Attachment-Based Therapy in Ottawa & Online Across Ontario
Attachment-Based Therapy in Ottawa: Healing Relational Patterns
If you are seeking attachment-based therapy in Ottawa or virtual attachment-based therapy across Ontario, I provide a relational approach to help you understand how your history shapes your connections today.
In my experience as a psychotherapist specializing in attachment, I’ve found that healing is less about trying to change your attachment style. Instead, the most profound shifts happen when we understand how your attachment patterns developed, recognize what they were protecting you from, and learn how to work with them rather than against them.
My approach to attachment therapy in Ontario focuses on meeting these learned responses with curiosity and consistency, allowing your nervous system to soften and move toward security.
Causes of Attachment Wounds: Attachment Therapy in Ottawa
Attachment patterns develop when connection felt inconsistent, unsafe, or conditional. While early caregiving relationships are foundational, adult relationships also influence your attachment system.
Through attachment-focused therapy in Ottawa, we explore how your nervous system learned to stay protected. Recognizing that these patterns were adaptive responses meant to keep you safe is a vital step toward attachment healing.
Understanding Attachment Styles in Adulthood: Support for Ontario Residents
Anxious Attachment
Seeking reassurance of love and care
People-pleasing or avoiding conflict to preserve connection
Prioritizing your partner’s needs over your own
Anxiety in relationships, fear of rejection or abandonment
Anxious Attachment Therapy focuses on building internal safety, expressing needs confidently, tolerating uncertainty, and relating from choice rather than fear.
Avoidant Attachment
Discomfort with emotional closeness or vulnerability
Withdrawing during conflict or emotional stress
Difficulty relying on others or asking for support
Fear that intimacy will lead to loss of autonomy
Avoidant Attachment Therapy focuses on gradual exposure to safe closeness, exploring why intimacy feels threatening, and developing trust in relationships.
Disorganized Attachment
Oscillating between seeking closeness and pushing others away
Emotional overwhelm or shutdown during stress
Fear of abandonment combined with fear of intimacy
Dissociation or feeling disconnected during conflict
Disorganized Attachment Therapy focuses on building emotional regulation, safety, and trust, learning to tolerate intimacy while managing fear of separation.
Myth 1: You have only one attachment style.
Truth: You can hold more than one attachment style!
Attachment patterns shift depending on the relationship and the dynamics involved. You might be anxious with one partner, avoidant with another, or experience a mix.
Myth 2: Your attachment style is fixed.
Truth: Attachment style is not fixed!
Your patterns can evolve across your lifespan, influenced by relationships, experiences, and personal growth.
Myth 3: Attachment is all-or-nothing.
Truth: Attachment exists on a spectrum!
Someone may lean avoidant, but not be fully avoidant, or show varying degrees of anxiety depending on the situation.
Myths About Attachment Theory: Insights from a Psychotherapist
Myth 4: You should focus on changing your attachment style.
Truth: It’s more effective to work with your attachment style than fight it!
Understanding and embracing your attachment tendencies allows you to relate to yourself and others more compassionately.
Myth 5: Attachment is only shaped by childhood experiences.
Truth: Attachment develops from both early and later relational experiences!
While childhood plays an important role, adult relationships also shape your attachment patterns.
Myth 6: You must be secure before you can have a healthy relationship.
Truth: You don’t need to be “secure” to have healthy relationships!
Healing happens within relationships. You don’t need to be “secure” to experience meaningful connections.
Gal Zohar, Psychotherapist Specializing in Attachment-Based Therapy
My approach is relational, attachment-based, trauma-informed, and insight-oriented. Therapy becomes a safe space where your patterns are met with curiosity, attunement, and consistency.
Attachment-based therapy techniques:
Exploring how attachment shows up in your thoughts, feelings, and relationships
Understanding the protective function of your attachment patterns
Developing emotional safety, self-trust, and relational confidence
Creating corrective relational experiences that help your attachment system soften
Attachment patterns are shaped through relationships and therefore, can be healed through safe, consistent relational experiences — including therapy.
Virtual Attachment-Focused Therapy Throughout Ontario
If this resonates, you are welcome to book a free consultation with me. This is an opportunity to explore your story, ask questions, and see whether attachment-based therapy feels like the right next step for you.