Is therapy for “attachment disorders” in adults bogus?

I’m not challenging the idea of attachment in children and attachment styles. Those have been well-documented. Just the idea that less-than-secure attachments can be corrected in adulthood by a relationship with a therapist.

Didn’t work for me. And left me worse off than when I started. Eventually I have made it through things. But it sounds like it continues to hurt others in this forum, too.

20 years ago there was a fad of “repressed memories” that proved largely bogus. And I remember “Primal Scream” and rebirthing therapies from years ago.

Searching the internet for “attachment therapy” I found some very harmful therapies for children that have now been largely, I guess, discredited.

What do you all think? And if it works for some, but is harmful to others, what warnings and disclaimers do you think might help adult clients when they are considering the “attachment disorder” idea?

I think it takes a hugely skilled therapist to navigate that kind of therapy successfully. I would say that my attachment issues are dramatically better, and my relationships much improved as a result of therapy. There are been some set-backs and blow-ups along the way, and I think that if I had quit at that point, or if my therapist had been unable to acknowledge his errors along the way, I would have been worse off than I was before therapy.

I agree that I think it takes a very strong T to undertake this kind of work with a client. My T is so accepting of things that I bring, my pushes and pulls, my criticism, my desires and of me I suppose. She accepts gifts that I make, she listens to my complaints about her and our therapy, telling me straight (mostly) why she does the things she does and accepting and apologising if she made a mistake. I, in turn, do likewise. She sits with me through many silences but also comes up with ideas to get me moving again if I can't do that on my own. She seems just as happy to sit and play with me as she does to have a proper conversation about day to day things that affect my life, or the deep stuff surrounding the past. She has given me pieces of herself, without burdening me with information and has never once given me any promises that she didn't feel she could keep, either short term or long term (oh except once early on and it took several weeks to work through that one, but she was there, consistent and steady as ever. She apologised and said she had learnt a very valuable lesson).

I said it takes a strong T, not a skilled T, because I must admit that I think that I am the first adult that she has worked with in this way. We have never discussed attachment issues but I think I have them, along with a while host of other issues such as not attaching to my Mother as a baby, with a father who worked away, CSA, emotionally neglecting parents, a mother with chronic depression as I was growing up, childhood bullying, fairly severe drug addictions and the fact that I may be on the autistic spectrum. Trying to decide which of these issues causes what is almost impossible to be honest and I think that my T doesn't like to try to look for cause and affect too much, but just works with whatever I bring at the time.

The reason I say that I think that I am the first person the has worked with in this way is mainly because she said that she had never had the issue of out if session contact come up before and I can't imagine doing this work without it. I could be completely wrong though, and it has been a question I have been wanting to ask for a long time. For me the out of session contact helps massively because I do have a real problem in talking during therapy and without the ability to write down my thoughts and reflections, our entire sessions would be largely based around what came up for me from the one before, and that wouldn't be very productive.

So strong, not necessarily skilled, in my opinion.

I also believe that it takes a client who is in the right place themselves, and that is even harder to define than it is to define a good or strong T.

I also believe that the relationship has to be right, and it could not be a good fit between the two. If it is not, then I don't think this type of work would be effective and I think it could be very harmful.

I think Ts should be upfront about the possibility of therapy not helping, and that, in some circumstances it may not work out between the two and that, in those instances, the T would try to find someone else more suitable for the client to work with. I think a lot of people would see this as abandonment but in my heart I do not believe that it is. It is a fact of life that some peoples psyches do not gel but it is inprative that a T spot this early on, does not lead the client on in the hope that they can 'make it work'. It is an art form not a science and each output will be different, that is the nature of the beast and that is what should be explained to the client.

This is something that I am going through currently. I also think it takes a strong T and have wondered sometimes whether my T is strong enough. She shows alot of anxiety around my wellbeing, sometimes to the extent that I think she needs reassurance as much as I do, that she is doing the right thing for me.

Having said that, she has been steady, calm and consistent all these years. She has allowed me to contact her whenever I need her out of session, allowed me to send lengthy emails free of charge, to which she consistently responds, even if I have been critical about her or told her she just doesn't understand. Sometimes I feel her boundaries should be a little tighter and this would benefit me, other times I think I need her to be a bit flexible with boundaries because of my issues.

