The Modern Attachment Spectrum: Trauma Therapy Techniques for Relational Patterns

Most clinicians learned attachment as four boxes to sort clients into. In practice, people move. A client can look secure in one relationship and anxious or avoidant in another, sometimes within the same session.

Join Sue Marriott, LCSW, CGP, co-host of the Therapist Uncensored podcast and co-author of Secure Relating, for a conversation about what a spectrum model of attachment actually looks like in the room, and how it changes the way you track and work with relational patterns.

In This Conversation, We Will Explore:

• Why attachment styles were never meant to sort people into four fixed boxes, and what a spectrum model captures instead
• How the Modern Attachment Regulation Spectrum (MARS) links attachment activation to real-time nervous system states, not just childhood history
• What shifts when you track a client's movement along the spectrum instead of assigning them a single attachment label
• How relational neurobiology explains why the same client can look secure in one relationship and anxious or avoidant in another
• Ways to help clients recognize their own attachment activation in session, without pathologizing normal protective patterns
• How this framework strengthens the trauma therapist training and relational skills you already bring to complex attachment work