Therapy for Attachment Issues
Therapy for Attachment Issues in Hampshire
The emotional bonds we form early in our lives are responsible for shaping and maintaining all our relationships. If this emotional development is hampered in your childhood, you may experience an inability or diminished capacity to connect with others. This can transform into attachment issues and disorders, which become an obstacle to maintaining healthy relationships in adulthood.
Many people often don’t realise they have attachment issues until they start to affect their bond with people that matter. Acknowledging these issues and asking for help are the initial steps to resolving attachment issues. Therapy can be an effective and lasting solution to fix attachment problems. I welcome you to seek therapy for attachment issues in my Hampshire clinic or online.
To schedule a 15-minute complimentary session, call +44 7584 354041 or email me at info@drmcphee.co.uk.
Understanding Attachment Disorders
Attachment issues, or attachment disorders, stem from negative experiences in early childhood.
Children that have experienced pain, abuse, neglect, or poor bonds with their caregivers often develop insecure attachment or attachment disorders. These issues can also develop in those who have lost one or more parents as a child, who are in foster care, or those who were adopted.
There are two main types of attachment disorders:
This type of attachment disorder results from finding it difficult to form a bond with your parents or primary caregivers as a child, due to early neglect or mistreatment.
When children with RAD are distressed, they don’t respond to the comfort offered. These children may show emotionally dysfunctional behaviour, with symptoms such as being excessively clingy or withdrawn, showing little emotion, or refusing to engage with others.
Adults with RAD are usually detached and withdrawn and avoid displaying affection. They exhibit angry and impulsive behaviours and have trouble maintaining connections and relationships.
DESD, or disinhibited social engagement disorder, involves a behavioural pattern of seeking comfort and attention from anyone but your primary caregivers.
Children with DSED are over-friendly with strangers, don’t exhibit distress when separated from their caregivers, and may prefer interacting with unfamiliar individuals over trusted adults.
This disorder develops when a child with RAD or DESD doesn’t receive proper treatment for their condition. It’s a continuation of the previous attachment disorders, so the individual will continue to show similar symptoms that may affect their adult relationships.
Adults with AAD develop insecure attachment styles, including:
- Anxious attachment (or anxiety attachment disorder)
- Avoidant attachment (or avoidant attachment disorder)
- Disorganised attachment (or disorganised attachment disorder)
The earlier these attachment disorders are identified, the better the chance of preventing long-term effects. If left untreated, attachment disorders may lead to cognitive delays and behavioural issues, as well as affecting your ability to form healthy relationships and increasing your risk of developing anxiety and depression.
What Causes Attachment Issues?
There are multiple underlying causes of attachment issues, including childhood neglect and abuse, inconsistent early care, and foster care or institutional settings.
When children grow up in difficult circumstances, they may struggle to develop bonds that make them feel secure. Over time, this can lead to difficulties in forming and maintaining healthy relationships.
Childhood Neglect and Abuse
When young children are subject to neglect and abuse in their early years, they have a higher risk of developing childhood attachment issues. A young child knows very little about relationships, and these traumatic experiences hinder them from forming strong and secure emotional bonds with caregivers.
Children who have experienced abuse or neglect don’t trust others easily and may control or hide their emotions making it difficult for them to form meaningful relationships.
These early traumatic experiences often affect a child’s self-esteem and social and emotional behaviours into adulthood.
Inconsistent or Inadequate Early Care
Inconsistent and inadequate care in the early years of life can also lead to attachment issues, as children are unable to develop a sense of security and trust in their parents or caregivers. They’re more likely to face confusion, insecurity, and difficulties in forming healthy emotional relationships.
Foster Care or Institutional Settings
Children in foster homes and institutionalised settings, particularly young children or infants, are more likely to develop attachment issues due to frequent changes of caregivers and unpredictable emotional support. The lack of quality attachment makes it difficult for them to trust people.
Challenges Addressed in Attachment Issues Therapy
Therapy for attachment issues is designed to help you understand and resolve the deep emotional patterns that prevent you from building healthy, secure relationships. Below are some of the most common challenges I address in therapy:
Many adults with anxious attachment styles live with a constant fear that people will leave them or stop caring. This fear can lead to overthinking, clinginess, or intense worry about relationships. Therapy helps you develop trust and security, so you no longer feel like you must “earn” love or constantly fear losing it.
