Attachment Wounds
Growing up in dysfunction shapes how you survive—and how you relate.
If you grew up in a home impacted by addiction, chaos, emotional unpredictability, or chronic instability, you likely learned how to adapt early. You became observant, responsible, emotionally attuned to others—or skilled at staying invisible when needed.
Those strategies helped you survive.
They may be limiting you now.
As an adult, this can show up as chronic anxiety, emotional numbness, perfectionism, people-pleasing, difficulty trusting others, fear of abandonment, or feeling responsible for everyone else’s emotions—while struggling to identify or meet your own needs.
Many adult children of alcoholics don’t identify with a single traumatic event. Instead, the impact often came from both what happened and what didn’t.
Attachment wounds may include overt threats to safety, such as emotional, physical, or verbal abuse. They can also develop through chronic absence—when emotional needs weren’t consistently met, caregivers were unavailable or unpredictable, attunement was missing, or presence and protection couldn’t be relied on.
Both experiences shape the nervous system.
Attachment wounds are different from PTSD—and require a different approach
Traditional PTSD typically develops in response to a specific, identifiable threat or traumatic event. Attachment wounds develop over time through repeated relational experiences—especially in childhood—where connection felt unsafe, unreliable, or conditional.
Both live in the nervous system.
But attachment trauma is relational, identity-shaping, and often organized around parts of you that formed early to keep you safe.
This is why insight alone often isn’t enough—and why effective trauma therapy must be tailored differently.
A focused, relational approach to attachment healing
EMDR Intensives can be highly effective for attachment wound healing when combined with ego states therapy and parts work.
Rather than pushing through memories or forcing vulnerability, this approach works intentionally with the protective parts of you that learned how to manage closeness, control, emotional distance, or self-reliance. The goal isn’t to eliminate these parts—it’s to help them no longer run your life.
In an intensive format, we create the time and structure needed to:
Address long-standing attachment patterns
Work safely with protective and younger parts
Reduce emotional reactivity and internal conflict
Build a more secure, grounded sense of self
This model allows for meaningful progress without dragging therapy out for years.
You don’t have to keep living in survival mode
Healing attachment wounds isn’t about blaming your past or reliving everything you went through. It’s about giving your nervous system—and your inner world—what it didn’t receive, so relationships, boundaries, and self-trust don’t feel so exhausting anymore.
You deserve more than coping.
You deserve connection, stability, and ease.