Therapeutic Approach

Marion uses an attachment-based approach for most counselling requests for individual, couple or family counselling.  See "Explanation of Attachment" for a comprehensive understanding of this theoretical orientation.

Question:  How does attachment theory affect the way you offer treatment?

In my 18 years of being a therapist, I have come to see that attachment theory explains emotional health and emotional difficulties in an easy to understand developmental way.  Attachment to our primary caregivers, whether it be secure or insecure, is the foundation for our emotional and social development.  It is the lens through which I look to understand client problems.  Therapy is tailored to help clients learn to feel more secure, learn to modulate their emotions and learn to have more satisfactory relationships.  I explain these concepts to clients and find that they frequently grasp these concepts easily and that they can relate the information to their life experiences.

People who have particularly difficult childhoods frequently experience ongoing difficulties managing their emotions and often don't understand the nature of their problems.  Frequently they have been led to believe that their problems are due to their innate defectiveness.  Attachment theory relieves them of this burden and allows them to see that we all need to feel that we are emotionally safe and secure from infancy on.  If these needs are not adequately met, we will have difficulty in particular with feelings of anxiety and depression and difficulty forming satisfactory relationships.  Adults need to feel safe and secure in their relationship with their partners and couple difficulties form when one or both partners don't perceive that these needs are being met.  In addition if security needs weren't met in childhood, people will look for childhood needs to be met in their relationships which can place and unfair burden on their partner.

Question:  Do you see attachment theory having a place in the wider community?

I believe that we need to do a lot more to help parents whose own childhoods have been adverse to parent their children in a way that allows their children to develop with a better sense of felt security.  I believe there is much which can be done to reduce the development of emotional, behavioral and social difficulties in childhood which in turn will translate into less learning problems, less alcohol and drug use, less crime, etc.

Last modified: 05/09/06