Attachment-Based Therapy
A Developmental Approach to Understanding Patterns, Safety, and Change
Attachment-based therapy looks at how early relational experiences shape the way we regulate emotions, relate to others, and experience ourselves in adulthood. Rather than focusing on symptoms alone, it explores the underlying patterns that keep repeating, even when you’re self-aware and trying hard to change.
At LOOP, attachment is not treated as a label or personality type. It’s a framework for understanding how safety, connection, and emotional regulation develop, and how they can continue to develop across adulthood.
Attachment Therapy Explained
What is attachment-based therapy?
Attachment-based therapy focuses on how humans learn to feel safe, connected, and regulated through relationships. When early relationships (usually with our parents) were inconsistent, overwhelming, or emotionally unavailable, the nervous system adapts in ways that once made sense.
In adulthood, these adaptations can show up as anxiety, emotional shutdown, people-pleasing, conflict cycles, or feeling disconnected from yourself or others. Attachment-based therapy works with these patterns as understandable responses, not personal flaws. This lens underpins both individual therapy and couples therapy at LOOP.
How attachment patterns form and persist
Attachment patterns form early, often before language or conscious memory. They shape how we respond under stress, how close we allow others to get, and how we manage emotions internally.
Because these patterns are learned at an emotional and nervous system level, they tend to persist even when we understand them intellectually. Therapy focuses on creating the conditions for new learning to occur, rather than trying to override old patterns through logic alone.
Why insight alone often isn’t enough
Many people coming to attachment-based therapy are thoughtful, reflective, and self-aware. They understand their history and can name their patterns, yet still feel reactive or stuck in real moments.
Attachment work recognises that change happens through experience, regulation, and relationship. Therapy therefore works beyond insight, supporting emotional awareness, nervous system stability, and new relational experiences (with your therapist and beyond) over time. This principle is central to our therapeutic approach.
Core principles of attachment-based work
While therapists may draw on different methods and frameworks, attachment-based therapy at LOOP is guided by a shared set of principles:
Collaboration: therapy is a shared process, paced and shaped with you
Emotional awareness: developing the capacity to notice and stay with internal experience
Mentalisation: understanding your own inner world and the inner worlds of others
Relational safety: using the therapeutic relationship as a place for new learning
Development over time: supporting gradual, lasting change rather than quick fixes
These principles allow flexibility in approach while maintaining depth and consistency of care.
What attachment-based therapy focuses on
Attachment-based therapy often involves:
Understanding repeating emotional or relational patterns
Exploring how safety, closeness, and distance are managed
Supporting emotional regulation and tolerance
Developing a more stable internal sense of self
Creating new relational experiences that support change
The work unfolds gradually and is adapted to your capacity and goals.
What attachment-based therapy is not
Attachment-based therapy is not:
A quiz to determine your attachment style
About blaming parents or caregivers
A rigid or one-size-fits-all model
Focused only on symptom reduction
At LOOP, attachment is used as a guiding lens, not a box to put people in.
Who attachment-based therapy can help
This approach is often helpful if you:
Feel stuck despite previous therapy or self-work
Struggle with emotional regulation or overwhelm
Experience repeating relationship patterns
Feel disconnected, guarded, or unsure how to be yourself
Want therapy that goes deeper than coping strategies
Many of these themes are explored in individual therapy, and when they show up relationally, in couples therapy.
Attachment-based therapy in relationships
In relationships, attachment patterns often appear as predictable interaction cycles. One partner may seek closeness while the other withdraws, or conflicts may escalate quickly despite good intentions.
Attachment-based couples therapy focuses on understanding what each person is protecting and needing underneath these patterns. The aim is to increase emotional safety, slow reactivity, and support new ways of relating over time. You can learn more about this work on our couples therapy page.
What change can look like
Change in attachment-based therapy is often gradual and cumulative. People may notice:
Greater emotional steadiness under stress
Increased capacity for closeness without overwhelm
Less reactivity in relationships
A stronger sense of internal safety and self-trust
These shifts develop through consistent, relational work rather than techniques alone.
Attachment-based therapy at LOOP
At LOOP, therapists work from attachment-based, relational, and trauma-aware foundations. Individual practitioners may draw on different evidence-based frameworks, but all work within a shared commitment to collaboration, emotional safety, and meaningful change over time.
You can read common questions on our FAQs page, or explore whether individual therapy or couples therapy feels like the right next step.