Anxious, Avoidant, or Somewhere In Between: Childhood Trauma Therapy in Falls Church, VA for Attachment Healing
Childhood felt messy. You did not know how to describe it at the time, but you were often anxious, scared, uncertain, and maybe pretty angry too. Maybe your home life “seemed” stable to everyone else, but your inner world felt incessantly rattled. Everything felt like it was “your” problem and “your” fault. But in reality, you felt lonely. You had no adults to rely on and trust. Attachment injuries and attachment trauma speak to that global lack of safety and trust in the world, and it can begin at a very young age—even in infancy. Struggling with trust in others, trust in yourself, and experiencing profound and long-term unmet emotional needs impacts your mental health and emotional well-being throughout childhood and into adulthood when not addressed and repaired. Therapy for healing attachment wounds can support this repair and help you build safety, trust, and connection. So what does attachment encompass? Let’s dive into it.
What is Attachment?
Attachment is the emotional bond that begins between child and caregiver, but as you grow, it evolves into the way you relate to others and your body’s intrinsic understanding of trust and security in your world. Attachment begins early in life. As infants, we do not have the ability to soothe and comfort ourselves. That is why we rely on our caregivers. When infants cry, experience hunger, sadness, anger, etc, this is not just an opportunity for a caregiver to meet the basic needs of the infant; it is also showing and modeling to the infant how to soothe big feelings and how to take care of those feelings when they arise. This sets up a tapestry for self-soothing and emotional security as the infant develops through childhood and into adulthood. However, if the caregiver(s) are unavailable, threatening, or inconsistent, that tapestry may not exactly develop in a consistent or secure manner.
What Are the Different Attachment Styles?
There are different attachment styles, or ways of learning to relate to others and your environment. As mentioned, this begins early in life, but even though it is learned early, it can shift and change as you have new experiences.
Secure: You have deep trust in your world and in others. You do not worry about their intentions or have suspicions about others constantly eating away at you. You typically believe that things will work out, even when you experience a challenge.
Anxious: You feel fearful when the people you care about are apart from you. What if something terrible happens to them? What if something goes wrong? Alternatively, what if you make a horrible mistake and you can’t fix it? Deep down, you worry that if you are away from loved ones and not close at all times, you will be abandoned and alone forever.
Avoidant: Closeness makes you nervous, even though you crave it. You just do not know how to show it, and so rather than feeling open and vulnerable, you shut down. It is scary to show it because if you do, you worry that others will leave you. When others are mushy, emotional, and vulnerable, it makes you uncomfortable, and you turn away or ignore them. Deep down, you worry that if you get too close, you will be abandoned.
Disorganized: Life was a nonstop stream of unpredictability from a young age, so you feel like everything is chaos. One moment you want to be close, another apart. You cannot tell what others’ cues for safety are, and you do not feel certain about whether closeness to another person is an option. It just feels like danger everywhere.
Understanding Attachment Styles Without the Labels
Attachment styles are not a diagnosis—just FYI—they are not some TikTok prescription of your whole personality. However, understanding some of the ways that your needs were and were not met in childhood, whether there were a lot of mixed messages, whether someone modeled repair, whether you felt safe and protected, or whether you received loving correction in childhood, can help inform how you relate to yourself and others today.
Attachment, Trauma, and Attachment Wounding and Why it Matters for Healing
In our nervous systems, there is a categorical difference between physical unmet needs and emotional unmet needs. When emotional unmet needs are unmet during childhood and early life, a part of you becomes stuck. It is almost as if a recording from that age, time, and place turns on and keeps playing in similar situations where you get triggered. Though your adult self is physically present, your younger self is “online,” stuck in that same recording, believing that your younger self is feeling those same feelings, thinking those same thoughts, and feeling that same sense of powerlessness. This does NOT mean that physical unmet needs have no weight or impact on you. It simply means that they may impact you differently.
You might be someone who says, “But nothing actually HAPPENED to me.” Or you may think, “Well, my needs were actually met, so why do I feel so terrified and anxious and down all the time?” This is where attachment, relationships, and bonding play an important role.
Your basic safety needs may have been met, but did you feel seen, heard, or cared for? Did you have someone to go to when you needed help or when you had a problem? When you needed something or felt scared, were you able to bring up these worries to a safe adult?
From Early Neglect to Present-Day Relationship Patterns
When our most important needs are neglected, or when we are made to feel small, invisible, or insignificant during the most important developmental years of our lives, it can contribute to attachment wounds—one type of childhood trauma. This can mean that you felt emotionally insecure or grew up with an insecure attachment style, or the feeling that you could not reasonably trust other people in your life, or trust that they would not abandon you.
