Trauma & Attachment Therapy
Aspen Therapy offers trauma and attachment therapy in San Diego and online throughout California. We work with teens, adults, and couples healing from complex trauma, difficult childhoods, and relationships that taught them they had to earn love or go without it.
The ways you learned to cope made sense at the time. Therapy is a place to understand those patterns and decide which ones you want to keep.
Who We Work With:
You don't need to call what happened to you "trauma" to come in. Many of our clients simply notice the same painful patterns showing up again and again, and want to understand why.
People often come to us for support with:
Childhood emotional neglect, criticism, or instability
Growing up with a parent who was emotionally immature, unpredictable, or unavailable
Fear of abandonment, or discomfort with closeness
People-pleasing and difficulty setting boundaries
Choosing partners who feel familiar in painful ways
Feeling numb, on edge, or easily overwhelmed
Shame and harsh self-criticism
The effects of abusive or controlling relationships
Setting boundaries with family, or grieving the family you didn't have
Complex trauma therapy
Complex trauma comes from painful experiences that were repeated or ongoing, often in childhood and often within relationships that were supposed to be safe. It can shape how you see yourself, how your body responds to stress, and how much you trust other people.
Healing doesn't require retelling every detail. We go slowly, build safety first, and work with what shows up in your life now.
Attachment therapy
Attachment is the way we learned, early on, to seek comfort and closeness. If care was inconsistent, conditional, or frightening, you may have learned to cling, to keep your distance, or to do both.
These patterns tend to follow us into adult friendships, partnerships, and parenting. Attachment-focused therapy helps you recognize yours and practice a more secure way of relating, including in the relationship with your therapist.
Therapy for adult children of emotionally immature parents
Some parents provide food, shelter, and schooling but can't offer emotional closeness. They may be self-focused, reactive, dismissive of feelings, or uncomfortable with anything but the surface. As a child, you may have become the responsible one, the peacekeeper, or the one who needed nothing.
As an adult, that can look like guilt when you set a boundary, feeling lonely around your own family, or taking care of everyone but yourself. We can help you make sense of what you didn't receive, grieve it, and decide what kind of relationship you want with your parents now. That might mean new boundaries, more distance, or a different way of staying connected. The choice is yours.
Related pages: [Individual Therapy], [Couples Therapy & Marriage Counseling], [IFS Therapy].
How We Work:
We believe you are the expert on yourself and capable of the changes you want. Our role is to offer a steady, safe relationship where old patterns can be understood and new ones tried out.
Our approach is trauma-informed and attachment based. In practice, that looks like:
Attachment-focused work: tracing how early relationships shaped the way you seek closeness and protect yourself today.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT): learning to recognize, feel, and share emotions that once had to be hidden.
Internal Family Systems (IFS): getting to know the parts of you that carry pain, and the parts that work hard to keep you safe, with curiosity instead of judgment.
Trauma-informed care: putting safety, choice, and trust first, so you stay in control of the pace and never have to share more than you're ready to.
Somatic and mindfulness-based work: noticing how stress and old experiences show up in your body, and learning ways to steady yourself when you feel overwhelmed or shut down.
Our Therapists Specializing In Trauma & Attachment Therapy:
Frequently Asked Questions
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Attachment therapy looks at how your earliest relationships shaped the way you connect with people now. It helps you understand patterns like fear of abandonment or pulling away, and build more secure relationships.
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Complex trauma results from repeated or long-lasting painful experiences, often in childhood and within close relationships. It differs from the trauma of a single event and often affects self-worth, emotions, and trust.
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Common signs include a parent who dismissed or was overwhelmed by your feelings, made things about themselves, avoided hard conversations, or relied on you for emotional support. Many adult children describe feeling unseen even when their basic needs were met.
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No. You choose what to share and when. Healing depends on feeling safe, not on reliving details.
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No. Some people choose distance and others stay close with new boundaries. We'll support whichever relationship you decide is right for you.
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Yes. We offer secure online sessions to anyone located in California, and in-person sessions at our San Diego office.
