Integrative Attachment Therapy

When relationships feel harder than you would like

Attachment-related challenges can take many forms. These are a few experiences you might recognise.

These patterns can appear in intimate relationships, friendships, family life, or professional partnerships. They may also affect your confidence and your freedom to explore what matters to you.

You don’t need to know your attachment style before starting. We begin with an in-depth, collaborative assessment of your attachment patterns and co-design a tailor-made attachment repair journey.

Developing greater security in your relationships

The aim is to gradually build a more dependable sense of relational security, called earned security.

For you, that might mean:

• Feeling more at ease with closeness and independence.
• Building and deepening relationships that feel nourishing.
• Recognising and expressing your needs and boundaries.
• Navigating conflict with greater steadiness.
• Developing a stronger sense of worth and confidence.
• Having more freedom to explore, create, and participate fully in life.
• And many more possible forms of ease, feeling okay in yourself, and freedom.

Security does not mean never feeling anxious, afraid, hurt, or uncertain. It means developing more ways to stay connected to yourself and others when those feelings arise, and to build more secure, mutually nourishing relationships.

How Integrative Attachment Therapy works

Integrative Attachment Therapy brings together three complementary pillars of attachment repair: collaboration, metacognition, and Ideal Parent Figure imagery. These pillars support one another throughout our work, in ways suited to your experience and needs.

We work towards shared goals, bringing together your knowledge of your own experience and my therapeutic understanding. Your needs, preferences, questions, and feedback help shape both the direction and the pace.

Our relationship is also a place to practise collaboration: expressing what matters to you, receiving support, navigating differences, and recognising the value of both your contribution and another person’s. The aim is to develop ways of relating in which you can participate fully without losing yourself.

Metacognition helps you notice and make sense of your thoughts, feelings, bodily responses, and relational patterns. It also involves recognising that what you fear or assume may not be the whole picture, and considering another person’s perspective without losing touch with your own.

Together, we explore what happens when relationships become unsettling. Over time, this work can help you recognise familiar reactions, understand what may be happening within yourself and others, and respond with greater perspective and choice.

Early caregiving experiences can shape what we come to expect from closeness and how we experience ourselves in relationships. Ideal Parent Figure imagery works with these learned expectations through new, embodied experiences of secure caregiving.

With my guidance, you imagine being a young child with parent figures who are distinct from your actual parents and suited to your needs. We explore what helps you feel safe, seen and understood, comforted, valued, and supported in becoming yourself.

Your own imaginative capacities and sense of what you need guide the process. Repeated experiences are intended to support lasting changes in how you feel and respond in relationships, helping you develop an inner sense of the secure caregiving you needed as a child. The aim is for that security to become something you can draw on in daily life.

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!”

Dr David Elliott

Learn more about the Integrative Attachment Therapy approach.

What working together looks like

Beginning with understanding

Our first two or three sessions are usually devoted to building our therapeutic relationship and co-creating an understanding of your likely attachment patterns.

We explore your current relationships, the caregiving conditions you grew up with, and significant relational experiences or trauma, at a pace we agree together. We use this understanding to agree what you would like to develop and shape the work around you.

A full Adult Attachment Interview, with formal scoring and a debrief, may also be considered as an optional addition to the programme. It is not a standard requirement for working with me.

A typical ongoing session

We begin with what feels most relevant: recent experiences, recurring patterns, moments of connection, or situations that have unsettled you.

Through conversation and embodied exploration, we identify material that may inform personalised Ideal Parent Figure imagery. I introduce the IPF protocol when I judge it safe and relevant to our work.

After the imagery, we take time to reflect on the experience, help it settle, and close the session.

Supporting the work between sessions

When the imagery practice has become sufficiently secure and we agree it is appropriate, we may record that part of a session.

You receive two versions: one with both our voices, and one with my guidance alone, so you can revisit the practice independently.

We may also develop a small, personalised practice to explore in daily life. These forms of support, when used, are included in the session fee.

The practical details

Languages

English and French.

Frequency

We usually begin with weekly sessions. As greater security becomes established, we assess your progress together and may agree to meet less frequently, for example, every two weeks, when that is appropriate for you.

First conversation

We begin with a short form about you and what you are looking for. If we seem like a good fit, I’ll invite you to a complimentary 30-minute chemistry call.

Let’s explore working together

Tell me about your current mental health and what you would love to develop through therapy. You’ll also be guided through two self-report attachment assessments and invited to upload the results.

These assessments often offer starting points for reflection, which we can explore together as we look more closely at your attachment patterns in our first sessions. They do not establish a diagnosis or replace that exploration.

Whether or not we go on to work together, I treat everything you share here as strictly confidential.

I read your responses to understand what you are hoping for and whether my experience and approach could support you. If another practitioner or service seems better suited to your needs, I may suggest that instead.

If we seem like a good fit, I’ll invite you to a complimentary 30-minute online chemistry call. We can get a sense of each other, discuss your questions, and explore whether to begin therapy.

Take your time with what you share.

A few questions you may have