I know I have changed alot over the years in my real life in friendships and relationships and put this down to the constant support I have had and solid acceptance that T has shown me however I have behaved. This has filled a big void for me. Just the unconditional support and love.

Your therapy sounds really good. I was going to write 'your therapist sounds so good', but I didn't because it seems to me that it might be you that is particularly good at therapy. I wish I could take my therapy complaints to my T, I am resolving to do this. I don't know if my T would ever apologize, or tell me she thought she had made a mistake. I wish she would though. I tend to take all the responsibility myself for any difficulties.

I don't know that therapy for attachment disorders is necessarily bogus but what I know is that I had no idea I had attachment issues when I started therapy. My therapist isn't exacty trained for this sort of issue. So far, I'm deeply attached and deeply insecure about the relationship. I guess it takes time. But it has definitely resulted in a lot of suffering.

I certainly do take the responsibility for difficulties upon myself and it has been a bug change to see and hear someone say that it was their fault, when it was. I still do take responsibility for things onto myself out of the sessions but I can see slowly that this may be changing. I want to write more but I have to go to work, I will try to write more later. Hugs to you

I would not call it bogus. I don't think any one theory in psychotherapy is any more bogus than any other and if it works for someone, then that is all that matters in my opinion.
I think of it along the lines of this quote from Bull Durham (the only baseball movie I have ever made it all the way through):
"If you believe you're playing well because you're getting laid, or because you're not getting laid, or because you wear women's underwear, then you *are*!"

For me, the woman used to talk about attachment and how mine was all dismissive/avoidant etc. But I don't have a problem with my attachment style. I am fine with it and have no urge to change it. So we had to get that straightened out and the woman finally got off that annoying kick.

I think it is. I find it disgusting and disturbing when therapists use this in therapy with clients. It's scary to me. I rarely see any good come out of it. Long term good that is.

Depends on the lens one views it through.
T has a book on her shelve entitled "on needing people and is roots in early childhood ". Everytime I've looked at that title over the years, I've laughed. T will ask "tell me what's funny?". I say "the whole idea of needing people.

It was only last session when I get again looked at it and laughed that T said, "you've said you need ****(my husband)? I said, yeah, that's true. But when I think of other people, eg, a girl I grew up with abd basically took me prisoner in infant sch, and a woman in sorta of friendly with up the road from me, they sort of make me cringe.
T said, yes, but they're not the people you need?
I had to think, and realised I cast the wrong people when I read that book title. Seeing that, I finally understood that needing isn't weak, that if we have the right people in our life's - like I have my husband - it makes sense. I guess therapy for attachment issues is like that. If we just think or read about it and replay earlier negative experinces, then it doesn't feel possible. But given the right T then it makes sense and works.

Attachment disorders are only diagnosed in children. Once your an adult, if it's severe enough and there was never any help, the attachment disorder could morph into a personality disorder.

There's certainly room for change, it just involves a lot of insight and effort. Attachment styles are ingrained in us from childhood and become part of who we are and how we relate on an unconscious level. So to change them in an absolute sense is probably unlikely and any therapist who claims they can do this is very irresponsible if not an outright liar.

I'm sure think some relational patterns can be changed if that's what someone wants to do and they are really motivated. You just need to be equipped with the tools to do so, whether it be therapy or something else. The younger one is, the easier I imagine it would be since less time has been devoted to interacting and behaving a certain way. I hate to think anything is impossible, but changing an attachment style in its entirety, after a certain point in time, probably is.

Based on my experience your feeling of scariness is well-founded. I "trusted" the experts -- well, my compliant outward self did. And what was potentially scary I had walled off and then therapists got triggered I guess and shamed me in the kind of close interpersonal interaction I just didn't have in the real world -- except with my late husband. And we didn't interact that way.

