What Are The Two Key Principles Of Attachment Therapy

Question 2
Behavioural therapy focuses on human behaviour and is an action-based therapy that looks to eliminate unwanted or maladaptive behaviour. The goal is to help the individual learn new, positive behaviours which will minimise or eliminate the issue as it is believed that behaviour can be both learned and un-learned. (McLeod, 2010). The traditional behavioural therapy draws on two key principles, classical and operant conditioning paradigms of learnings and works best for mental health conditions that cause unwanted behaviour by fostering positive behaviour change such as addiction, anxiety, phobias and OCD. Classical conditioning focuses on associative learning, whereby a child or adolescent learns to respond in a particular way
The clinician use attachment theory as a basis to assess children’s and parents’ attachment styles and behaviours and provide guidance for structuring interventions and the goal is to uncover the less-than-optimal patterns of interactions and through relationship, change them. Unlike behavioural therapy, the focus of the intervention is shifted away from the caregiver or the child or causes and symptoms, but rather onto the quality of the caregiver-child relationship which can be used as a tool to address a child’s emotional, cognitive and social functioning difficulties. By focusing on primary vulnerable emotions and unmet attachment needs towards the past and ongoing experiences that have ruptured the attachment bond, the clinician can then facilitate corrective attachment episodes where parents can learn how to respond to their child or adolescent’s feelings in a more supporting and understanding manner (Diamond, 2014). It is believed that changing the behaviours of both parents and children can produce higher results than those focusing on parental sensitivity alone, thus the clinician needs to assess the child’s and parent’s attachment behaviours and provide guidance in the
However, in order to promote stronger working alliances, the clinician needs to work on areas such as safety and boundaries, attunement or reflective functioning, in becoming secure bases for their clients, so that the client can learn skills to relate to others and regulate affect. The clinician has to acknowledge that addressing attachment issues in older children or those with complicated backgrounds can be challenging due to other developmental and environmental factors such as neurocognitive or psychiatric limitations or internal working models, defenses and compensatory strategies, thus this has significant impact on the effectiveness of the interventions. As compared with older individuals, young children depend more on their primary attachment figures, encounter fewer external influences and demands, and exhibit less rigidly formed or not yet formed internal working models thus attachment interventions may be therefore more straightforward and powerful for younger children