In this short video, I explain how the way you attach was once a sensible answer to your childhood, and how we work on it together by video.
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Online attachment therapy helps you understand how you learned to seek people out or hold them off, and why that early learning still shapes your closest relationships today. We work one to one by video, in English, in 1-hour sessions with 50 minutes of therapy, at a time that fits your time zone.
I help you catch your pattern in live moments, see what it once protected and practise a steadier way of being close. Attachment is a main branch of my online psychotherapy. When one pattern is clearly yours, go deeper with anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, disorganised attachment or building secure attachment. Nearby pages cover codependency, self-sabotage, being single and never being single.
To take a next step, talk to me on a free 30-minute call, choose a time to meet, check my client policy or send me a note.
Online attachment therapy is for English-speaking adults, wherever they live, who keep meeting the same painful turn in their closest relationships. Perhaps closeness simply asks more of you than it seems to ask of others. You want real change in how you love, with a therapist you can reach by video.
Attachment touches almost every part of life, and some situations are served better by a more focused page. See whether one of these fits you more closely.
You can also send me an email
These reviews describe clients’ experiences of working with me. They come from my wider practice and do not all relate to online sessions. Each person’s experience is their own, and a review does not promise a particular outcome.
“Over more than 15,000 clinical hours, I have noticed that attachment language is used far more often to explain a partner than to understand oneself. ‘He is avoidant’ ends a conversation. It rarely starts one. I would much rather hear what you do in the moment closeness changes. Underneath, people ask things like ‘If I stop trying, will anyone notice I am gone?’ or, from the other side, ‘Why can nobody let me sort this out by myself?’. When you turn the lens round, onto your own move and its history, the pattern starts to loosen. That needs curiosity, not a label.”
Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist and EFT couples therapist
I am Mark Colclough, MA. I have practised since 2004 and offer online psychotherapy and couples therapy in English.
My training brings together your emotions, your thoughts and your relationships. My deep passion is the moment when what happens between you finally makes sense, to each of you and to each other. I have lived and worked in nine countries, so I know something of life across languages, cultures and borders.
Read about my background, or explore online psychotherapy and online couples therapy.
I meet regularly with experienced psychotherapists to reflect on my work, question my understanding and develop my skills. Supervision is part of the professional care I bring to individual and couples work, including online sessions.
My focus is thoughtful practice, integrity and responsibility.
You are welcome to ask about the kind of support you need.
Tell me where you are based and your time zone. We can then consider whether online sessions together are suitable.
Dmitri is 38, a software architect from Kyiv who has lived in Berlin for 6 years. His relationships follow a script: 4 or 5 months of real warmth, then a creeping restlessness he cannot explain. He starts working late, answers messages with a single word and feels relief when plans fall through. He took an online quiz, got a result and felt no wiser.
I would not start with the quiz. I would ask Dmitri to walk me through the week the restlessness began last time, and then about the flat he grew up in, where feelings were rarely spoken. In a first video session he would probably notice that his retreat begins exactly when someone starts to rely on him.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have tried hard to love differently, yet the same old turn keeps finding its way back into your closest ties.
There is no right time and no qualifying reason for attachment therapy. If closeness keeps going wrong at the same point, or you feel a quiet dread each time someone gets near, that is enough. You need no diagnosis, theory or crisis first. In 22 years of practice I have seen how deeply early attachment shapes adult life, and I can tell when ordinary relationship ups and downs have become a pattern that deserves attention.
My professional view is that these patterns shift fastest when we catch them happening in your life now. I will help you name what moves in you as closeness grows or fades, what keeps the cycle going and what needs to change. Use these 6 questions to test whether it is time.
If so, the repetition is telling you something. The partners change, the countries change, and still the story bends the same way: you end up overlooked, or hemmed in, or halfway out of the door as things get serious. Each time it looks like bad luck, yet part of you doubts that.
I would look for the turning point, the moment just before you cling, cool or leave. A single painful ending is not a pattern. The same turn with different people usually is, and that is how I tell passing strain from a learned strategy. If this sounds like you, book a session with me and we will trace it.
These needs can sit side by side because each protects something different. One part of you wants to be held and chosen. Another wants room, trusts nobody fully and stiffens when someone comes too close. You may swing between them, lonely while single and smothered once you are not.
I do not see either side as the healthy one. Drawing on attachment theory and object relations, I treat each need as something you learned for good reasons. When you can hear what each one is guarding, you no longer have to choose in a panic. The aim is room for both, with the same person.
For many people it does. A shorter text, a distracted look on a video call, a friend who has not replied by evening, and your mind starts to race. You replay the last conversation, hunt for your mistake and cannot rest until someone says all is well. The calm lasts until the next small shift.
