Attachment-Focused Therapy
How you learned to be close to people is still running, often faster than you realize.
The through-line of my whole practice: anxiety, trauma, dating and couples all sit on top of it. Slower by design.
What It Is
In plain language
Long before you had language for it, you worked out what to do when you needed something from someone. Some people learned that asking works. Some learned that asking works if you ask loudly enough, or often enough, or if you time it correctly. Some learned that needing anything is a liability and the safest thing is to want less. Whichever it was, you got very good at it, and you have been doing it ever since without thinking about it.
Attachment is the through-line under most of what I treat. The anxiety that spikes when a text goes unanswered for six hours. The trauma that will not settle because there was nobody to settle it with at the time. The dating pattern that keeps selecting for people who are just slightly out of reach. The couples cycle that turns dishes into a referendum on whether you matter. Same system, different rooms.
The research describes broad patterns rather than fixed types. Secure, where closeness is roughly comfortable and repair after conflict is expected. Anxious, where connection feels precarious and the strategy is to monitor and pursue. Avoidant, where closeness reads as a threat to autonomy and the strategy is distance. Most people are a mix and shift depending on who they are with and how much sleep they have had.
The useful part is what these patterns are: strategies, not defects. Each one was the intelligent response to a particular environment. A child who learned that a parent responds only to escalation was correct to escalate. The trouble is that the strategy keeps running long after the environment changed, and now it is being applied to a partner who would have answered a plain request.
Earned security is the term for what changes. It means someone who did not start out secure develops it through later experience: relationships that stayed steady, and repair that actually happened. It is less like fixing a wiring fault and more like a language you learned late. You will always have a first language, and the accent shows under stress. That is fine. Fluency is the goal, not erasure.
At a Glance
- Shelley Davidescu, LMFT, 17 years in practice
- In person in Bankers Hill, San Diego
- Telehealth Monday through Friday across California
- Free 15-minute consultation
Individual sessions are $210, or $325 for 90 minutes. Couples sessions are $225, or $345 for 90 minutes.
All of my methodsIn a Session
What this actually involves
Step through it. This is the shape of the work, not a script we follow line by line.
Not just romantic. How you handle a boss going quiet, a friend canceling twice, a family group chat. The same strategy usually shows up in all of them, and seeing it in three places at once is more convincing than seeing it in one.
Fit
Best for, and not for
Worth knowing before you book, so neither of us spends four sessions finding out.
Best For
- People who notice the same relational pattern repeating with different people
- Anxiety that concentrates around closeness, distance, and whether someone is upset with you
- Adults doing well by every external measure who find intimacy disproportionately hard
- Anyone who wants slower, deeper work rather than only skills, and has the patience for it
Not For
- If you want a short, targeted piece of work on one specific symptom, this is not the fastest route and we would start with skills or EMDR instead
- If you need crisis or inpatient-level care, that comes first, and exploratory relational work would wait until things are steadier
If you are in crisis, call or text 988. If I am not the right clinician for what you are carrying, I will say so and help you find someone who is.
How I Use It
Where this sits in the rest of the work
This is the lens I am using even when we are nominally doing something else. When a thought record keeps producing the same conclusion about being a burden, that is attachment. When EMDR processing snags on a memory of nobody coming, that is attachment. When a Gottman assessment shows one partner flooding immediately, the reason is usually older than the marriage. I do not always name it out loud in every session, but it is what I am tracking.
It is also the reason I say the work is slower and why I think the slowness is the point. Attachment patterns did not form through information and they do not change through information. They change through repeated experience of something different, including here, in a relationship where you can be direct, be irritated with me, cancel a session, or say the thing you were sure would be too much, and the room stays the same. That takes a number of months rather than a number of sessions, and I would rather say that plainly at the start.
Questions
Answered plainly
Anything not covered here is worth asking on the free 15-minute consult.
Do I need to know my attachment style?
No, and the online quizzes are a rough guide at best. What matters is the specific thing you do when someone goes quiet, which we can observe together without a label.
Does this mean blaming my parents?
No. We are describing an environment and the strategy you built inside it. Plenty of people arrive with parents who did their best in hard circumstances, and the pattern still formed. Both things are true.
Can attachment patterns actually change?
Earned security is well documented as something people develop later through steady relationships and real repair. I do not promise outcomes or timelines. What I can tell you is what the work involves and how we will know whether it is helping.
Is this useful if I am single?
Yes, and it is often easier to see clearly when you are not inside a relationship. Dating, friendships and work all give us plenty of live material.
How does this fit with the more practical work?
Skills first, almost always. Once your week is manageable, this is usually what the work opens into, and it is the part that tends to hold.
Free 15-Minute Consult
Fifteen minutes to find out whether this is the right work.
Tell me what is actually going on. I will tell you honestly how I would approach it, and whether I am the right person for it.
In person in San Diego, and by telehealth across California.