Trauma and Attachment Therapy in NJ & PA

Helping You Heal Attachment Wounds and Reclaim Your Life

Do You Struggle with Trust, Connection, or Feeling Safe in Relationships?

  • Do you often feel anxious or disconnected in relationships?

  • Do you avoid emotional intimacy or fear abandonment?

  • Are you carrying the weight of unresolved childhood trauma or attachment wounds?

If these feelings resonate, you’re not alone. Trauma and attachment wounds can profoundly impact how you connect with others and with yourself. But there is hope for healing and transformation.

Click here to schedule your free consultation!

Understanding Attachment Trauma

Attachment trauma stems from early relational experiences that shape how you connect with others. Whether you've experienced abandonment, neglect, or emotional unavailability, these wounds can lead to trust issues, fear of intimacy, or difficulty maintaining secure relationships. Our trauma-informed therapy approach provides a compassionate space to heal these deep-rooted emotional scars.

Key Symptoms of Attachment Trauma:

  • Fear of rejection or abandonment

  • Difficulty trusting others

  • Overwhelming need for validation

  • Emotional detachment or avoidance

How Trauma and Attachment Therapy Can Help

Trauma and attachment therapy is designed to help you:

  • Understand Your Patterns: Gain clarity on how past experiences shape your relationships and emotional responses.

  • Heal Attachment Wounds: Work through unresolved pain with evidence-based techniques like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy).

  • Develop Secure Connections: Build healthier, more fulfilling relationships with others and yourself.

  • Reclaim Emotional Safety: Learn how to feel grounded, safe, and confident in your life.

How can Attachment Focused Therapy Help Me?

Relationship issues

  • Romantic concerns - You may have a hard time creating or sustaining romantic relationships. Or, romantic relationships may be plagued by codependency, insecurity, avoidance, and/or conflict.

  • Family dynamics - Struggles within a family unit (e.g., divorce, sibling rivalry, poor parent-child dynamic, etc.)

Low self-esteem

  • By healing your attachment wounds, you can enhance your sense of self-worth and self-confidence

Anxiety and depression

  • General anxiety - Anxiety you are experiencing may be linked to an insecure attachment style

  • Depressive disorders - Feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and depression may be linked to underlying attachment problem

Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

  • Early childhood trauma - Early traumatic experiences (e.g., abandonment, abuse, neglect) can have many ongoing effects 

  • Adult trauma - Traumatic experiences in adulthood can negatively impact your attachment styles and, thus, relationships

Emotional regulation

  • In attachment therapy, you can learn how to develop healthier ways to manage and express your emotions

Social skills and the ability to form healthy peer relationships

  • Social anxiety - In order to form and maintain relationships, you may need to overcome your social anxiety first

  • Peer relationships - In attachment-based psychotherapy, your child or teen can learn how to navigate peer relationships to learn healthy coping mechanisms

Understanding Attachment Styles

Attachment theory provides a powerful framework for understanding how early childhood experiences shape how we connect with others. The bonds we form with primary caregivers influence our emotional responses, communication patterns, and relationship dynamics throughout life. By exploring the four main attachment styles, we can gain valuable insights into how we interact with others and identify areas for personal growth.

Secure Attachment Style

People with a secure attachment style are comfortable with both closeness and independence. They trust easily, communicate effectively, and approach relationships with mutual respect and empathy. This attachment style fosters emotional balance and resilience, providing a solid foundation for meaningful connections.

Key characteristics:

  • Positive self-image and a healthy view of others

  • Open and effective communication of needs and emotions

  • Balance between intimacy and personal space

Anxious Attachment

Individuals with an anxious attachment style often crave closeness but struggle with feelings of insecurity. A fear of abandonment drives their desire for constant reassurance, which can sometimes strain relationships. This heightened sensitivity to their partner’s emotions often leaves them uncertain and vulnerable.

Key characteristics:

  • Frequent need for validation and reassurance

  • Anxiety and preoccupation with relationship stability

  • Challenges maintaining self-worth without external affirmation

Avoidant Attachment

Those with an avoidant attachment style value self-reliance and emotional independence, often avoiding deep emotional connections. They may see vulnerability as a weakness, leading them to keep others at arm’s length and focus on maintaining control in relationships.

Key characteristics:

  • Preference for independence over closeness

  • Avoidance of emotional vulnerability or expressions of affection

  • Tendency to withdraw when relationships demand emotional depth

Disorganized Attachment

Individuals with a disorganized attachment style experience a conflict between a desire for intimacy and a fear of getting hurt. This can result in a pattern of seeking closeness but withdrawing when relationships become too intense, creating confusion and unpredictability in their connections.

Key characteristics:

  • Ambivalence about trust and intimacy, leading to push-pull behaviors

  • Fear of betrayal and emotional pain

  • Difficulty trusting others or fully opening up.

What is the goal of attachment-based therapy?

Attachment-based therapy helps you understand how your childhood relationships affect your adult life. It focuses on healing emotional wounds from your early years, especially from relationships with parents or caregivers.

This therapy helps you:

  • Recognize how past experiences shape your current relationships

  • Learn healthier ways to handle emotions and connect with others

  • Build stronger, more trusting relationships

It's particularly helpful if you struggle with relationships or managing emotions, or want to understand why you react to others the way you do.

You’re worthy of love and connection.
You always have been.

  • Attachment trauma is based on the understanding that our early experiences with caregivers shape our ability to form healthy relationships as adults. If those early experiences were disrupted by neglect, abuse, or even just inconsistency, it can create a form of trauma called "attachment trauma."

    Think of it this way: your early attachments are like the emotional foundation of the house that is your self-concept and life. If that foundation is shaky, it makes everything built on top of it unreliable and prone to collapse, even in a light breeze. Attachment-focused therapy can help you repair the foundation. Schedule a consultation here.

  • Attachment-focused therapy is a type of psychotherapy that delves into the core of how we connect with others. I will work to help you build a stronger, more secure foundation for connection by building safety and trust with you. We may use parts work (IFS), CEN therapy, or other compassion-focused tools. It’s honestly a beautiful process, and I love helping people with it. Schedule a consultation here.

  • That may be part of our work together! The truth is that our attachment styles may vary based on who we’re interacting with, though we all tend to lean towards one pattern or another. For example, you may be avoidant with your friends (stepping away when things feel too close), but maybe you err anxious in romantic relationships (fearing abandonment or loss, even when there’s security).

  • Therapy is not about blaming parents, but it is about providing context. Most of the time, parents do the best they can with what they have. Sometimes that “best” is not very good, and it’s important to know that as context for what you’re experiencing.

    I also know that intergenerational trauma, racism, poverty, and other systems of oppression may have an impact on a parents’ ability to show up for you. Nonetheless, the impact on you was real. You deserve to have feelings about it, and you also deserve to feel better.

    I would love to help. Schedule a consultation here.

FAQs

Common questions about Attachment-Focused Therapy

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Security, trust, and connection – it’s all waiting for you.