Attachment Styles

Understanding Attachment Style Therapy

Attachment theory was developed by Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby to explain human bonding. They believed that the attachment between mother and baby heavily influences the child’s emotional and mental development. The researchers believed that mental disorders could be traced back to separations, inconsistent, or harsh treatment from the mother.

Children grow up healthy and thrive when they experience love and nurturing, security, responsive interaction, and encouragement for exploration. Without these crucial aspects of child and mother attachment, the child’s development can have severe and long-lasting consequences.

In therapy, your counselor can help you use this theory to understand your attachment style, helping you recognize your typical relationship patterns and work toward developing a more secure attachment.

Contact our therapists today for attachment style therapy in Brickell, Downtown Miami, and West Palm Beach and start healing attachment wounds and improving your relationships with a secure attachment.

Understanding Attachment Styles

Secure Attachment

A secure attachment style results from a healthy attachment between the mother and baby. Researchers believe for a child to grow up with a secure attachment style, the baby requires physical contact with the mother. A mother’s response to the baby’s cries creates a healthy, secure attachment.

A baby who feels safe, supported and encouraged to explore leads to an adult with a secure attachment.

Individuals with attentive mothers can grow up mentally healthy and develop secure relationships with others in adulthood.

Even if you didn’t have an attentive or relaxed mother growing up, you can still develop a secure attachment through counseling at our centers in Brickell, Downtown Miami, and West Palm Beach. Our therapists bring specialized trauma training to sessions to create a supportive environment allowing you to reshape patterns developed in childhood.

Avoidant Attachment

People with an avoidant attachment style try to minimize closeness and emotional intimacy with others. These people learned early on that trying to become close to others leads to disappointment or regret.

These are usually people who had avoidant mothers as babies. When the baby would cry, the mother would fail to soothe the baby. The baby learned that depending on or trying to be close to others is unsafe because it leads to being let down.

If you experience difficulty trusting others, emotional distance, or fear of intimacy, you may have an avoidant attachment style.

Anxious Attachment

While avoidant attachment describes someone who rejects intimacy, those with anxious attachment styles have a heightened need for it. This need comes from a fear of rejection from others. This may lead to feelings of jealousy and insecurity.

Characteristics of anxiously attached individuals include clinginess, neediness, and jealousy.

Disorganized Attachment

People with disorganized attachment styles are said to have a combination of avoidant and anxious behaviors. These people want intimate relationships, but when people get too close, they sabotage.

They may have conflicting behaviors which may confuse their loved ones.

These babies are usually the children of parents with trauma. The mom provides inconsistent responses to the baby’s cries. At times, the caregiver can have been frightening, intimidating, disoriented, even abusive or neglectful.

People with this attachment style typically experience inconsistency, unpredictability, and difficulty regulating emotions.

How Attachment Styles Impact Relationships

The attachment theory states that our attachment style, formed during the first few years of life, affects our relationships throughout life.

Here is how each attachment style manifests itself in relationships:

• Secure attachment: Adults with a secure attachment style have healthy relationships. They confidently express their emotions, communicate, and set boundaries.
• Anxious attachment: Adults with an anxious attachment style cling to relationships. They may experience jealousy, clinginess, and people-pleasing tendencies,
• Avoidant attachment: Adults with an avoidant attachment style are overly independent. They may inadvertently push people away with their guarded behavior.
• Disorganized attachment: Adults with a disorganized attachment style crave close relationships, but they sabotage them. They usually experience chaotic relationships due to fear of abandonment.

Through compassionate and structured counseling in Brickell, Downtown Miami, and West Palm Beach, you can understand your attachment style and learn to create new patterns of relating.

Attachment Styles Therapy in Brickell, Downtown Miami, and West Palm Beach

All therapy at Evolve Therapy & Counseling utilized the Sovereign Body Method- a structued four phase approach. This method focuses on recalibrating the nervous system to expand your capacity for different feelings and situations.

