(Why This Is Where Attachment Work Truly Lives)
There’s a common misconception in therapy that change happens in moments of insight.
A realisation lands.
A pattern makes sense.
A link to childhood becomes clear.
These moments matter – but in attachment-informed work, they’re rarely where the deepest healing occurs.
That happens somewhere else entirely.
It happens in repair.
Not dramatic repair.
Not perfectly executed repair.
But small, relational moments where something goes differently from before.
For many clients, this is not just therapeutic.
It’s unprecedented.
When repair was never part of the original story
For clients with early attachment wounds, rupture was often familiar – but repair was not.
Caregivers withdrew.
Minimised feelings.
Became overwhelmed.
Acted as if nothing had happened.
Or expected the child to move on without acknowledgement.
So, the nervous system learned something very specific:
When something goes wrong, I’m on my own.
That learning doesn’t disappear in adulthood. It shows up in relationships – including the therapeutic one.
Clients may:
- Fear they’ve said the wrong thing
- Worry they’ve damaged the relationship
- Assume distance means rejection
- Leave rather than risk repair
And often, these fears are never spoken aloud.
Why repair matters more than getting it “right”
No therapist gets it right all the time.
We misattune.
We misunderstand.
We miss cues.
We say something that lands badly.
Attachment work doesn’t require perfection.
It requires repair.
When a therapist notices a rupture and gently names it – without defensiveness or collapse – something extraordinary happens.
The client experiences:
- Being noticed after distress
- Being taken seriously
- Being met rather than avoided
- A relationship that survives difficulty
For clients whose inner child learned that rupture meant abandonment, this is profoundly regulating.
The nervous system updates.
Not because it was told to – but because it experienced something different.
Repair doesn’t always look like a conversation
Repair is often imagined as a verbal process.
But many repairs happen quietly.
Through:
- The therapist stays present after the intensity
- A softer tone in the following session
- Remembering something the client shared
- Allowing space for awkwardness without rushing
Sometimes the most powerful repair is simply not pulling away.
Especially when the client expects you to.
The therapist’s internal work
Repair asks something of us as therapists.
It asks us to tolerate:
- Not being the “good” therapist
- Sitting with our own discomfort
- Acknowledging impact without self-blame
- Staying open when we’d rather move on
This can be surprisingly hard – particularly for therapists whose own attachment histories include responsibility, appeasement, or fear of conflict.
But clients don’t need us to be flawless.
They need us to be available after imperfection.
When repair reaches the inner child
For many clients, repair doesn’t land cognitively first.
It lands emotionally.
A sense of relief.
A softening.
A feeling of being held in mind.
The inner child – the part that learned rupture meant danger – begins to take in a new experience:
Something went wrong… and I wasn’t left.
This is not regression.
It’s developmental healing.
Repair over time, not all at once
Repair is rarely a single moment.
It unfolds slowly, across sessions.
Each small rupture that is met and survived builds trust.
Each return strengthens the sense of safety.
Each moment of staying reshapes expectation.
Eventually, clients begin to risk more honesty, more vulnerability, more presence – not because they’ve been told it’s safe, but because they’ve felt it.
Why this work can’t be rushed
Repair takes time because it works at the level of the nervous system, not just at the level of understanding.
For therapists, this can feel frustrating.
Progress may look subtle:
- Less withdrawal
- Quicker recovery
- More openness after difficulty
But these are profound shifts.
They signal that something which never happened before is finally happening now.
A reflection to carry forward
You might gently reflect on this in your own work:
- How comfortable are you with repair?
- What happens inside you after a rupture?
- How do you let clients know you’re still there?
In attachment-focused therapy, repair isn’t a technique.
It’s a lived relational experience.
And for many clients, it’s the first time a relationship has said:
We can come back from this.
You still matter.
You don’t have to manage alone.
In the next blog, we’ll shift focus to the nervous system – and explore why insight so often fails to create change without regulation.
For now, you might sit with this:
What becomes possible when the thing that was missing isn’t insight… but repair?
Often, that’s where healing quietly takes root.
