Attachment-Based Therapy
Understand your relationship patterns, heal emotional wounds, and build the secure connections you deserve
Do relationships feel more complicated than they should? Maybe you find yourself craving connection but pulling away when someone gets too close. Or you become anxious the moment someone seems distant, replaying conversations and wondering what you did wrong. Perhaps you notice a pattern—you either chase love desperately or shut people out entirely, and no matter how hard you try, relationships leave you feeling exhausted, unsure, or never quite safe.
These patterns aren't random, and they don't mean something is fundamentally wrong with you. How you experience relationships as adults is deeply shaped by your earliest attachment experiences—how you were cared for as a child, whether you felt safe expressing emotions, and what you learned about trusting others. When those early experiences felt unpredictable, dismissive, or unsafe, they create patterns that follow you into every relationship you have.
Attachment-based therapy helps you make sense of these patterns, understand where they come from, and heal the emotional wounds that keep you stuck. Whether you struggle with trust, intimacy, self-worth, or fear of abandonment, therapy can help you build more secure connections—starting with the relationship you have with yourself.
You Can Learn to Love and Be Loved Differently
At Sagebrush Counseling, I offer attachment-informed therapy to help you move toward healthier, more fulfilling relationships.
This work isn't about blaming your past or your parents—it's about understanding how early experiences shaped your nervous system and relationship blueprint, and then gently building new, more secure patterns.
Understanding Attachment Styles
Attachment theory identifies four main attachment styles that develop in childhood and influence how we relate to others throughout our lives. Recognizing your attachment style is the first step toward changing patterns that no longer serve you.
Secure Attachment
You feel comfortable with intimacy and independence. You trust others, communicate your needs directly, and handle conflict without excessive anxiety or avoidance. You had caregivers who were consistently responsive and attuned.
Anxious Attachment
You crave closeness but worry constantly about rejection or abandonment. You might overthink texts, need frequent reassurance, or feel like you love more than you're loved. Early caregiving was inconsistent—sometimes warm, sometimes unavailable.
Avoidant Attachment
You value independence highly and feel uncomfortable with too much emotional closeness. You might pull away when relationships get serious, struggle to express vulnerability, or dismiss your emotional needs. Caregivers may have been distant or emotionally unavailable.
Disorganized Attachment
You experience a confusing mix of craving and fearing closeness. You might push people away and then panic when they leave, or feel chaotic and unpredictable in relationships. This often develops when caregivers were the source of both comfort and fear.
Attachment Styles Can Change
Your attachment style isn't fixed. With awareness, intention, and therapeutic support, you can develop what's called "earned secure attachment"—learning to relate to yourself and others with greater safety, trust, and emotional balance, regardless of how you started.
Who Benefits from Attachment Therapy
Attachment-based therapy helps people who recognize that their relationship patterns keep repeating, no matter who they're with.
- You struggle with trust and constantly question if people really care about you
- You feel anxious in relationships, needing constant reassurance or fearing abandonment
- You pull away when people get too close or have difficulty opening up emotionally
- You notice a pattern of choosing unavailable partners or sabotaging good relationships
- You experienced childhood trauma, neglect, or inconsistent caregiving
- You've been through betrayal or infidelity and your attachment style has shifted
- You want to break cycles from your family of origin before they affect your own children
- You struggle with self-worth and feel undeserving of love
How Attachment Therapy Works
Attachment-based therapy addresses both the psychological and physiological aspects of relationship patterns.
- Understanding your attachment style and where it came from
- Identifying triggers and patterns in your current relationships
- Processing early attachment wounds with compassion and care
- Learning to regulate your nervous system when triggered
- Developing new, healthier relationship skills and behaviors
- Building self-compassion and secure self-attachment
- Practicing vulnerability and emotional expression in safe ways
- Creating corrective emotional experiences in therapy
Attachment and Betrayal: When Trust Is Broken
Betrayal in relationships—whether through infidelity, deception, or broken promises—can profoundly impact your attachment style. Even if you previously felt secure in relationships, experiencing betrayal can shift you toward anxious or avoidant patterns as your nervous system learns that closeness equals danger.
The aftermath of betrayal often involves hypervigilance, difficulty trusting, intrusive thoughts, and either clinging tightly to your partner or pulling away completely. These responses aren't weaknesses—they're your attachment system trying to protect you from being hurt again. But they can also keep you trapped in cycles of pain and disconnection.
Attachment-informed therapy after betrayal helps you understand how the experience has affected your attachment style, process the trauma of broken trust, rebuild your sense of safety (whether in the same relationship or future ones), and decide what secure attachment looks like for you moving forward. Healing is possible, and you don't have to do it alone.
Learn more about how betrayal impacts different attachment styles and what healing looks like in our blog resources below.
Understanding Attachment After Betrayal
Understand the profound ways infidelity and betrayal can shift your attachment patterns and relationship behaviors.
Explore how betrayal intensifies anxious attachment patterns and what healing looks like when you struggle with fear of abandonment.
Learn how avoidantly attached individuals respond to betrayal and the unique challenges they face in healing.
Discover how betrayal affects those with disorganized attachment and the path toward greater security and stability.
Understand how even securely attached individuals are impacted by betrayal and how they can rebuild trust.
Learn whether attachment styles can shift after infidelity and what it takes to develop earned secure attachment.
What You'll Gain from Attachment Therapy
Attachment-based therapy doesn't just help you understand your patterns—it helps you transform them. Through this work, you can develop deeper self-awareness about your relationship needs and triggers, learn to regulate emotional responses instead of being controlled by them, build genuine intimacy without losing yourself or pushing others away, trust your judgment about who is safe and who isn't, communicate your needs clearly and handle conflict constructively, break intergenerational patterns so they don't affect your children, and develop compassion for yourself and your journey.
Most importantly, you'll learn that your attachment wounds don't define you. With support and practice, you can create the secure, fulfilling relationships you've always wanted—starting with how you relate to yourself.
Explore our therapeutic approaches to understand the methods we use in attachment work.
Online Attachment Therapy Across Texas
All attachment therapy sessions are conducted online through secure, HIPAA-compliant video conferencing. This allows you to access specialized attachment-informed therapy from anywhere in Texas.
Online therapy can actually enhance attachment work because it allows you to process difficult emotions in the safety and comfort of your own space. You can take time between sessions to practice new relationship skills in your daily life and bring those experiences back to therapy. The consistency of regular online sessions also helps build the secure therapeutic relationship that serves as a foundation for healing attachment wounds.
Learn more about how online therapy works and what to expect from virtual sessions.
Learn More
Learn about your attachment therapist's background and approach
Explore other therapy services we offer
Understand the virtual therapy process
Learn about our integrative therapeutic methods
Find answers to common questions about therapy
Begin Healing Your Attachment Patterns
Schedule a free consultation to discuss how attachment-based therapy can help you build the secure, loving relationships you deserve.
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