I was definitely pretty OK most of the time when my late husband was alive. Felt/knew I was going to need "help" when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Went looking, didn't find it. :-(

Yes, I think it's fair to say that my attachment issues morphed into a personality disorder -- probably OCPD, most recently diagnosed PDNOS. And I was determined -- compulsed/obsessed? -- with getting "well" before the PDNOS was diagnosed so the motivation has been there but I didn't know what was really "wrong". If any therapist did, they didn't tell me until the last one and . . .well, that therapy started when I was 63, so . . .

ETA: it probably sounds like I'm just complaining, and I AM complaining, but as I've said before I think there are a lot of us out here who have been hurt, or at least not helped to the tune of a lot of money, by therapy and there's no one counting, no place to go to give our feedback. So thanks for the opportunity to have my say.

As an adult, you get classified into an attachment style, such as secure, insecure, disorganized, etc. It takes a very dedicated, patient t that fully understands attachment issues to even stand a chance at having an insecurely attached client work towards entering secure attachment. The impact insecure attachments have on adults can run deep. Very deep. Many t's are not specialized in adult attachment issues and therefore underestimate the power it can hold over a client. Insecure attachments often go unrecognized by t's or get brushed off as playing an insignificant role in the client's life. This is when therapy can go dangerously wrong. Also, working through adult attachment issues successfully is a long, hard, demanding process not just for the client, but also for the therapist. A t not specialized or prepared to deal with the complexities involved can get overwhelmed and burnt out quickly which can lead to even further damage to the client yet. With that, though rare, I do think a t can help bring a once insecurely attached client into secure attachment.

I think even the most motivated people will really struggle with this, especially where it tends to be seen from a very black and white perspective. With enough work I think an insecurely attached person could learn to form secure attachments with some people, even if it goes against their natural instincts.

When I first started working with T I didn't trust her at all, kept waiting for her to do a runner on me, tell me it was too much, too hard, that she had changed her mind. Early on my mind manipulated all of her words so I often heard negatives, criticisms, desires to leave me, send me away etc where there probably weren't any. I couldn't imagine her out of session any other way than her dismissing me, ignoring me and forgetting me and truth be told I wanted her close but was so absolutely terrified of it that I didn't know what I wanted.

By her being and doing everything that I mentioned in a previous post, and by me taking some risks and throwing caution to the wind every now and again, I no longer feel this way all of the time. I often now think that she is actually there for me and think she cares. I know that if I email I will get a reply and if I don't then it is a genuine reason. My anxiety around this has significantly reduced. I am able to express myself and my needs better, be that still in writing largely and I am now not quite as terrified of letting her close. I do not manipulate her words in my mind as much, though it still happens more frequently than I would like, and I think she will stick around more often than I think she won't. She had just been there, same as ever, no matter what, and that is what is making the most difference. That is not bogus, it is consistent in the way that it should have been years ago.

How has this changed my other relationships? As yet, not by much (but there are only about 4 of them anyway) but I can see changes within myself and this may change my other relationships as time goes on.

I'm deeply attached.to my T. We talk about it a lot recently. I don't know how it will end but my t has shown me so far that he can handle it. He has told me he went thru the same thing in his own therapy. I fight him a lot, I try to push him away...I néed him a lot aND want to be close. It's confusing and exhausting. Will it end badly? I don't know. I don't have an answer for that yet...

my therapist is very good at it, and it has helped me immensely as an adult.

The first thing I'd like to see is some honest effort to measure outcomes with such clients. Without that, the whole thing looks very sketchy. I'd also like to know how it is that a therapist who studies attachment theory is in a position to heal someone's attachment trauma. Doesn't make any sense. What does quality someone to do that? It's impossible to define, therefore it's a dangerous social experiment. As I see it, most therapists are playing a game called "let's dig around and see what pops up".

I think only a t that has experienced the attachment healing process themselves could be qualified. There is no way all the books in the world alone could give a t full understanding of the intensity involved. That's why so many of them fail, imo.

