How Your Attachment Style Can Influence Therapy

"One of the auxiliary benefits of therapy, no matter what you've come to discuss, is that it helps you develop healthy attachment. It occurs because therapy is a process that keeps and nourishes clear boundaries, respectful communication, non-judgement, and acceptance, while you explore the freedom to be yourself (because everybody else is taken, remember?).You do it together with your therapist, in a therapeutic alliance-hand-in-hand mutual work, by building a working relationship with them."

"However, people who didn't have the experience of healthy attachment in their early life may experience all of the aforementioned things as something negative, resembling an unhealthy dependency, and feel it is dangerous.It is especially relevant for people who grew up with narcissistic, addicted, or alcoholic parents, or parents with mental disorders or with severe PTSD. In their altered state of mind, these parents may not have been able to distinguish right from wrong,"

Therapy provides a corrective relational experience that cultivates healthy attachment via clear boundaries, respectful communication, non-judgement, and acceptance. The therapeutic alliance involves collaborative, mutual work between client and therapist that models safe dependency and a working relationship. Individuals who lacked healthy early attachment may interpret therapeutic care as dangerous dependency, particularly those raised by narcissistic, addicted, alcoholic, or mentally ill caregivers or caregivers with severe PTSD. Early caregiving disruptions can impair caregivers' capacity to distinguish emotions and reality. Attachment style influences therapy processes and outcomes, with secure attachment predicting better results and increases in security linking to improved outcomes.

Read at Psychology Today