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When your relationship with yourself feels unmanageable, it’s hard to build a secure or stable relationship with anyone else.
- Withdrawing in relationships – Avoiding closeness to protect themselves from rejection or emotional pain
- Fear of abandonment or intimacy – Feeling anxious about being left, betrayed, or getting too close
- Difficulty trusting others – Struggling to rely on people or open up emotionally
- Intense or unstable emotions – Feeling overwhelmed or unable to regulate emotional responses
- Low self-worth – Carrying a deep sense of not being good enough or needing constant reassurance
- Emotional numbing or dissociation – Disconnecting from feelings or the body as a way to cope
- People-pleasing or over-functioning – Trying to maintain safety by avoiding conflict or staying in control
- Physical symptoms with no clear cause – Headaches, chronic tension, or fatigue linked to unresolved emotional pain
- Mental health challenges – Including anxiety, depression, PTSD, or traits of borderline personality disorder
- Impulsive or addictive behaviours – Using substances, sex, food, or other distractions to escape emotional discomfort
Attachment trauma often begins in childhood when a caregiver wasn’t emotionally present, consistent, or safe enough to meet your needs. Without that early attunement, you may have learned to suppress your emotions, stay hyper-alert to others’ moods, or disconnect entirely — all as a way to feel safe. In response, you developed unhealthy (maladaptive) coping strategies to regulate your moods and self-worth. These survival strategies can follow you into adulthood, showing up as unstable relationships, low self-worth, poor boundaries, or a nervous system that constantly feels either overwhelmed or numb. Individuals with attachment injuries often struggle with:
Maya Angelou
"Nothing will work unless you do"
Attachment Trauma
As someone who has experienced the confusion and deep loneliness that comes with disorganised attachment, I understand what it’s like to long for connection but feel unsafe in it. That push-pull of needing closeness while fearing it can be exhausting and isolating — even in a committed relationship. My approach is attachment trauma-informed, grounded in both lived experience and evidence-based clinical practice. If you choose to see me for therapy, our work may include:
You don’t have to keep surviving relationships. With the right support, you can learn to feel safe in them — starting with the one you have with yourself.
I’m here to help you when you’re ready.
- Gaining insight into your attachment style and how it shapes your relationships
- Exploring how attachment injuries are impacting your marriage or partnership
- Engaging in inner child task-work to reconnect with early emotional wounds
- Using mindfulness practices to support emotional regulation and foster spiritual connection
- Receiving psychoeducation that brings clarity and reduces shame around your patterns
- Drawing from Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) to repair and strengthen emotional bonds
- Working with Internal Family Systems (IFS) to resolve inner conflict and promote self-trust
- Applying somatic techniques to help regulate your nervous system and build internal safety
You don’t have to keep surviving relationships. With the right support, you can learn to feel safe in them — starting with the one you have with yourself.
I’m here to help you when you’re ready.
Attachment-Focused Trauma Therapy with Me
When your nervous system has been shaped by inconsistent, neglectful, or unsafe relationships, it doesn’t just “get over it” because you’re now an adult. Insecure attachment can affect everything — how you love, how you fight, how you trust, and how you see yourself. You may feel like you’re too much, not enough, or constantly chasing reassurance that never really lands. You might find yourself stuck in chaotic relationships, pushing people away, or repeating patterns you swore you'd never fall back into. It’s exhausting, lonely, and can leave you questioning what’s wrong with you.
Isn’t it time you felt better?
Isn’t it time you felt better?
Living With an Insecure Attachment is Painful
Disorganised attachment — often rooted in trauma, neglect, or frightening early caregiving — is marked by a deep, internal conflict: the person you turn to for safety is also the person you fear. As adults, this unresolved fear and longing can lead to relationships that feel confusing, unstable, or emotionally unsafe.
In romantic relationships, individuals with disorganised attachment often swing between anxious clinging and avoidant withdrawal. They may crave intimacy one moment and push it away the next, overwhelmed by mistrust or fear of being hurt. Partners often describe the relationship as chaotic, unpredictable, or emotionally volatile.
This pattern can include sudden emotional outbursts, intense fear of abandonment, and shutting down without warning. It’s not uncommon to feel out of control — needing constant reassurance, then feeling trapped when it’s given. There may also be a history of trauma bonding, staying in toxic or abusive relationships despite knowing they’re harmful.
Disorganised attachment isn’t about being "too much" or "not enough." It’s the nervous system doing its best to survive in a relationship blueprint that never felt safe. But without help, the cycle continues — chasing love, fearing love, and never quite feeling secure in either.
In romantic relationships, individuals with disorganised attachment often swing between anxious clinging and avoidant withdrawal. They may crave intimacy one moment and push it away the next, overwhelmed by mistrust or fear of being hurt. Partners often describe the relationship as chaotic, unpredictable, or emotionally volatile.
