Breaking the patterns that keep love from landing.
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You know the pattern. One of you pursues closeness, the other pulls away. You feel hypervigilant to the other's moods, trying to manage their feelings before they explode. You've built walls so high that even when they try to reach you, no one gets in. Or you disappear into your partner, losing yourself completely, trading your needs for their approval.
These aren't character flaws. They're attachment patterns—learned responses to your earliest relationships that are still protecting you. But they're also keeping love at arm's length.
Anxiety, avoidance, or a desperate mix of both. Feeling responsible for someone else's emotions. Cycles of withdrawal and pursuit that leave both people exhausted and alone. These patterns make sense when you understand where they came from. And once they make sense, they can change.
Relationship therapy helps you see these patterns clearly—not to assign blame, but to create genuine understanding and choice. Through relationship therapy, we explore how your earliest experiences of love shaped the way you connect today, and we build new ways of being together that feel safer, more honest, and more deeply connected.
Your attachment style isn't random. It's shaped by your earliest relationships—how your caregivers responded to your needs, what felt safe, what felt dangerous. These early lessons got wired into your nervous system.
Attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby, shows us that the quality of your early relationships creates an internal working model—a blueprint for how you expect love to work. If your caregiver was consistently attuned, you learned that it's safe to need. If they were distant or unpredictable, you learned to be self-sufficient or to protest loudly for connection.
These patterns follow you into adulthood. Your partner isn't the problem. The pattern is the problem. And here's the beautiful part: once you understand it, you can rewire it.
This isn't about blame. Your parents did the best they could with what they had. This is about understanding, compassion, and choosing something different going forward.
Gottman Method: Based on decades of research, the Gottman approach identifies the patterns that predict relationship breakdown and teaches couples how to break those cycles. We learn to manage conflict with respect and humour.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT): EFT is the gold standard for couples work. It helps you access vulnerable emotions beneath the surface, move from blame into connection, and create secure attachment with your partner.
Integrative Attachment Therapy (IAT): Informed by research at Harvard Medical School, IAT focuses on healing your individual attachment wounds — the patterns you carry from your earliest relationships. This is deeply personal work that happens one-on-one, helping you develop a secure internal working model so you can show up differently in all your relationships.
Most of my relationship and attachment work is with individuals. You don't need a partner to do this work — in fact, individual attachment therapy is often the most powerful starting point. By healing your own patterns first, you naturally transform how you connect with others. I also offer couples sessions when both partners are ready, but the deepest change often begins with you.
One of the most powerful aspects of Integrative Attachment Therapy is creating what we call an "internal secure base." This means developing a relationship with yourself that's compassionate, steady, and grounded—so you're not entirely dependent on your partner for your sense of safety.
Through guided visualization and body-awareness work, we help your nervous system learn that it's safe to trust, to need, and to be close. We create new neural pathways—literally rewiring your brain's attachment expectations. This isn't magical thinking; it's neuroscience.
When you develop a secure internal working model, something remarkable happens: you can show up differently in your relationships. Less reactive. More choice. More love, with less desperation.
Not necessarily. While couples work is powerful with both partners present, individual attachment therapy can also transform your relationships. I can work with you alone on your patterns, how you show up in relationship, and your capacity for connection. Sometimes individual work is the entry point.
My approach integrates Gottman Method, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), and Integrative Attachment Therapy, which goes deeper than surface-level conflict resolution. We're not just managing disagreements; we're healing the underlying attachment wounds that create conflict patterns.
That's exactly what attachment therapy addresses. Your earliest relationships literally shaped your nervous system and how you relate. This isn't about blame—it's about understanding. Once you see the pattern, you can make different choices.
This varies. Couples often see significant shifts within 8-12 sessions. Deeper transformation typically emerges over 6 months of weekly work. Individual attachment work can take longer depending on what you're healing. I'll give you realistic expectations in your discovery call.
Absolutely. I work with all relationship structures—monogamous, polyamorous, open relationships, and more. The principles of secure attachment, emotional attunement, and healthy communication apply across all relationship styles.
PACFA Registered Integrative Psychotherapist
My work is informed by attachment theory, trauma-informed practice, and somatic approaches. More importantly, I've spent time understanding my own patterns. I know how hard it is to break cycles, and I know it's possible.
What I bring to this work is genuine presence, a commitment to your healing, and the belief that secure, loving relationships are possible for you.
Clinical Supervision: Dr Tra-ill Dowie PhD
Your attachment patterns made sense. Now they're optional. Relationship therapy in Kyneton and Melbourne can help you break free. Start with a free 15-minute discovery call—no obligation, no pressure. Just a conversation about what's possible.
Schedule Your Free Discovery CallHours: Monday to Thursday, 9am–6pm
Locations: Kyneton & Melbourne, Victoria • Online in Australia or internationally
