Attachment Theory & Emotional Healing | Anxiety Therapist Los Angeles, CA
Attachment, Anxiety, and Emotional Safety: Insights from an Anxiety Therapist in Los Angeles
Discover how attachment theory and anxiety affect First Gen, BIPOC, and Queer adults. Work with a culturally affirming anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, CA to heal old patterns, deepen emotional connection, and build healthier relationships.
Why Relationships Feel So Hard Sometimes
After every breakup or social setback, you may find yourself asking: Why are relationships so hard? Whether it is feeling disconnected at work, struggling to trust your partner, or replaying conversations in your head, these moments leave you questioning your emotional responses. You are not alone and there is a reason for those patterns.
So many of us move through life unsure how to express our needs or set boundaries. We carry the weight of people-pleasing tendencies, feel guilty when we prioritize ourselves, and worry that if we speak up, we might lose connection to those people in our lives altogether.
That’s where working with an Anxiety Therapist in Los Angeles, CA, grounded in attachment theory and neuroscience, can help.
What Is Attachment Theory?
Attachment theory explains how early relationships shape the way we connect with others and with ourselves. The cultural and social systems we grow up in influence whether we feel safe to be vulnerable, ask for help, or show our emotions.
It also sheds light on why you might feel:
Anxious in close relationships
Afraid of abandonment or rejection
Distrustful of others, even when craving connection
Unsure how to communicate needs or set boundaries
At its core, attachment theory helps us understand:
How early caregiver relationships influence our behaviors as adults
Why conflict or silence can cause overwhelming emotions for us
How attachment styles (anxious, avoidant, secure, or disorganized) shape our relationships
The good news is that understanding your attachment style doesn’t lock you into one “category.” Attachment is fluid, in that with awareness and support, you can create new patterns of connection that feel more secure.
Anxiety, Attachment, and Intergenerational Trauma — A Los Angeles Therapist’s Perspective
When anxiety and attachment issues overlap, the emotional weight can feel heavy. It can manifest itself into your behaviors without yourself having awareness of it happening or why. It can show up in these different ways when you are alone or in social situations.
Overthinking after conversations
Constantly seeking reassurance from friends or partners
Avoiding conflict even when something hurts
Struggling to express needs
Feeling torn between wanting closeness and fearing it
These aren’t flaws, they have been survival strategies your nervous system has built over time. As a first-generation Latinx woman raised in a BIPOC community, I learned early on to normalize criticism and judgment. Comments at family gatherings were brushed off as jokes or dismissed because “that’s just how they are.” As a child, I didn’t have the language to name when something felt uncomfortable, so I learned to ignore my body’s signals and push down my feelings.
As an Anxiety Therapist in Los Angeles, CA, many of my first-gen clients share similar stories. They grew up with messages that being emotional was weakness, or that needing/asking for comfort was “too much.” These lessons shape how they show up as adults with themselves and others; whether it is difficulty trusting, distancing when things get hard, or feeling worried about being a burden.
The Brain’s Role in Attachment and Anxiety (what I see in my Los Angeles anxiety therapy work)
Sometimes, it feels like your brain is your enemy when it is turning small triggers into spirals of worst-case scenarios. Constant loops of logic fading, emotions feeling overwhelming, and suddenly you are caught in a a rabbit hole of fear and self-doubt.
Our brains often feel separate from us, like they are uncontrollable. But the good news is: the brain is malleable, even in adulthood.
Author and therapist Diane Poole Heller, in her book The Power of Attachment, explains that as children, we primarily form implicit memories — sensations, feelings, body states — that later become “signals” for safety or danger.
A child raised in a playful, protective, emotionally present family learns to trust and relax.
A child raised in emotional detachment (suppression of emotions) or chaos develops defense mechanisms in behavioral responses like hypervigilance, shutting down, or overreacting — in an effort to stay safe.
As adults, those defense mechanisms still present themselves when relationships feel threatening. Yelling, criticism, or emotional distance from parents in childhood can resurface as anxiety, distrust, or fear of closeness in adulthood.
Your brain’s job is to protect you from pain. But sometimes that protection in scanning for danger, pulling away, or clinging too tightly creates blocks of the very connection you long for.
The Anxious Brain in Relationships
Think about the times you have wanted to get close to someone but it felt like an automatic or instinctual need to pull away. Or when you struggled to trust another’s intentions, even if they showed care. These reactions often come from old defense patterns created in childhood —something I often explore with clients in anxiety therapy in Los Angeles, CA.
If your parents dismissed or ignored your emotions, trusting others to hold space for you may now feel unsafe.
If they weren’t emotionally present, you may have learned to rely only on yourself, making depending on others to feel risky.
This is how insecure attachment styles form:
Avoidant attachment pulls back to protect independence.
Anxious attachment clings tightly, worried about not being loved back.
Both are survival strategies. Both are valid responses to past hurts you have experience in the past.
In my blog What First-Gen Anxiety Feels Like in Los Angeles, I explore how these patterns are amplified for first-gen adults who grew up balancing cultural expectations, emotional silence, and the pressure to “handle it” alone.
Making Sense of Your Protective Patterns
So, how do you start to untangle this?
Sitting with your thoughts. Notice what worries come up in friendships, family, or romantic relationships.
Looking for threads. Do these worries remind you of childhood experiences? How were your emotions met then?
Naming your defenses. Are you withdrawing, reaching out more, overthinking?
Recognizing the pattern is the first step to shifting it. Your brain has been trying to protect you from pain. Therapy helps you untangle and understand those protective signals, you then can decide which ones you want to keep and which you’re ready to let go of. This is not a process you have to do alone, there is support.
How Anxiety Therapy in Los Angeles Can Help
Hi, I’m Ligia Orellana, LMFT (she/her/ella), a first-generation Guatemalan-American therapist based in Los Angeles. I offer virtual therapy across California, specializing in supporting BIPOC and LGBTQ+ adults who are navigating anxiety, attachment wounds, and intergenerational stress.
In my work as an Anxiety Therapist in Los Angeles, CA, I create a culturally responsive, trauma-informed space where you don’t have to minimize your feelings. Together, we explore how anxiety, attachment, and identity intersect.
Therapy isn’t about “fixing” you. It’s about helping you return to your most grounded, empowered, and emotionally safe self.
We’ll work on:
Processing past hurts without judgment
Building awareness of protective patterns
Practicing new skills for communication and connection
Creating corrective emotional experiences that foster secure attachment
Healing is a journey, not a destination. With support, you can move beyond anxious patterns and create connections that feel safe, fulfilling, and real.
