Attachment Disorders

At Family Resilience, our therapists have studied the factors that comprise attachment.  They are adept at spotting difficulties in attachment and helping parents learn attachment repairs.

For a child with attachment difficulties:  We will want to together apply the concepts of window of tolerance, the call and response nature of attachment and the need for touch in a child.  We can help you find an authenticity that is crucial with children with attachment challenges, but also a rock solid presence as a parent.  Too much reactivity, we find, can throw fuel on the reactive fire!

Together we’ll also assess which milestones of development have been met, which have not.  We’ll help parents understand a need to repair, often, with a child.  Many children with attachment are also adopted:  read more about adoption support here.  We’ll assess parents’ attachment patterns for a fit with their child and discuss the components of attachment so that parents know how to best help their child feel secure.

Teens with attachment disorder take extraordinary patience.  A team approach of support for both parents and teens is important here to manage explosiveness, self-harm, destructiveness or depression.  The FRG team will want to accomplish the task laid out for children, as well as helping with the many transitions of the young adult time of life; helping hold consistency in the face of chaos, at times.

• A heads up that both parent and child support will be important here.  We can’t work only with your child for a family with attachment issues.

Adults can be carrying attachment wounds as well.  They often look like having difficulties in relationships, especially around “space” (determining how close or far to be). .  Examples:  You stay to yourself more often or aren’t sure how to make friends;  You make a friend but feel anxiously attached, often worried, if they are there for you. It’s a tough concept to intuitively manage if you were not raised in a family that knew how to navigate relationships.  So we start with kindness  (you’re trying your hardest!) then use our signature mind/body  techniques to help you calm, to feel more comfortable in your own skin.  We recommend our co-regulating touch bodywork, but understand that that might be out of your comfort zone at first.  We together understand without shame your usual patterns . . . slowly, warmly.

Attachment repair takes time, genuineness and patience in the room so that you can be a new you.

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