Individual Therapy for Attachment Trauma
Counselling for Attachment Trauma & Relational Injury
‘Attachment style’ has become a pop psychology buzzword in the last few years. Maybe you’ve watched a lot of TikTok videos and determined that you’re ‘anxiously attached’ or ‘avoidantly attached’, and now you’re looking for support to go beyond the label.
Maybe you fall hard and fast, and then spend weeks analyzing every text, terrified they'll leave. Maybe you pull away when things get close, not because you don't care, but because getting close feels genuinely dangerous. Maybe you oscillate — craving intimacy and then bolting when you get it. Maybe you keep ending up in the same dynamics, with different people, wondering what's wrong with you.
Nothing is wrong with you. What's happening is attachment injury, and it's one of the most common things I help people work through.
What Is Attachment Trauma?
Attachment trauma or relational injury doesn't always come with a dramatic story. It doesn't require abuse or neglect in the more obvious sense.
It happens when early relationships - with caregivers, family, perhaps early loves - taught your nervous system that closeness was unpredictable, painful, or unsafe. It happens when the people who were supposed to be your safe haven were also a source of fear or pain. When you had to manage your own emotions because there was no one steady enough to help you do it. Perhaps a parent consistently told you told you to “just get over it” when you were upset If love felt conditional, maybe you learned brilliant adaptive strategies to try and stay in connection – or avoid the pain of it.
These early experiences can shape how your nervous system responds to intimacy, conflict, and connection. They create what we call insecure attachment: patterns of relating that were once adaptive and protective, and that now create pain in your closest relationships.
How Attachment Trauma Shows Up in Adult Life
Intense fear of abandonment that drives anxious or controlling behaviour
Difficulty trusting others, even people who have given you every reason to trust them
Emotional flooding in conflict — feeling overwhelmed, reactive, or unable to think clearly
Shutting down or disconnecting when things get intense
Patterns of choosing unavailable partners, or recreating painful dynamics
Feeling fundamentally unloveable or 'too much' for others
Difficulty being alone, or difficulty being truly close
Triggers in relationships that seem disproportionate to the moment
For more on how different attachment styles can manifest, check out my blog post here.
Healing Attachment Wounds in Therapy
Attachment heals in relationship. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes part of the medicine, and your brain and body learn new ways of feeling safe with another person.
Working with me, you'll experience what it feels like to have a steady, attuned, presence. I’ll stay curious and present rather than reactive, and I offer unconditional care without requiring you to be anything other than what you are. Over time, this relational experience begins to offer your nervous system a new template for what connection can feel like.
In addition to this, we actively work with the parts of your holding different attachment wounds and protective patterns.
Somatic Experiencing® for Attachment Healing
Attachment trauma lives in the body. When you feel triggered by a partner's tone of voice, or when your chest constricts before a difficult conversation, that's your nervous system responding to threat cues that are often connected to very old experiences.
In Somatic Experiencing, we work gently with these physiological responses. We help your body learn to distinguish past from present. We build the capacity to feel activated without becoming overwhelmed, and eventually, to move through relational difficulty with more steadiness and less survival-brain reactivity.
I also specialize in a modality called Somatic Resilience and Regulation that supports healing of early pre-verbal and developmental trauma. In this kind of work, it’s not about ‘talk therapy’ at all. Instead, we use micro-moments of attunement and attention to your body to help cultivate a new sense of connection.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) for Relational Patterns
IFS helps us understand the parts of you that are driving relational pain. There's often a part that desperately wants closeness. A part that's convinced you'll be abandoned. A part that armors up and pushes people away to avoid being hurt first. A part that carries profound shame about needing anything at all.
We approach all of these parts with curiosity and care. When they feel truly understood, not bypassed or fixed, they start to soften. And the Self (the you that is fundamentally calm, curious, and compassionate) has more room to lead in your relationships.
Building Internal Security
The goal of attachment trauma therapy isn't to become someone who doesn't have attachment needs. It's to build enough internal safety that those needs can be met and expressed without overwhelming you or the people around you.
When you develop what's called earned secure attachment, something shifts. You can be close without losing yourself. You can tolerate conflict without catastrophizing. You can be alone without it feeling like abandonment. You can ask for what you need without shame.
This shift happens slowly, in layers, and it’s entirely possible.
Relationships This Work Can Help
Attachment trauma affects all of our close relationships, not just romantic ones. The work we do together often brings healing to:
Romantic partnerships
Family relationships
Friendships
Work relationships
Your relationship with yourself, which often mirrors your earliest attachment experiences most of all
Using attachment trauma therapy, we'll help you build internal safety, explore childhood (or more recent) wounds, and move from anxious or avoidant towards secure, healthy relationships.
Who I Work With
I work with adults 19+ in Squamish and online across BC. Attachment trauma therapy is individual work. I don't offer couples counselling. Many of my clients find that doing this individual work shifts how they show up in relationships, even when only one person is in therapy.
Ready to Explore This?
Book a free 20-minute consultation and let's see if we're a good fit.
I'm Helen Beynon, MACP, RCC (#18811), and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), offering individual counselling in Squamish and online across British Columbia.