Relational Therapy

Relational therapy is a depth-oriented approach grounded in attachment theory, originally developed by John Bowlby. It is based on the belief that healing happens in the context of safe, meaningful relationships and that the therapeutic relationship itself can become a powerful source of change.

Relational therapy begins by offering a secure base: a consistent, supportive, and non-judgmental space where you can explore painful thoughts, emotions, and experiences at your own pace. Within this “holding environment,” we look closely at the ways you learned to connect, protect yourself, or seek closeness (relational patterns) may be shaping the situations that cause distress today.

Relational therapists also pay attention to what unfolds between you and your therapist, not as something to analyze or fix, but as a living example of how you engage in relationships. This creates opportunities to notice familiar dynamics in real time and gently experiment with new ways of relating.

A core part of the work involves understanding how past experiences influence present behavior, while helping you find more flexible, fulfilling alternatives. For example, if you grew up in a family where no one asked about your inner world, relational therapy offers a corrective experience—one in which your thoughts, feelings, and experiences are met with genuine curiosity and care. Over time, being deeply known can change how you relate to others and to yourself.

Relational therapy is effective for anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship difficulties, shame, personality patterns, and chronic feelings of disconnection. It is strongly evidence-based, drawing from decades of attachment research, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience. Neuroscientist Allan Schore’s work shows that emotional healing occurs largely through right-brain-to-right-brain communication—the nonverbal processes of attunement, tone, facial expression, and emotional presence that develop in early relationships and are reactivated in therapy.

Long-term research, including the Harvard Grant Study, consistently finds that the quality of our relationships is one of the strongest predictors of a healthy, meaningful life. Relational therapy holds that love expressed through safety, attunement, and emotional responsiveness has the power to heal through corrective emotional experience.