Before moving into attachment coaching, I spent thirty years working as a doctor in the UK.
In 2021, during the second half of the pandemic, the wheels came off my own life, in ways that I was at a loss to explain.
In the process of trying to understand what had happened, I discovered Attachment Theory.
And everything fell into place.
Not only did it explain what was going on for me at the time, it shone a light on patterns that had been shaping my decisions, my relationships, and my choices for much of my adult life.
What drew me to attachment theory was not just the explanation it provided. By examining the anatomy of a single triggering moment, attachment theory allows us to uncover the pattern driving it and identify precisely the points where the pattern can be changed. This offers the possibility of lasting, meaningful change without heavy reliance on lengthy, and sometimes unfocussed exploration of the past.
To my mind, it was beautiful in its simplicity and precision.
Moving from medicine to attachment coaching may seem like an unusual choice, but having experienced the change that attachment work brought to my own life, wanting to share that experience with others felt inevitable.
The language of medicine and psychology may be quite different, but the skills they require are remarkably similar, and the transition from one to the other was almost seamless. Today, I practice attachment coaching with the same curiosity, precision, and compassion that previously defined my medical career.
Insecure attachment patterns come with significant costs. They prevent people from developing close relationships, place limits on their careers, and stop them from fully appreciating their own worth.
Seeing people held back in this way, often through no fault of their own, as a consequence of a poor start in life, had always felt like an affront.
Being able to combine my skills and do something about it has brought a level of satisfaction that was missing from my medical career for a long time.
My work with clients is based on a simple underlying principle:
Patterns persist because earlier expectations continue to shape present behaviour.
Change happens when new responses create repeated experiences that update those expectations.
Put more simply: your system is not only reacting to what is happening now.
It is also reacting to what it has learned to expect.
The process is quite simple.
In most situations the behaviour we wish to change is a response to a prediction; an expectation of what, based on previous experience, we believe will happen in a particular type of situation.
For example, we may believe that in a heated discussion our perspective won’t be heard and we’ll be forced to agree to something we don’t want. We may fear that a partner’s slow reply to a text message indicates that they’ve lost interest and are planning to leave us. We may perceive a critical comment from a boss as a sign of general dissatisfaction and ultimately as a threat to our promotion prospects, or our job security.
Often the prediction is accompanied by an underlying belief. Our minds draw conclusions from past experience to make sense of them, the ‘Why’ behind it. X happens because “I’m ‘Y’”, or because “people are ‘Z’”. In Integrated Attachment Theory these beliefs are referred to as ‘Core Wounds’. Examples are things like “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not respected”, or “People can’t be trusted”.
These beliefs often drive much of the distress that follows a triggering event, keeping it alive long after the event itself has passed.
In our work we will explore situations where these types of patterns are at play. We establish the nature of the threat that the behaviour is trying to protect you from, and any underlying belief that you are carrying with it. Repeating this process across multiple events allows us to see how your individual attachment patterns are behaving across all areas of your life.
Once we have an understanding of a pattern we can begin to change it. We start by introducing a different response, gradually at first, then build upon it until we have an alternative that can be leveraged naturally and comfortably. When the new behaviour repeatedly proves to deliver a positive outcome rather than the outcome that was feared, the old prediction weakens and the new response becomes increasingly easy to access, even in situations that would previously have been challenging.
Hand in hand with updating the behaviour, we address any associated beliefs. By providing our minds with concrete examples of alternative experiences that contradict the belief (“Core wound reprogramming” in IAT terms), and harnessing the brain’s neuroplasticity, the old belief recedes as the new one replaces it.
The diagrams show how a protective response becomes automatic, and how it can be updated.
Many people with insecure attachment styles operate in a perpetual state of Fight, Fright, or Flight. Their nervous systems are wired to scan the horizon for threats.
This state predisposes to over-reaction, and it depletes us and harms our health. I teach all my clients techniques that switch the nervous system out of this ‘survival mode’, and restore a sense of peace.
We all need certain things in our life. Safety. Significance. Love. Connection. And so on.
When those needs aren’t fulfilled, we react to everything differently and life feels incomplete.
You’ll come to recognise your needs, learn how to meet them yourself, how to communicate them and how to be comfortable when they are met by others.
Communicating effectively increases the likelihood of achieving any desired outcome. It can make the difference between someone being receptive, and the conversation going well, or defensive, and ending in an argument.
People don’t mind read. You’re unlikely to get what you want if you don’t convey clearly what ‘what you want’ actually looks like. You’ll learn how to communicate these things clearly and specifically.
You’ll also learn to anticipate what others’ triggers may be and how to disarm them pro-actively before they can intervene and sabotage a conversation.
Most insecure attachment styles are challenged by boundary setting. You’ll become aware of your boundaries, learn how to set them with others and recognise when a different approach is needed.
Whether it’s a specific problem you’re struggling with, or you’re looking to change patterns that affect several areas of life at once, my process can help.
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