Even when you feel in control of the other big areas of your life, relationships can still feel like an endless maze. You might feel confident and successful in your work, but still find yourself dealing with sadness, anger, and shame in your relationship. You might feel helpless and hopeless: this isn’t where you’d imagined you’d be at this point in your life, and it’s hard to imagine how it could change.

Therapy can help you to find new ways of navigating this part of your life, whether you’re struggling with an ongoing conflict in your relationship or challenges in dating. We’ll dive into what’s going on for you emotionally, work on new skills for communication and stress reduction, and find new ways through areas where you feel stuck.

Relationship Issues Often Feel Cyclical and Never-Ending

You may recognize these repetitive patterns in your relationships:

Too much conflict: The same fights and miscommunications keep occurring, triggered by seemingly small issues that escalate.
Avoidance: You escape from addressing difficult topics, never truly resolving underlying problems.
Uncertainty: You can't decide if your partner is right for you, plagued by persistent doubts amidst the good times.
Codependency: Your sense of identity has become enmeshed with your partner's, making separation difficult.
Anxiety: Despite reassurance, you can't fully trust that the relationship is secure.
Unmet expectations: You feel you're giving too much or that too much is expected of you.
Dating woes: You repeatedly attract the wrong partners and face disappointment in new relationships.

Attachment Is At the Root

Some of the most confusing issues in relationships can be explained by looking at attachment theory. Attachment theory was developed by John Bowlby in the 1950s and expanded by Mary Ainsworth in the 1960s and 1970s, and explains a great deal about how we relate to others.

Bowlby’s research showed that a secure attachment between a caregiver and a child is important for healthy social and emotional development. When you grow up feeling that you have a secure base, you feel safe to explore and connect with others. When you don’t have a secure base, you are likely to have a range of strategies to protect yourself from getting hurt further, many of which interfere with your ability to fully connect to others.

Ainsworth’s research found specific patterns of attachment that people tend to align with depending on their particular upbringing. As research has progressed, four overall attachment styles have been identified:

Secure attachment: Tend to form health, balanced relationships. Comfortable with intimacy, able to trust others, and can communicate needs, emotions, and boundaries. Can enjoy a mix of independence and intimacy within a relationship.
Anxious attachment: May struggle with a fear of abandonment and a need for reassurance. May be preoccupied with their relationships, worry about their partner’s commitment, and seek validation. Anxious partners often are hypersensitive to possible threats to a relationship.
Avoidant attachment: May struggle with emotional intimacy and commitment. May avoid emotional vulnerability, have difficulty trusting others, and value being extremely independent and self-sufficient. Avoidant partners often create emotional distance in relationships and find it hard to create deep emotional connections.
Disorganized attachment: May have challenges regulating emotions and forming stable relationships. May exhibit erratic behaviors, struggle with self-esteem, and have difficulty trusting others. This attachment style is often the result of severe childhood abuse and neglect.

Attachment styles may also be looked at as defensive strategies. We have a negative bias toward the world, looking for signs of danger in order to protect ourselves from harm. When we spot something in the environment that matches with something that has harmed us in the past, we’re geared toward protecting ourselves against it.

As a result, many people are on the lookout for challenges they faced as a child in their first examples of attachment (generally from caretakers or parents), and will protect themselves in ways that are intended to be protective, but actually cause more problems in their relationship.

Can Attachment Styles Change?

The good news is that research shows adults can develop "earned secure attachment" and change unhealthy patterns, even if they didn't have a secure bond as children. However, many people remain unaware of how their attachment style drives their behavior and perpetuates relationship struggles.

Psychotherapy has proven highly effective for modifying attachment styles and their associated patterns. Studies support the long-lasting benefits of therapeutic interventions. Other helpful practices include:

Having positive relationship experiences that challenge old expectations
Engaging in mindfulness to increase emotional awareness
Building communication and emotional regulation skills

How Therapy Can Help

In our sessions, I'll help you:

Understand your attachment style and how it influences your relationships
Recognize and change unhealthy patterns around conflict, communication, and boundaries
Build self-esteem and get in touch with your true needs and values
Explore the root causes in your personal history and past relationships
Work through issues like codependency, commitment fears, and sexual intimacy concerns
Learn to identify unproductive defensiveness and open up to greater vulnerability
Develop strategies to have productive disagreements instead of painful conflicts

The path to empowered, fulfilling relationships begins with self-awareness. If you’re interested in seeing whether therapy could help you, feel free to reach out and schedule an introductory call with me.

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