This pattern can include sudden emotional outbursts, intense fear of abandonment, and shutting down without warning. It’s not uncommon to feel out of control — needing constant reassurance, then feeling trapped when it’s given. There may also be a history of trauma bonding, staying in toxic or abusive relationships despite knowing they’re harmful.
Disorganised attachment isn’t about being "too much" or "not enough." It’s the nervous system doing its best to survive in a relationship blueprint that never felt safe. But without help, the cycle continues — chasing love, fearing love, and never quite feeling secure in either.
What Disorganised Attachment Looks Like
Avoidant attachment often develops when closeness in early relationships felt unsafe, overwhelming, or met with rejection. As adults, those with avoidant patterns tend to suppress emotional needs — both their own and others’ — and view vulnerability as a threat rather than a bridge to connection.
In relationships, this often looks like emotional distance, shutting down during conflict, or feeling smothered by a partner’s need for closeness. They may intellectualise feelings, prioritise independence, and avoid commitment under the guise of needing “space” or not being ready. Partners often describe them as detached, dismissive, or unwilling to “go there” emotionally.
Signs are often subtle: missed calls ignored, deep conversations deflected, physical affection reduced over time. They may have a history of short-lived relationships, or remain in long-term ones while keeping their emotional world completely closed off. When tension rises, their instinct is to withdraw — physically, emotionally, or sexually — rather than repair.
Avoidantly attached individuals aren’t unfeeling; they’re often overwhelmed by feelings they never learned to tolerate. But in protecting themselves from vulnerability, they unintentionally keep their partners — and connection — at arm’s length.
In relationships, this often looks like emotional distance, shutting down during conflict, or feeling smothered by a partner’s need for closeness. They may intellectualise feelings, prioritise independence, and avoid commitment under the guise of needing “space” or not being ready. Partners often describe them as detached, dismissive, or unwilling to “go there” emotionally.
Signs are often subtle: missed calls ignored, deep conversations deflected, physical affection reduced over time. They may have a history of short-lived relationships, or remain in long-term ones while keeping their emotional world completely closed off. When tension rises, their instinct is to withdraw — physically, emotionally, or sexually — rather than repair.
Avoidantly attached individuals aren’t unfeeling; they’re often overwhelmed by feelings they never learned to tolerate. But in protecting themselves from vulnerability, they unintentionally keep their partners — and connection — at arm’s length.
What Avoidant Attachment Looks Like
Anxious attachment, sometimes referred to as love addiction, isn’t a fixation on love itself — it’s a dependency on emotional intensity and fantasy. Individuals with this pattern often idealise their partner and orient their entire emotional world around them, chasing the illusion of security and connection. The partner becomes the central source of self-worth, comfort, and identity.
This often includes obsessive behaviours — replaying conversations, anxiously waiting for replies, and being unable to function when the relationship feels uncertain. Red flags are dismissed or minimised. These can include addiction, uncontrolled anger, infidelity, legal or financial issues, emotional unavailability, or an inability to function as an adult.
Despite significant emotional cost, the pursuit continues. They may withdraw from friends, abandon personal goals, and feel miserable unless they are in constant connection with their partner. When the relationship inevitably becomes chaotic or disappointing, breakups are followed by intense reunions driven by hope that this time things will change.
They usually don’t.
These relationships often end when the partner leaves — or when the person with anxious attachment finally recognises that no amount of chasing, hoping, or sacrificing will turn this connection into what they’ve imagined. Sometimes, they move on in search of a new partner to recreate the high. Other times, with the right support, they begin the real work: understanding their attachment wounds, breaking the cycle, and learning how to build connection that’s secure, mutual, and grounded in reality.
This often includes obsessive behaviours — replaying conversations, anxiously waiting for replies, and being unable to function when the relationship feels uncertain. Red flags are dismissed or minimised. These can include addiction, uncontrolled anger, infidelity, legal or financial issues, emotional unavailability, or an inability to function as an adult.
Despite significant emotional cost, the pursuit continues. They may withdraw from friends, abandon personal goals, and feel miserable unless they are in constant connection with their partner. When the relationship inevitably becomes chaotic or disappointing, breakups are followed by intense reunions driven by hope that this time things will change.
They usually don’t.
These relationships often end when the partner leaves — or when the person with anxious attachment finally recognises that no amount of chasing, hoping, or sacrificing will turn this connection into what they’ve imagined. Sometimes, they move on in search of a new partner to recreate the high. Other times, with the right support, they begin the real work: understanding their attachment wounds, breaking the cycle, and learning how to build connection that’s secure, mutual, and grounded in reality.