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Relationship & Attachment Therapy in Kew
Certain relational patterns have a way of repeating themselves. The same kind of partner, the same eventual disappointment, the same pull toward people who feel familiar in ways that are hard to explain and harder to change. This isn't bad luck or poor judgement. It's usually the echo of much earlier relationships, ones formed long before a person had the language or the choice to shape them differently.
At KYND Psychology, therapy for relationship and attachment difficulties works from the understanding that our earliest bonds become a kind of template, an internal blueprint for what closeness, safety, and love are supposed to feel like. When those early bonds were inconsistent, intrusive, or withdrawn, the template carries that instability forward, often showing up in adult relationships as anxiety, avoidance, or a difficulty trusting that connection can be steady.
Working from a psychoanalytic foundation, and drawing on evidence-based approaches where they serve the person in front of me, I offer a space to notice these patterns as they actually happen, including within the therapeutic relationship itself. This isn't about assigning blame to early caregivers. It's about understanding what was learned, so it no longer has to run on autopilot, always in service of the person, never the protocol.
Why We Keep Choosing the Same Kind of Relationship
Psychoanalytic thinking suggests we don't simply meet new people freshly. We meet them through the internal relationships we formed earliest, unconsciously casting new partners and friends into old, familiar roles. This is often why a person can feel inexplicably drawn to someone who will disappoint them in a very particular, recognisable way. Recognising which old relationship is quietly being replayed is often the beginning of being able to choose differently.
What Sessions Look Like
Early sessions focus on understanding a person's relational history and the patterns that tend to repeat across different relationships. From there, therapy pays close attention to how these patterns show up in real time, including in the relationship between client and therapist, using it as material for change rather than only discussing it in the abstract.
Sessions are available for adults and young adults at our practice in Kew. Many clients travel from Hawthorn, Camberwell, Balwyn, and Richmond for a therapeutic approach that treats them as a whole person rather than a diagnosis. Clinical psychology offers structure and grounding, psychoanalytic thinking offers depth and meaning, and my training in both allows sessions to move between practical support for the present and a slower exploration of where these patterns began.