Therapy for attachment issues in Croydon
When every relationship follows the same script
Key facts
- BACP registered #197852
- Croydon practice
- Individual therapy £70
- Couples therapy £100
- 50-minute weekly sessions
- Couples therapy in person only
You know your attachment style. You've taken the quizzes, read the Instagram posts, can explain exactly why you chase people who pull away or why intimacy makes you want to run. You understand the theory perfectly.
But you're still doing it. Still picking the same unavailable people. Still sabotaging when things get good. Still feeling that familiar panic when someone gets too close or that crushing rejection when they pull back. Understanding hasn't changed anything.
Knowing isn't changing
Attachment theory has become pop psychology. Everyone knows if they're anxious, avoidant, disorganised. You can spot the patterns, predict the outcome, explain to friends exactly why your relationship is doomed. But knowing your attachment style doesn't stop you living it.
That's because attachment isn't only intellectual. It can be pre-verbal, visceral, laid down in the nervous system before you had words for it. You may have learned very early what relationships meant: whether people were reliable, whether your needs mattered, whether closeness felt safe or dangerous.
Maybe your caregivers were inconsistent. Sometimes there, sometimes gone, and you never knew which version you'd get. So you may have learned to be hypervigilant, to cling, to panic at any sign of distance. Anxious attachment is not simply neediness. It can be a nervous system that learned love is unpredictable and has to be worked for constantly.
Or maybe closeness came with conditions, intrusion, or danger. So you may have learned to be self-sufficient, to keep people at arm's length, to leave before you can be left. Avoidant attachment is not simply coldness. It can be a system organised around the idea that intimacy is not safe.
Or maybe both things were true at once. Neglect and engulfment. Abandonment and intrusion. So you developed disorganised attachment - simultaneously desperate for connection and terrified of it, pushing and pulling in the same breath.
Attachment theory isn't a modern add-on to psychodynamic therapy - it's in its DNA. John Bowlby, who developed attachment theory, was a psychoanalyst. The entire framework grew out of psychodynamic thinking about early relationships and how they shape us. Pop psychology has popularised the categories, but the depth work has always been psychodynamic.
So this isn't about learning attachment theory in therapy. It's about working with the actual attachment patterns as they show up, in real time, in a relationship designed to help you experience something different.
What we'll do
We meet weekly or twice-weekly, same time each week. This consistency matters. Your attachment patterns will show up here too - in how you relate to me, the therapy, the space between sessions.
If you're anxiously attached, you'll probably worry about what I think of you, scan for signs I'm losing interest, panic if we have to reschedule. If you're avoidant, you might find reasons to miss sessions, intellectualise everything, keep me at a careful distance. If you're disorganised, you might oscillate between both.
This isn't a problem. It's the work. We'll notice these patterns together. We'll explore what they may be protecting you from. And gradually, in a relationship where someone shows up reliably and does not disappear when you feel difficult or needy or distant, new experiences may become possible.
You may not be able to think your way into secure attachment alone. It often needs experience: that someone can be consistently present, that ruptures can be repaired, that you don't have to be perfect or independent to be kept, that closeness doesn't have to mean losing yourself.
This work is slow. Attachment patterns were formed over years in your earliest relationships. They rarely dissolve in a few sessions. Over time, the script may start to loosen. You may begin catching yourself mid-pattern. The old responses may not feel quite as inevitable.
Common questions
- Can you change your attachment style?
- Attachment patterns can shift, though it is usually better understood as earned security than a complete erasure of the past. Early experiences cannot be undone, but new relational experiences can give you more room around old patterns.
- What's the difference between anxious and avoidant attachment?
- Anxious attachment involves hyperactivation - pursuing closeness, fearing abandonment, needing constant reassurance. Avoidant attachment involves deactivation - maintaining distance, valuing independence, suppressing attachment needs. Both are responses to early experiences of unreliable caregiving; they just developed different strategies.
- Why do anxious and avoidant people attract each other?
- Because the dynamic is familiar. The anxious person's pursuit feels like needed attention to the avoidant. The avoidant's distance creates just enough uncertainty to keep the anxious person hooked. It's a painful dance that confirms both people's beliefs about relationships - and it's what both systems know.
- How long does it take to develop secure attachment?
- It varies significantly. Attachment patterns often developed over many years, so shifting them takes time. Many people need long-term, consistent therapy, but there is no fixed timetable. The work is not just understanding your pattern; it is having a different experience of relationship.