Most traditional therapy involves talk therapy, and is based upon the development of a therapeutic relationship between therapist and client. This relationship requires mutual trust, respect, reciprocity, emotional honesty and the ability to formulate thoughts and feelings into words.
Children with Attachment Disorder are unable to make use of such methods because:
- They do not trust.
- They are not emotionally honest, and in fact are frequently not able to identify their feelings or what is behind those feelings.
- They do not respect anyone, including themselves.
- They are not capable of reciprocal give and take relationships.
- Their backgrounds of abuse, neglect, unresolved trauma or pain, loss and abandonment frequently occurred during the first year or two of life, prior to conscious memory of events.
- They do not know why they feel and act as they do.
- They are operating in the only way they know how to survive.