Wanting closeness and clarity is not too much, and I will not shame you for it. We work on how quickly the alarm fires and how much it decides your next move. We look at where you first learned that love could vanish, and you practise asking directly. If this is your main struggle, online anxious attachment therapy goes further.
Far more people do this than admit it, and it hurts everyone involved. You miss someone terribly while they are away and feel cornered when they return. A loving message goes out late at night and a cool one the next morning. Closeness feels like the thing you want and the thing that threatens you.
In sessions we slow the swing right down to find the instant one need flips into the other. I have real tenderness for these protective moves, and I will still ask you to own the ones that hurt people. If this swing is central, online disorganised attachment therapy is designed for it.
Many people learned early that needing others was unsafe, so they became good at needing nobody. When a partner wants to talk about feelings or a friend leans on you, you turn calm, sensible and slightly absent. You reach for your inbox, a run or a screen. It feels like control until someone says they cannot reach you.
That distance has done a real job, and I respect it. Together we find what it shields you from, so you can stay present a little longer without feeling swamped. You learn to say “Give me an hour and I will come back to this” before stepping back becomes shutting out. Online avoidant attachment therapy focuses on this pattern.
Attachment strategies are clever, and they cost something. If you kept people near by being easy, useful or impressive, you may have lost touch with what you feel. If you stayed safe by needing nothing, you may not know what you would ask for. None of it means you are damaged.
Part of our work is separating the strategy from the person beneath it, including what came down to you from earlier generations. I will name it when you disappear, and I will not give you a ready-made self. The aim is a clearer sense of who you are and which relationships fit you.
If you recognised yourself here, a free call lets us talk first, and booking a session lets us begin straight away.
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Tell me briefly what kind of support you are looking for.
Include your country and time zone so we can discuss whether online work together is possible and find a suitable time.
You do not need to explain your whole story in your first message.
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Knowing your pattern helps, but the work has to change how you reach out, how you step back and how you mend things afterwards.
This is where the work turns practical. You will understand what stirs in you as closeness rises or falls, spot the sequences that repeat and make changes you can feel with the people you love. A label with no change in behaviour rarely makes anyone feel more loved.
After 22 years of practice, I am convinced this work moves when I take an active part. I will name what I notice, including what happens between us on screen, where attachment patterns often show most clearly. I guide, and I challenge explanations that keep you stuck. These 6 questions show what we work towards.
Related reading: Why do I turn into someone else when we fight?, Why am I always waiting for them to leave? and Why do I back away when someone starts to love me?.
We begin by separating the pattern from its fallout. The jealousy, the silences and the breakups are real, but they are usually the last link in a chain. Underneath sits a specific fear, a belief about what people do when you need them and a protective move you learned early.
I give this structure. You will hear what I think your pattern is, where I would begin and which stories hold you back, such as “I always pick the wrong people”. Bowlby called these inner working models, and our job is to update yours. Whenever it feels right, book a session with me to start.
You can learn to see it coming. An attachment reaction nearly always has a run-up: a tight chest when a reply is late, a sudden urge to clean when someone cries, a thought that starts with “people always”. The sooner you spot it, the more room you have for something new.
We replay real moments slowly, asking what set them off, what they guarded and what they cost. Spotting it is only half the job. We then rehearse a different move, in session and at home, until you can use it on an ordinary weeknight without me there.
Steadiness does not mean feeling nothing or pretending not to care. It means staying present enough to notice what is happening in you and choose your response. Some alarms are accurate. Others are old reactions to dangers long gone.
I help you catch the first stir of activation and understand what your body is responding to, often something it remembers better than your mind does. We find ways of settling that suit you. I will be direct: this needs a few minutes of practice every day between our sessions.
It begins with sorting what you feel, what you need and what is yours to carry. You hint instead of asking, test people instead of telling them, or wait for them to guess. Unspoken needs tend to turn into resentment or a lonely sense of being unknown.
We work on words that are honest, specific and proportionate, such as “I need a quiet evening, and I still want to see you tomorrow”. I will notice when you silence yourself, and when you give someone else the whole job of calming your fear. Often we rehearse a real conversation first.
Decisions get clearer once fear, guilt, habit and other people’s hopes are set apart from what you actually know and want. Fear of being alone can keep you somewhere wrong. Fear of being trapped can push you out of something right.
We lay out your options honestly, with what each would ask of you. You get my professional view, and I will say when you are dodging, but the choice stays yours. If you keep ending up alone, therapy for “why am I single?” looks closer. If you are rarely single, therapy for always being in a relationship does the same.
Change has to show up outside our sessions: the evening your partner is late, the friend who cancels, the moment someone says they love you. You may need firmer limits, a new way of asking for support, a habit of repair after an argument, or people who can meet you halfway.