Why does this matter? These attachment styles can help frame how you learned to relate to others from the very beginning of your life. And, in the context of childhood trauma, if your world felt unsafe, it illuminates another layer of why you may or may not feel distrust, anxiety, or disease in relationships today. Understanding this context with a trauma therapist can support foundational work in childhood trauma therapy and support appropriate goals for your growth and healing.
How IFS Therapy and Ego States Therapy Heal Attachment Wounds and Attachment Trauma
When you are triggered by your younger parts, the parts of you that feel stuck in that old recording with their unmet emotional needs, it is almost like your adult self takes a backseat in a car and your younger self gets into the driver’s seat of that same car. And, honestly, it does not feel so good, does it? IFS and Ego States Therapy helps to get your most wisdom-filled adult self back into the driver’s seat—while also not abandoning your younger versions of you.
Together, at Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy, we take time to build trust and safety in a trauma-informed therapeutic relationship. We do an attachment-based intake and questionnaire that allows us to understand historical parts of you that continue to trigger you in the present. From there, we explore your protectors—or the parts of you that help you manage while also helping protect your most hurt and wounded parts so that they do not get so hurt again. We build compassion and lower the judgment, building safety and ease along the way. Blending in Ego States Therapy, we work to create a loving team of resources in your internal world. These resources essentially act as your team of personal heroes that can step in when we encounter younger, hurt parts of you. This team may be informed by experiences you have had that have been particularly warm, loving, and encouraging.
Having this team, as well as a safe place for them to exist within you, allows your resources to step forward when needed so that we can process hurt and wounded parts of you, unburdening their pain and desensitizing the heat of their hurt. In this way, these resources offer the opportunity to meet the unmet emotional needs and offer repair that was not previously offered. In this trauma-informed approach, this is how we slowly allow you to take back your power as your wisest, most autonomous adult self. Over time, and through utilizing this as a practice in consistent IFS sessions and Ego States Therapy sessions, the old recordings feel less potent, and you are able to offer the hurt, younger parts of you (that used to get triggered), the opportunity to rest while you, as your connected adult self handles whatever you need to manage.
Over time, you find that these younger parts no longer rush to be in the driver’s seat of that car. Even when they have their moments, you find that you are able to respond with care and compassion, letting your adult self take charge.
Begin Trauma Therapy for Healing Attachment Wounds in Falls Church, VA
At Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy, we provide trauma-informed, compassionate care designed to help you restore a sense of safety, reconnect with your inner strength, and rediscover your authentic self.
How to begin:
Schedule your complimentary 15-minute consultation call below.
Complete a brief pre-consultation form.
Meet with trauma therapist Alice Zic to discuss your needs and goals.
Take the first steps toward healing through personalized childhood trauma therapy.
In-Person Therapy in New Orleans at Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy
Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy provides face-to-face therapy sessions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in New Orleans, Louisiana. We welcome clients from the Greater New Orleans area seeking support for childhood trauma, healing from the effects of an emotionally immature parent, or teen anxiety. Our Mid-City office offers a safe, accessible, and welcoming space to begin your journey toward emotional well-being and personal growth.
Online Childhood Trauma Therapy in Virginia
Online therapy provides a convenient way to begin childhood trauma therapy from the comfort of your own space. As a licensed therapist in Virginia, I work with clients across the state, offering professional support wherever you are. With just a private space, an internet connection, and your preferred device, therapy can fit seamlessly into your life, no traffic or commuting required. Start your healing journey today by scheduling a complimentary consultation call below.
Additional Therapy Services
Beyond childhood trauma, Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy offers virtual support for teen anxiety in Connecticut, Virginia, and Louisiana, mother-daughter family therapy both online and in person, and in-person sessions in New Orleans. Whether you’re navigating mother wounding, childhood emotional abuse or neglect, parentification, immigration-related trauma, or your teen’s anxiety, we provide a compassionate, nonjudgmental space for healing across CT, VA, and LA.
Meet Alice Zic, Your Licensed Childhood Trauma Therapist
Alice Zic, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker based in New Orleans. She provides online therapy across Louisiana, Connecticut, and Virginia, as well as in-person sessions in New Orleans.
Alice specializes in helping perfectionist, mother-wounded women heal from childhood trauma and grow into confident, capable adults. She is trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Ego States Therapy, trauma-informed approaches that support mind-body integration and reparenting of wounded or critical parts.
With a focus on mother wounding and relational trauma, Alice also offers parent coaching and mother-daughter family therapy, helping repair and strengthen parent-child bonds through an attachment-based lens.