Anxious Attachment Therapy in Austin, TX
Therapy for adults who feel stuck in unsatisfying relationship patterns.
You want closeness, and some part of you is still auditioning for it.
You read the message again. You check the timestamp. You replay the tone of the last thing they said and try to work out what it meant. Something shifted — you're almost certain of it — and now you can't settle until you know what.
Maybe you ask for reassurance and feel briefly better, then doubt it again by evening. Maybe you don't ask at all, and manage the fear by making yourself indispensable instead.
Whatever the strategy, it takes an enormous amount of energy — and when it doesn't work, you don't conclude that the strategy failed. You conclude that you did. You end up exhausted, and further from the people you most wanted to be close to.
Anxious Attachment might show up as:
Difficulty trusting others
Minor communication gaps register as abandonment
Monitoring for cues of rejection
Pursuing harder
Feeling angry and hopeless in close relationships
Replaying or decoding conversations
Doubting that you’re worthy of love, attention, and affection
Escalating faster than you can catch yourself
Your pattern made sense once.
Somewhere early, usually in the family you grew up in, you learned that care was unpredictable. It came, but you couldn't count on when — or on what it depended. You learned that closeness was a gamble. So you adapted. You got good at reading people, staying close, being useful, watching for the first sign of trouble. And it worked. It kept you safe with people who couldn't be relied on.
That equipment is still running. Sometimes it runs as hypervigilance, in relationships where you're not actually at risk of being left. Sometimes it runs as a pull toward partners who are emotionally unavailable — and that isn't bad luck. Someone who is only intermittently available recreates the conditions your system was built for. Their distance confirms what you already expect, and your pursuit gives them a reason to keep it. The two of you fit together precisely. It's also one of the least satisfying pairings there is. From the inside, though, it rarely feels like a pattern. It feels like chemistry.
You may already know most of this. People often arrive here able to name their attachment style, trace where it came from, and describe the pattern in detail — and still find themselves inside it at eleven at night, three texts deep. Insight isn't the missing piece. What's missing is the ability to notice what's happening in your own mind, and to hold open the question of what might be happening in someone else's, while you're still in the middle of it. That's mentalizing capacity — not a realization — and capacities can be built.
We’ll do it together.
Clients describe me as a good listener, warm, insightful, direct, transparent, thoughtful, and deeply caring. My hope is that you will always feel that I am in it with you. I'll meet you where you are with everything I've got.
