The Clinic

South Sound Attachment Clinic is our Olympia WA office, opened in 2001.  Doing business as The Attachment Clinic begins servicing Seattle families in 2011.  If you're in Seattle and need Attachment Counseling services, call 1-800-261-7402 to hear how we can start seeing you now.  If you don't live in Washington State, we can still help you.  Continue to browse the website to learn more.

We offer non-holding Holistic Attachment Counseling based in Attachment Theory and Eastern Psychology Practices. 

Both parents are expected to actively participate in counseling sessions, unless there is a therapeutic need for individual counseling.  The therapist structures each session to meet the unique needs of each parent and child relationship. 

Counseling Sessions

For younger children typically the first half of the session, we build upon the parent and child's attachment providing them fun interactive play.   For the second half of the session, the therapist observes and tracks 26+ attachment variables that could occur in each parent and child's relationship.  The therapist coaches the parent to shift  interacting with their child based on the observations.  The goal is to get the parent and child attachment close to secure attachment.

For older children, we use evidence-based psychotherapy, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy.  We emphasize repair and healing from the parent to the child and create home-based assignments when this is not happening.  The Founder, Beth Latimer desiged new parent-child techniques useful with older Rad children, based on her experience and review of Attachment literature (read her bio below).  We see even more success and movement in those sessions.  We also include energy psychology and nutrition into our work, because it contributes to making real progress. 

The Assessments

Beth Latimer is certified to test, analyze, and design treatment plans using attachment research testing.  These tests are video recorded and used to provide parents feedback in therapy.  The testing assessements can be done with children between the ages of 1-8.  One parent and one child are tested at a time.  For specific questions about these assessments email theattachmentclinic@gmail.com.


The Children

We work with trauma impacted children where the trauma occured early in life, which disrupted their attachment system.  It is very common for children in this situation to have multiple diagnoses, so we don't just work with attachment.  The majority of the children we see were adopted in the United States, but we also work with internationally adopted children.  We are currently contracted with the State of Washington and serve foster children.  We anticipate to work more with families and their birth children as we raise awareness of Disorganized Attachment.

Attachment Counseling is a really big deal for healing trauma.  When significant trauma happens in the attachment stage, like loss or separation from a primary attachment figure, it may stop children's psychological and emotional development.  If so, to survive, this child develops a defensive layer that acts older than the chronological age of the child fooling those outside the home that he/she is fine.  As Attachment Therapists, we became good at recognizing how disturbed the attachment system and personality of the child has been impacted by trauma.  We are healers of trauma and attachment and use non-invasive long-term empathy based methods. 

The Founder

Beth Latimer, M.A., Respected Attachment Therapist and Mother to four children.  Beth writing to you here.  It is my life's passion to provide parents many tools for children with Attachment Disorder and Disorganization.  Discovering parents in need of quality Attachment Counseling and tools, I founded The Attachment Clinic 8 years ago, passionate to fine tune Attachment Counseling down to the best techniques, support and tools.

My undergraduate degree in Psychology with additional Philosophy courses from The University of Wisconsin provided me a depth of analysis that you will notice in our services.  My graduate degree from Saint Martin's University was in basic counseling and taught very little about Attachment.  Knowing this, I investigated other graduate counseling programs to learn this is the norm.  Unbelievably unfortunate for children with attachment issues needing counseling that works.

Before I was a counselor, I worked with foster children in residential and group care.  I watched counselors reject these children.  This fueled a passion inside me to learn all things attachment.  I became certifiied to test parent-child attachment relationships, assessing their style of attachment, the strenghts and weaknesses of each parent and then utilize this information for treatment planning. 

It is my life's purpose to learn all there is to know in trauma and attachment and fields related to healing this.  I design quality programs and continue expanding upon the good Attachment Therapies.  So check back occassionally!

Update:  In Spring 2011, I recognized increased growth for older children and teenagers with RAD when focusing on Eastern Psychology practices and Energy Psychology methods.  Now some easy to use techniques from these approaches are standardized at the clinic further contributing to consistent progress. 

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