Attachment-Based Therapy
The way you learned to connect as a child still shapes how you love, fight, and trust today. Understanding these patterns is the first step toward changing them.
Why Your First Relationships Still Matter
Attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby and later expanded by Mary Ainsworth, reveals something fundamental about human nature: we're wired for connection from birth. Infants don't just need food and shelter—they need attuned, responsive caregivers to develop properly.
When caregivers are consistently responsive, children learn that relationships are safe and that their needs matter. When caregivers are unpredictable, dismissive, or frightening, children adapt. They might become hypervigilant about relationships (anxious attachment), learn to suppress their needs (avoidant attachment), or develop confused strategies (disorganized attachment).
Here's what's crucial: these adaptations were intelligent responses to your specific environment. They helped you survive. But strategies that worked in childhood often cause problems in adult relationships. You're trying to navigate present relationships with software designed for a different operating system.
How Attachment Shows Up
Secure Attachment
Comfortable with intimacy and independence. Can ask for what you need, tolerate disappointment, and trust that relationships can weather conflict. This is where therapy aims to help you move toward.
Anxious Attachment
Highly attuned to relationships but often worried. You might need frequent reassurance, fear abandonment, or feel like you care more than your partner. Silence feels threatening. Closeness feels urgent.
Avoidant Attachment
Value independence highly, sometimes at the cost of connection. You might pull away when things get intense, struggle to share vulnerably, or feel suffocated by partners who need closeness. You learned self-reliance because depending on others wasn't safe.
Disorganized Attachment
A mix of anxious and avoidant patterns, often resulting from caregivers who were both source of comfort and source of fear. You might desperately want closeness while simultaneously pushing it away. Relationships feel confusing and intense.
When Attachment Patterns Cause Problems
Maybe you keep choosing partners who aren't available. Maybe you push people away right when things get good. Maybe you feel clingy and hate yourself for it, or emotionally numb when you want to feel connected. Maybe you can't stop the anxious spiral when someone doesn't text back, or you shut down the moment someone wants to talk about feelings.
These aren't character flaws. They're attachment patterns—and they make perfect sense given your history. An anxious style developed because unpredictable caregiving taught you to stay hypervigilant. An avoidant style developed because emotional needs got dismissed or rejected.
The good news: attachment patterns can change. Not through willpower or self-help books, but through new relational experiences. Therapy provides exactly that—a consistent, responsive relationship where you can safely explore vulnerability and develop new patterns.
How Attachment-Based Therapy Works
Mapping Your Patterns
We explore how attachment shows up in your life—in romantic relationships, friendships, family, even at work. Not just intellectually, but in the emotional reactions that feel automatic and hard to control.
Understanding the Origins
We connect present patterns to past experiences—not to blame anyone, but to understand why you developed these strategies. This often brings compassion for yourself and clarity about what you actually needed.
Experiencing Something Different
The therapeutic relationship itself becomes a new experience. When I respond differently than your nervous system expects—staying present when you push away, not overwhelming when you need space—your patterns slowly update.
Practicing New Patterns
As you develop more security, we work on applying it outside therapy. This means risking vulnerability, tolerating uncertainty, and trusting differently—but now with a stronger foundation.
When Attachment Work Makes Sense
Relationship Patterns
You keep ending up in the same kinds of relationships or making the same mistakes
Fear of Abandonment
Anxiety spikes when partners need space, or you interpret distance as rejection
Difficulty with Closeness
You pull away when relationships get serious or feel suffocated by intimacy
Trust Issues
Hard to rely on others, even when they've proven reliable
Emotional Intensity
Relationships feel all-or-nothing, with big highs and devastating lows
Parent Relationships
Unresolved issues with parents affecting current relationships
Culturally-Attuned Attachment Work
Attachment is central to how I understand human struggles and healing. I believe the therapeutic relationship isn't just a container for treatment—it's the treatment. The consistency, attunement, and safety we build together is where change happens.
For AAPI clients and children of immigrants, attachment patterns often intersect with cultural dynamics: different expectations about emotional expression, family loyalty, independence, and what "healthy" relationships look like. Many clients grew up with caregivers who loved them deeply but struggled to show it in Western-typical ways. Others carry intergenerational attachment patterns shaped by immigration, war, or cultural trauma.
I work with these complexities without judgment, helping you understand your attachment history in its full cultural context while building patterns that work for your life now.
Attachment Principles Across Services
I integrate attachment understanding into all my therapy work.
That's completely normal. Attachment patterns often show up in present-day relationships and emotions, not just explicit memories. We work with what's happening now—how you react when someone pulls away, what makes you feel safe or unsafe—and use that to understand deeper patterns.
The Pearly Therapy