Some people come to therapy after an event they can point to. Others cannot point to anything, and that is often the more confusing place to be. Nothing happened that would sound serious if you said it out loud, and yet closeness is difficult, conflict is unbearable, and some part of you has always been braced for the other person to leave.
Attachment trauma describes injuries that happened inside relationships that were supposed to be safe, usually early and usually repeatedly. Not a single incident but a pattern: a parent who was warm one day and unreachable the next, or present in body and absent otherwise, or who needed managing so consistently that you learned to read a room before you learned to read.
How it tends to show up later
Rarely as a memory. More often as a set of things you assume are simply your personality.
Needing a great deal of reassurance and then feeling ashamed of needing it. Going cold in an argument and not being able to explain why. Choosing people who are unavailable. Achieving a great deal and feeling nothing much when you do. Feeling most at ease in relationships where slightly too little is on offer, because that is the familiar amount.
These are adaptations. They were reasonable responses to the conditions you were in, and they usually keep running long after the conditions change.
Why ordinary talk therapy sometimes stalls here
Many people arrive having already spent years in therapy that helped and did not resolve this. That is common, and it is not a failure of effort on your part.
Attachment injuries are laid down early, often before language, and they are held as expectation rather than as narrative. You can understand your childhood in considerable detail and still flinch when someone gets close. Insight and relief are not the same thing, and reaching one does not automatically deliver the other.
How I work with it
Usually with attachment-focused EMDR, which works on the experiences underneath the pattern rather than only on the pattern itself. Before that, we build stability using Trauma Resiliency Model skills, so that going toward difficult material does not simply flood you.
Internal Family Systems earns its place here too, because attachment wounds tend to produce fierce protectors. The part that withdraws, or that gets contemptuous, or that decides in advance not to want anything, is doing a job it took on young. Working with it rather than against it is usually what allows movement.
When the pattern is playing out in a current relationship, this work often runs alongside Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, either for both partners or for one.
What to expect
This is not brief work and I would rather say so at the start. Patterns built over years of childhood do not resolve in six sessions, and any therapist promising otherwise is selling something.
What people usually notice first is not a memory changing but a reaction losing its grip: the flinch arriving smaller, the argument not swallowing the whole weekend, the ability to say what you need without it costing quite so much.
Practical details
Sessions are $260 for 50 minutes, in person in Los Angeles or by video anywhere in California. See the rates page for fees and superbills, and the telehealth page for how online sessions work.
Talk to me first
We can speak at no cost before you commit to anything, and you do not need to have it organized before you call. (310) 926-4001 or the contact page.