Therapy for Attachment & Relationship Difficulties
You may long for connection, but closeness brings anxiety, feeling distant, or the return of the same painful patterns.
Even though you already rationally understand why relationships are difficult for you, when someone pulls away, when conflict starts, or when another person needs something from you, the understanding falls away and you revert to impulses or automatic reactions. Here we go again.
It’s confusing: you reach for reassurance and still don’t feel reassured, or you shut down when you want to explain yourself. You agree to something you don’t want, then feel resentful or trapped. You say yes when you should say no.
Or you may even be a total mystery to yourself: how did that emotion get set off in you? Why does that person have that effect on you and make you act that way? Why do you feel like a stranger to yourself, even wondering if you have a center?
Therapy can help you become curious about what happens inside you around closeness, conflict, rejection, trust, dependence, and vulnerability. Together, we work toward helping you act in relationships with more self-awareness and more room to be yourself.
I offer individual therapy for adults online in California, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Florida, and in person in San Diego.
What relationship difficulties can feel like
Sometimes the difficulty is wanting more connection than you feel able to ask for. Sometimes it is wanting space without feeling guilty, frightened, or responsible for someone else’s reaction. You may move between both.
You might recognize yourself in some of these experiences:
A change in someone’s tone or a delayed reply leaves you wondering what you did wrong.
You replay conversations, seeing signs of rejection, or withdrawal.
You want support or validation but feel ashamed for needing it.
You become quiet, numb, defensive, or overwhelmed during conflict.
You put other people’s needs first and lose track of your own.
You feel drawn to people whose availability you are never quite sure of.
Closeness feels comforting at first, then exposing, demanding, or difficult to tolerate.
Closeness makes you controlling, demanding and angry.
These difficulties can show up with partners, friends, family members, and colleagues. You may seem capable and independent while privately spending a great deal of energy managing what relationships bring up.
What it is like to work with me
I’m Richard Brouillette, LCSW. I work with adults experiencing complex trauma, chronic shame, inner conflict, and relationship patterns that have become difficult to change.
My approach is calm, collaborative, and direct. I listen carefully, share how I understand what is happening, and work with you to decide where we go next.
I draw from parts work and IFS, psychodynamic and schema-informed approaches, and attention to your emotional and physical responses, or what is called mentalization. The work is shaped around your experience and goals.
Your experience of therapy matters, too. If you worry about disappointing me, feel misunderstood, or find yourself agreeing when something doesn’t fit, there is room to talk about it. You can have reservations, ask questions, and need time.
Trust develops through what happens between us, including how we respond when something feels difficult.
Understanding attachment without oversimplifying with a label
Attachment describes how we experience connection and what we expect when we need other people. Can I ask for help? Will you still care about me if I disappoint you? Can I disagree with you and stay connected? Is there room for my needs as well as yours?
How do boundaries between adults work?
You may have read about anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, or disorganized attachment and recognized something familiar. Those terms can offer a starting point.
In therapy, we look closely at your particular experience, including how it changes across relationships. Using mentalization theory, we understand the mindsets that structure your ways of experiencing yourself and other people.
For some people, this means exploring early experiences of inconsistency, criticism, emotional neglect, or having to take care of others. For others, later experiences of betrayal, loss, or hurt are especially important. All of them shape the patterns of relating to yourself and others that you still rely on.
Crucially, we pay attention to what is happening currently in your life, as well as what happens in our relationship during a session. These are the keys to helping you make good changes happen in your current life.
When one part of you wants closeness and another pulls away
Part of you may long to be understood, while another insists that needing people is dangerous. One part may push you to explain, apologize, or try harder. Another may want to end the conversation, leave, or stop caring.
Trying to force either side to change can leave you more frustrated with yourself.
Parts work, including Internal Family Systems (IFS), gives us a way to explore these conflicting responses. We can ask what each part fears, what it is trying to prevent, and what happens when it takes over.
You don’t need to know the language of parts work before we begin. We start with the experience you are having and find a way to understand it together.
What we work on in therapy
We begin with the situations that bring you in: the argument you keep having, the uncertainty you can’t stop thinking about, or the moment you feel yourself disappear to keep the peace.
From there, our work may include:
Recognizing your reactions earlier. Noticing the thoughts, physical sensations, and impulses that come before emotional flooding or withdrawal.
Understanding what feels at stake. Exploring why a disagreement can feel like rejection, or a request for closeness can feel like losing your freedom.
Making room for your needs. Learning to recognize what you want before automatically accommodating, apologizing, or pulling away.
Practicing boundaries and communication. Finding ways to ask for support, say no, and stay present through manageable disagreement.
Developing self-trust. Taking your perceptions seriously while becoming curious about the fears and expectations influencing them.
Progress can look ordinary and still matter: asking a direct question instead of spending hours guessing, taking a break during conflict and returning to it, or noticing that you are upset before deciding that everything is your fault.
We keep your goals in view and return to them as the work develops.
Questions about attachment therapy
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This page describes individual therapy. We focus on your experience within relationships: what you feel, what you need, how you respond, and the patterns you want to understand or change. Your partner does not need to attend.
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Yes. You may want to understand what happens when you date, why you avoid relationships, or why a past relationship still occupies so much of your attention. We can also work on difficulties with friendship, family relationships, and asking for support.
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No. You can begin with what is troubling you. If attachment language helps us make sense of your experience, we can use it. We will also pay attention to the details that a label may leave out.
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That is a useful place to begin. We can explore what happens when that understanding becomes difficult to access: during an argument, while waiting for a reply, or when someone gets close. Therapy gives us space to work with the feelings, bodily responses, and internal conflicts involved.
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No. You don’t need a diagnosis or a particular explanation for your history. Feeling distressed, disconnected, or stuck in relationships is enough reason to seek support.
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Yes. I offer online individual therapy for adults in California, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Florida. In-person appointments are also available in San Diego.
A place to begin
You don’t need to explain your relationship patterns perfectly before reaching out. We can start with what keeps happening and what you wish could be different.
A free 20-minute consultation is a chance to tell me what is bringing you in, ask questions, and see whether working together feels like a good fit.