersonal exchanges that clients learned to suppress and avoid or overemphasize due to early attachment experiences. Our attachment experiences with our caregivers shape how we function as adults, especially our relationships with others. Attachment-based therapy helps to address the effects of negative early attachment experiences while strengthening the ability to create secure relationships and adaptive actions to use in life. A therapist will help clients express the types of communication patterns, emotions, perceptions, and behaviors that were excluded in formative relationships with their attachment figures. In return, the client is able to better communicate openly while accessing more adaptive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors in their life. 

The first central process of attachment-based therapy is the creation of a progressively more open and secure relationship between the therapist and client. This technique is effective because of the progressive developmental process that it frees within the client. The second central process is the facilitation and strengthening of adaptive capacities by addressing the emotions and the communications that the client learned to suppress or overemphasize in early attachment relationships. If you are interested in attachment-based therapy, our clinicians Kimbri Johnson and Maryam Archer are certified in this form of psychotherapy. 

Source: American Psychological Association