How to be a Healthy Attachment Figure for Your Clients

I’ve always thought that my therapy practice is one of my biggest teachers about love because it’s a place where unconditionality really matters. If we’re in the business of helping people repair the damage other relationships have done (and let’s be honest, that’s where most of our pain comes from if we dig back in time), then it’s important that we’re capable of being a healthy attachment figure for them.

And so what does it mean to be a healthy attachment figure? Consistency is at the heart of it.

All attachment fears are basically about the same thing: I won’t be able to be myself and have what I need. People believe this because this has been true for them at some point in their history. For most of us, we’ve had either too much suffocation or too much neglect. Maybe both. So what have we been missing?

Getting our needs met respectfully and consistently.

It’s amazing how much conflict and tension disappears between people when they feel respected in their needs and they get what they need consistently enough. Not every single time because we’re all human, but consistently enough. This creates security, which then breeds generosity, play, and ease.

This is as true in romantic relationships as it is in the therapist/client or coach/client relationship.

Most people tend to bias towards a certain attachment style. They either prefer closeness and get more freaked out by space or they prefer space and get more freaked out by closeness. As we’ve discussed before, these things can vary widely, but my point is that if you’re a practitioner, whatever tendencies you have will show up in the dynamic with your clients too. And the trick of it is that when you bias towards one thing, say closeness, you may inadvertently suffocate a client who needs to feel autonomy and space from you. Or if you tend to prefer space, you may inadvertently neglect or misattune to a client who needs to feel closeness and intimacy with you.

This can make it difficult to create conditions of respect, security, and consistency with your clients, so if you have clients that drop off without talking to you about why, don’t want to continue working with you, don’t send referrals, or seem to be holding tension or resistance with you, this is one of the places you can wonder about and think about what you may be able to change in your approach.

So when I say that my practice teaches me about love, this is what I mean. In order to be professional, skillful, and a secure attachment figure for my clients, I have to be unconditional in my responsiveness, respect, and validation with them. I have to investigate where I’m not consistent. I have to wonder what type of clients are most difficult for me. I have to commit to understanding and not pathologizing the needs of any of my clients. And I have to help those needs get met in appropriate ways within the therapeutic container, because our work together depends on it. What I guess I’m saying is that I have to be secure enough in myself that the other person’s attachment strategies don’t occur to my body or psyche as a threat when they’re not.

Having done this work, I can feel the ways my client work has flourished because of it. It inspired me to make Attachment Awareness and Heart two of the 10 SomaField Principles.

Please forward this to anyone that comes to mind if you think they’d enjoy it. :)