My T uses attachment as a way to develop trust and closeness in clients - not specifically using attachment therapy, if there's a difference. For me, it's been amazingly helpful, though not easy. I have a personality disorder w/avoidant features. These avoidant features are what I want to change. My T asked several times early in if I was comfortable being isolated or socially limited. I said no, I wanted to develop close relationships, but didn't know how. T told me that his therapy style would be different if I was happy being just as I am; it was perfectly valid if I didn't want to change my life style. If my T hadn't encouraged the development of attachment, I would have wasted the past year. I agree w/many people that it takes a strong T to carry attachment therapy or therapy using attachment off successfully. The T must be available to the client nearly constantly, allowing emails, texts, calls, and be able to tolerate the dependency that the client develops. Perhaps the "failed" or unsuccessful/harmful results of attachment therapy has more to do with the therapist than the therapy itself; I don't know what you've read. I'm pretty sure all types of therapy have been discredited or pronounced as harmful at some point.

I don't know what warnings or disclaimers might be helpful to clients thinking of going through this type of therapy. If the T specifically advertises they use attachment therapy, they should indicate that the client might feel uncomfortable in a close relationship, or a relationship in which the client may need to depend upon the therapist and the therapist's judgement; there may be intense feelings of neediness, which will be addressed in sessions. Hopefully, the client will have read something about attachment therapy prior to jumping into the deep end. I knew nothing about attachment, but using attachment in my therapy has not been harmful or bogus...IMO.

I have gone from intensely disorganized attachment to T1 to a place where now I can be ok with picturing him on one trail in the woods and me on another. I know he is within shouting distance. And I am ok with him doing what ever he is doing on his own path as long as he can hear me shout (which usually takes the form of a text). I used to need to talk to him daily and now I am mostly ok with twice per week.

I was very demanding for a long time and he held steady. He doesn't have any specific training in attachment or personality disorders. I think treatment with t3 has helped my DID the most, but she also treats personality disorders. So it may well be that what I do with T3 has helped me with the dependency. In any event, something is helping!

I agree with this, but it took me a long time to figure this out. I developed a secure attachment with one therapist after working together a few years, but to my surprise, restarted the whole anxious/preoccupied and fearful attached relationship again with another therapist. I started over from the very beginning! With the second therapist, I experienced the very same emotions and relational dynamics from infant to teenager.

How you relate to yourself, others, and the world is not as malleable as some schools of thought or therapists would like you to believe. More likely, how much you can change has some correlation with the degree of unmet childhood needs or trauma. I do know some who had a really hard life, but despite a high level of adversity, seem to get on ok. I also think the first 2 years really influences overall outcomes from therapy, or life in general.

One of the benefits of psychodynamic therapy for relationships/attachment, however, is in recognize patterns and learning about yourself. And being in touch with your emotions allows you to be less reactive about behaviors, make other choices, and experience more intimacy in relationships.

Another effect of this type of therapy is in learning about your needs; getting in touch with unmet childhood needs in tandem with the related emotional processing can lead to healthier attraction to healthier people. This is in opposition to being drawn to those who resemble childhood attachment figures as many unknowingly seek to repeat the past through present day relationships. That in itself leads to more secure attachment in relationships. I was always drawn to unavailable men, which fed my dysfunctional attachment patterns. Now I can be in a relationship with someone who is more in touch with himself, and my anxiousness, fear, and preoccupation doesn't manifest like it did with someone who is unavailable.

Like my therapist says, the more and more you talk about feelings and learn about yourself, the less power the past has over you.

So Here Today, I don't think it's bogus, and healing can happen, but I also don't think it can be "cured" in the way that some of the authors of publications or websites lead you to believe.

I've in what has been basically psychodynamic therapy with a trauma specialist for the last 6 years and that has broken down. Rupture and no repair.

I'm still very unaware of any needs -- not willing to touch that with a 10 foot pole. And my last therapist resembled people from my past and triggered reactions and feelings, or transference, that we could not resolve.

Ugh. "Why me?" Well maybe, why not. Happened to my late husband with a recurrence of a cancer that had been declared "a surgical cure" by our friend the hospital pathologist who examined the tissue.

I thought that was a horrible "wrong" perpetrated by. . .whom? The universe? It just "shouldn't be". Maybe that's OCPD talk. Or something.

Sometimes -- maybe always? It just is what it is.

Ugh. That's not grief, it's just . . .ugh.

Thanks for your reply. Gave me something to think about, for sure.