ABSTRACT
Like in the caregiver-child dyad, the therapist at first co-regulates with a client and works towards the goal of enabling auto-regulation in order to achieve integration. A clinician's first aim is to foster safety and security within the therapeutic relationship so that the client can involve the social engagement system. Creating safety for a client with an unresolved attachment strategy involves conveying acceptance. From an attachment perspective, it should be noted that co-regulation does not involve synchronicity, or pure mirroring, alone. Throughout the process, the therapist provides support, acceptance, and empathic attunement. With every successive and adaptive cycle of attunement, misattunement, and repair, the client gains an increasing capacity to negotiate ruptures. A therapist working from an attachment perspective will track and process a client's physical, emotional, and cognitive moment-by-moment experiences. A clinician can vacillate between secure, preoccupied, dismissing, or unresolved states of mind, depending on what is triggered by the client.