Within this method, some therapy interventions commonly used for attachment counseling include:

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): This therapy helps you identify and reframe the negative beliefs that may affect your attachments in relationships.
• Narrative Therapy: This therapy helps clients identify their narratives and change their perceptions of situations.
• Attachment-Based Art Therapy: Art therapy can help clients identify emotions in a nonverbal way that may be experienced subconsciously.
• Somatic Regulation: This therapy helps clients identify ways to relax their muscles to regulate their emotions.
• Psychodynamic Therapy: This therapy explores subconscious thoughts and underlying core beliefs that may influence relationship behaviors.
• Family therapy: An excellent option for clients who have family members who are willing to participate in therapy. In our experience, clients who have the support of their families are the most successful in therapy.
• Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): This therapy helps you learn distress tolerance skills to better cope with challenges.
• Couple’s therapy: A great option if you notice your attachment issues manifesting in your relationship and would like to work through them with your partner.

With compassionate and confidential therapy, you can heal your attachment disorder and adopt a secure attachment style.

Call us today for a complimentary consultation to learn more about attachment-style therapy in Palm Beach County or Miami.

Benefits of Attachment Style Therapy

Attachment therapy can improve your relationships with others, whether romantic, with family, or at work.

The benefits of attachment therapy include:

• Emotional regulation: Learning to listen to and control your emotions will help you act more rationally and react more productively to stressful situations.
• Increase self-esteem: Understanding and healing your attachment style will help you be more confident in your actions when you know they are coming from a healed place. You will also better understand yourself and learn how to love and care for yourself.
• Improved communication: Healing your attachment style can help you communicate better with the people in your life. You will begin to understand what you are looking for in relationships, set boundaries, and communicate your needs.
• Resolve trauma: A significant amount of our trauma stems from our attachment style. Healing these situations will help improve your overall mental health and well-being.

You and your therapist will work together to choose the best interventions for you within the structured approach. All our therapists have extensive training in trauma therapy to ensure you get the highest level of care. 

Finding the Right Therapist for You

Here are some things to look for in an attachment-based therapist:

• Training: Make sure your therapist is qualified and is either a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Licensed Mental Health Therapist (LMHT), or Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT).
• Experience: We believe that a therapist who has experienced and healed through the same issues you are currently experiencing is the most helpful.
• Therapeutic alliance: Building a therapeutic relationship based on trust and understanding is the most important part of helping her clients.
• Trauma-based approach: Based on our experience at our center, having a therapist who utilizes a trauma-based approach has the highest success rates in helping their clients improve their mental health and attachment issues.

If you’re looking for an intuitive and caring therapist, call our office today to speak with someone who can help you improve your well-being.

What to Expect in Attachment Style Therapy Sessions

The Sovereign Body Method offers a unique approach to understanding and healing attachment styles.

Our team recognizes the profound impact of early childhood experiences on your current relationships. Through body-based work, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of your attachment style and how it shapes your interactions with others.

Here’s what you can expect in attachment style therapy:

• Comfortable and safe space: Our therapists create a warm and supportive environment where you can openly share your thoughts and feelings without judgment.
• Structured approach: Your therapy sessions will be more structured than typical talk therapy.
• Skill-building: Learn practical tools and techniques to regulate your nervous system, helping you respond to feelings rather than react.
• Goal-setting: Collaborate with your therapist to set achievable goals for your personal and relational growth.
• Ongoing support: Receive ongoing support and guidance as you work towards being more grounded and sovereign.

With attachment counseling, you can work toward a secure attachment. Through our proprietary Sovereign Body Method, you can transform your attachment style and rewrite your emotional narrative. With sessions in Brickell, Downtown Miami, and West Palm Beach, FL, you can feel more grounded, confident, and free. Our therapists are fully committed to creating a safe place for healing.

Sources: Contributions of Attachment Theory and Research: A Framework for Future Research, Translation, and Policy by Jude Cassidy, Jason D Jones, and Phillip R Shaver