Clearwater, Florida & online statewide
Attachment-based therapy for adults who've read the books, named the style, and still find themselves doing the same thing in every close relationship.
Where most people start
Attachment language is everywhere now, and that's mostly good — it gave a lot of people their first accurate words for something that had never made sense.
But a category isn't a mechanism. Knowing you lean anxious explains why you reread a text forty times. It doesn't tell you what to do at the moment your chest tightens and you reach for the phone anyway. That gap between insight and change is where most people get stuck, and it's the part this work is actually for.
Closeness is comfortable; so is being apart. Repair after conflict feels possible rather than catastrophic.
Connection registers as relief rather than safety. Distance reads as danger, and the reaching-out feels compulsory.
Independence came first because it had to. Needing someone can feel more exposing than being alone ever did.
The pull toward closeness and the alarm about it arrive together. Often where trauma and attachment overlap most.
Worth saying plainly: these aren't four boxes people belong in. Attachment sits on continuums, shifts with the relationship you're in, and moves over a lifetime — including in response to therapy. If you didn't recognize yourself cleanly in any of the above, that's typical, not a sign you've misread yourself.
Attachment patterns were learned in relationship. They tend to change in relationship too.Emily Barbosa, [LMHC]
How this actually goes
The therapeutic relationship is the instrument here, not the setting. That's why pace and fit matter more than technique.
Not childhood first. The pattern shows up in current relationships, and that's where it's workable.
Trauma work that outruns your capacity to stay present isn't brave, it's counterproductive. Pacing is a clinical decision, not a courtesy.
The patterns you bring to close relationships tend to show up here too. Naming that when it happens is often the most useful thing in the room.
Approach follows what a particular person needs, rather than one method applied to everyone.
Who this fits
People often arrive here having done real work already — coping skills that hold, a diagnosis that fits, a therapist they liked. And a persistent sense that something underneath never got touched.
Common ground among the people I see: relationships that follow the same arc every time. Childhood that looked fine on paper. Difficulty needing anything from anyone. A partner who says you shut down, and no felt sense of doing it. Grief that arrived late.
If none of that sounds like you but the word attachment keeps catching, that's reason enough to have a conversation.
Practical details
Getting started
Fifteen minutes to hear what's going on and tell you honestly whether I'm the right person. If I'm not, I'll help you find who is.