How Secure Attachment Can be Rebuilt in Therapy

In recent years, Attachment theory has become broadly understood to a certain extent by many, not just those in fields such as psychology, counselling, biology.

Attachment in a Nutshell …

Broadly, the concept being that if parents or carers treat us with warmth, care, stability and compassion, as a newborn, we have secure attachment, which moves with us into adulthood.  In contrast, if for some reason our primary carer was absent physically or emotionally, did not attune to our needs, or was highly anxious, we may develop an insecure attachment with our primary carer.

Of course there are many intricacies to the theory of attachment, and it is not blaming the primary carer.  Rather, it is important to know that an insecure attachment from birth can be rebuilt as secure, through relationships.

How Attachment is Rebuilt

Sometimes we choose a life partner who attunes to us and therefore our attachment rebuilds, or repairs, almost as if by chance.  What is also exciting, is that the therapeutic process reactivates the attachment system, so that clients rebuild a secure attachment.

When a client comes to therapy, they often bring with them fear, anxiety, shame, and many other feelings. This is because their initial attachment was not ideal.  As a therapist, I provide an environment that encourages the client to feel safe.  A warm, compassionate, empathic, mindful, stable environment.  I want to create a therapeutic alliance where clients feel safe, not abandoned, not judged, and that I listen to their inner world with authenticity and empathy.  This provides the space for clients to experience healing.

Attachment and Neuroplasticity

Essentially what happens, is that as infants, we lay down implicit memories that shape our deepest understanding of relationships, and if they were not ideal, we lack trust in relationships.  Through therapy, the empathic care of the therapist allows the client to reveal themselves and their earliest fears.  Once the client speaks about his or her fears with a therapist, the therapist then provides the environment for secure attachment, returning new thoughts, feelings and processes to long term memory, changing the implicit memory in the brain forever, and allowing the client access to healing experiences.  Not only does the therapist play a role in attachment repair, but the relationship between the therapist and client deepens empathically.  This is often why, as clients we can’t put our finger on what has changed to make our life more satisfying, or more meaningful – change happens in ways that are sometimes non-verbal, or cannot be articulated.

The Therapeutic Relationship

Through this deepened relationship, the therapist holds the client continually in warm regard, and the client experiences that – expanding and solidifying their secure attachment – a feeling of synchrony and harmony, both felt and observed by the therapist and the client.  Because this process is both conscious and unconscious, it is important for the therapist to be in a mindful, aware state so that their own past experiences are not activated.

Resonance

Resonance though hard to explain, in physics, is a vibration, so in a therapeutic relationship, it is a non verbal process where the client receives the empathic signals from the therapist.  The client draws in from the therapist their empathic state and their intention to connect.  This warm, supportive relationship is internalised and the client takes it out into the world.

As a therapist, it is this deep sense of resonance with the client that is almost palpable in the room and endures for a long time for both the client and the therapist.  Of course, not every therapeutic relationship is this, but it is what I strive for as a therapist, in order for clients to feel heard, supported, felt, and to move comfortably in the world with repaired attachment and the ability to trust themselves in forming secure attachments with others.