Attachment Theory Therapist Guide, Adult Attachment Styles, Couples Therapy Tool (PDF + EPUB)

A clinical compendium on adult attachment for psychotherapists, counsellors and trainees, with 10 printable client worksheets.

Patients rarely come to therapy when things are going well. They tend to arrive when something has activated the attachment system, a loss, a separation or a relationship that has stopped feeling safe, and then, week after week, they meet a person who is available at a fixed time, who goes on holiday and who will one day say goodbye. Therapy does not only talk about attachment, since it recreates the conditions in which attachment strategies come alive.

This guide brings attachment theory back into the room, in a form you can use on Monday morning.

WHAT'S INSIDE

Part I · A map of adult attachment
From the Strange Situation to the Adult Attachment Interview, the anxiety and avoidance dimensions, and the hyperactivating and deactivating strategies that make sense of them, with a note on why "strategies, not labels" matters clinically.

Part II · Recognising attachment in the room
How dismissing, preoccupied and unresolved narratives sound, and a field guide to deactivating, hyperactivating and disorganised patterns in session, covering affect, use of the therapist, reactions to breaks and ruptures, and the countertransference pull of each. It closes on the therapist's own attachment.

Part III · Working with attachment
Building a secure base, and specific approaches for deactivating, hyperactivating and disorganised patterns with session language you can adapt. Rupture and repair, breaks and endings, attachment in couples (the pursue-withdraw cycle), online therapy, and three composite clinical vignettes.

Part IV · Tools
A guide to the main measures (AAI, ECR-R, RQ), a clinical observation grid, an attachment-informed formulation template and a guide to using the worksheets, with full references.

10 PRINTABLE CLIENT WORKSHEETS
1. What is attachment? (psychoeducation)
2. My closeness thermometer
3. When I feel disconnected
4. The story of my relationships
5. Triggers and needs
6. Our cycle (for couples)
7. A repair conversation
8. Holding the connection between sessions
9. Calm and reach
10. Secure moments log

FORMAT
• Compendium, 36 pages, PDF (US Letter, prints well on A4) and EPUB for tablets and e-readers
• Worksheets, 10 pages, PDF, printable
• Instant digital download; no physical item will be shipped

WHO IT IS FOR
Psychotherapists, counsellors, psychologists, social workers and trainees under supervision, across modalities. It is written from a psychodynamic perspective and grounded in research (Bowlby, Ainsworth, Main, Fonagy, Mikulincer and Shaver, Safran and Muran, Johnson).

LICENCE
For the personal professional use of the purchaser. You may print the worksheets for use with your own clients, but please do not resell or redistribute the files.

This resource supports clinical work and does not replace training, supervision or the professional and ethical codes of your jurisdiction.

If you want a single instrument for the relational field, The Distance Map works well alongside this guide, and Instruments, Not Oracles (AI Tools for Therapists) is the practical guide to AI tools in the same shop.

WHO WROTE IT
I'm Alberto Del Bove, a psychologist and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist trained in Rome, in private practice with adults. Everything in The Consulting Room is written and clinically reviewed by me, and most of it started as material I needed in my own sessions before it became something to share.

If you have a question before buying, or you want to know whether this fits the way you work, send me a message through Etsy and I will answer personally. If it turns out to be useful, a short review helps other clinicians find it.