If you find it difficult to open up, express emotions, or let people get close to you, it may be rooted in an avoidant attachment style. In therapy, we’ll gently work on creating emotional safety so that vulnerability and intimacy feel less threatening.
Past trauma or betrayal can make it hard to trust anyone, leading to self-sabotage in relationships. Therapy helps rebuild trust first with yourself, and then with others by understanding where these patterns come from and learning healthier ways to connect.
Attachment issues often leave people feeling unworthy of love or acceptance. Through approaches like Schema Therapy and Compassion-Focused Therapy, we work on healing the inner child and building a more positive, compassionate self-image.
If you find yourself repeatedly drawn to emotionally unavailable partners or toxic relationships, therapy helps you identify and break these patterns. We focus on creating a blueprint for healthy, secure connections.
Attachment wounds can lead to intense, overwhelming emotions such as anger, jealousy, or anxiety that feel hard to control. Therapy gives you tools to manage these emotions, fostering calm and emotional resilience.
Some people want closeness but fear being “smothered,” while others push people away to avoid getting hurt. We work together to find balance, so closeness feels safe, and relationships feel stable.
For many, attachment issues stem from early trauma or neglect. Therapy offers a safe space to process these painful experiences, meet unmet emotional needs, and learn how to reparent yourself in a way that feels healing and nurturing.
Treatments for Attachment Issues
My therapy for attachment issues involves various approaches to help adults develop secure attachments and improve their relationships.
In my sessions for therapy for attachment disorders, we’ll engage in a dialogue at your own pace and convenience, where you can talk about the experiences and events that have distressed you. This helps me understand what combination of approaches will work best.
I’m a Chartered Clinical Psychologist with a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and hold an advanced certificate in Schema therapy. In my fifteen years of experience, I’ve been offering a research-backed, compassionate and tailored approach for people struggling with psychological issues, including attachment disorders.
My therapy for attachment disorders blends the best of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), compassion-focused therapy (CFT), and schema therapy techniques, where every session is personalised to fit your needs.
The therapy techniques that I commonly use include:
I will help you identify the schema related to the experiences you had in childhood. By recognising, managing, and healing these maladaptive schemas, I’ll help you become more self-aware and guide you towards forming fulfilling relationships.
Trauma-focused CBT addresses the traumatic experiences associated with attachment disorders. TF-CBT combines CBT techniques with trauma-focused interventions to help you process the traumatic experiences you’ve faced, as well as develop coping skills and resilience, and improve your well-being.
I’ll work with you to understand your predominant attachment style and how it affects your ability to create close, healthy connections with people. We’ll work together to make changes that promote closeness with others and security within yourself.
My Attachment Disorder Therapy Process
Why Choose Dr McPhee for Attatchment Disorder Therapy?
Living with attachment issues can be incredibly challenging. But you don’t have to let your negative childhood experiences affect your adult connections. With my help, you can overcome your past trauma and strengthen your sense of self-worth by learning how to trust others. My therapy for attachment issues can be transformative and powerful and can offer significant benefits in your life.
As your therapist, I’m here to work with you at your pace and guide you as you move away from the overwhelming effects of attachment issues. You can choose between in-person sessions at my Hampshire clinic or online sessions, based on your comfort and convenience. With me as your psychologist and schema therapist, you’ll learn to heal and build better relationships.
Call +44 7584354041 or email me at info@drmcphee.co.uk to schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation.
Attachment issues in adults often show up as difficulties trusting others, fear of abandonment, emotional withdrawal, or being overly clingy in relationships. You might find it hard to form close bonds or feel anxious and insecure when someone pulls away.
Therapy doesn’t erase the past, but it can help you heal and develop healthier ways of relating to others. Many people experience lasting changes as they build self-awareness, trust, and emotional safety through therapy.
No diagnosis is needed. If you notice recurring patterns in your relationships like avoiding closeness, fear of rejection, or intense dependency then therapy can help address these challenges.
The number of sessions varies. Some clients see meaningful changes within a few months, while others benefit from longer-term support, especially if there’s deep-rooted trauma.
Yes, online therapy can be just as effective as face-to-face therapy. It offers the same tools and techniques, helping you explore and heal your attachment patterns in a comfortable and safe space.
Each session is tailored to you. We’ll explore your relationship history, emotional triggers, and current challenges. I use approaches like Schema Therapy and CFT to help you process your experiences, develop self-compassion, and learn healthier ways to connect with others.
Please schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation to explore how we might work together.