We agree together on what should change and what can stay. Your sensitivity, independence and loyalty are not the problem. People do grow more secure as adults, through relationships that prove reliable, and therapy can be one of them. Building secure attachment online describes that work.
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You do not need to know your style or tell your whole childhood. We start with your relationships today and what you want to be different.
From our first video session, I listen, help you name the pattern that matters most and give the work a clear direction. We start with one real relationship and one real moment, and your history joins in where it helps.
Online attachment therapy is a focused strand of my online psychotherapy, structured individual work on how you relate to others and to yourself. If the pattern lives mainly between you and a partner who wants to work on it, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. If you already sense this will take time, a therapy bundle brings real savings and a plan agreed at the outset.
I ask what made you get in touch now, which relationship or moment weighs on you most, what you have tried and what you hope will change. The full life story can wait.
Before we finish, I share a first reading of your pattern and suggest a direction. You then judge whether working with me feels useful. If you would like to talk before committing, book a free 30-minute call.
Individual work fits when the pattern lives in you and travels with you from one relationship to the next. With attachment, that is usually the case. Even when it flares most with a partner, its roots lie in your history and expectations, and we can explore every relationship without anyone else on the call.
One to one, you get direction, continuity and honest challenge each week. Our steady contact becomes a place to practise trusting, disagreeing and coming back after a rupture. The wider frame is my online psychotherapy, structured individual work on your whole life.
Couples therapy fits when the relationship itself needs sustained care and you are both willing to give it. If one of you reaches while the other retreats, if the same row keeps returning or if trust has been broken, working on the cycle together usually achieves more.
With a couple, I help each of you see the dance between you, own your share and find safer ways of being together. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing, and some people do individual work first.
Pace depends on how strongly the pattern is affecting your life, how much room you have and how much continuity the work needs. Attachment work relies on continuity more than most, because the reliability of our meetings is part of what helps.
I usually suggest weekly or fortnightly sessions to begin. I will tell you plainly if the gaps are too wide, if closer sessions would help or if we can safely meet less often. Sessions can also be placed back-to-back over a few days when your schedule or travel calls for it.
A bundle fits once you can see the work will take several sessions and you would rather not decide afresh after each one. In attachment work this matters. Many people want to stop just as therapy starts to feel close, and a planned course steadies that moment.
A bundle lowers the cost of each session and gives you the security of a structure agreed in advance. See therapy discounts and bundles and the cards below.
You will feel more at home in your relationships, and the old pattern will have eased enough for you to manage without regular support. It may still appear, but you catch it early, can talk about it and know how to repair.
I review progress with you openly and have no interest in keeping you longer than it helps. Ending well is part of attachment work, so we plan it together. Coming back years later with something new does not mean the work failed.
Not sure attachment therapy is where to begin? Here it is beside the options people looking at how they love most often consider.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online attachment therapy (this page) | The same relationship pattern keeps repeating and you want to understand and change it. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online psychotherapy | Relationships are one theme among several in your life right now. | 1-hour video sessions at a pace you choose |
| Online codependency and people pleasing therapy | You lose yourself in looking after others and struggle to say no. | Weekly or fortnightly video sessions |
| Online couples therapy | The pattern lives between you and a partner who will join you. | Longer video sessions for both of you |
Online attachment therapy with me is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for adults whose way of getting close to people, or keeping them away, keeps causing pain. It helps you understand the strategy you learned early, see how it plays out now and practise a steadier way of relating.
My work is depth-oriented. It draws on attachment theory and the British School of Object Relations, and it attends to the whole person. Within my online psychotherapy, attachment forms a main branch of its own.
Come when the same pattern keeps costing you relationships, sleep or peace of mind, or when you notice yourself avoiding closeness to stay safe. You do not need to wait for a breakup. Your own sense that something keeps going wrong is enough.
I pay most attention to whether the pattern repeats with different people, whether it is growing stronger and what you have given up because of it. A turning point that appears in relationship after relationship deserves proper work.
Yes, it can. A style is not a fixed identity but a learned set of expectations about what happens when you need someone. Something learned between people can be learned again between people. How far and how fast varies, and I do not offer quick fixes.
In my experience, understanding alone rarely does it. Change comes from being met differently, again and again, in therapy and in life, until your body begins to expect something new. With you, I would focus on catching the old expectation as it happens.
No, not in the way you fear. As a small child you never chose your strategy. It was a sensible answer to what you faced. What belongs to you now is what you do with it, and that is hopeful.
I do not blame, and I will not let you off the hook either. You will see your share of the pattern clearly and without shame, alongside the other person’s share.
That is common, and it makes sense. Attachment is not one trait you carry everywhere. You may hold tight to someone a little distant and retreat from someone who wants a lot. None of the words in the books is who you are. Each describes a move you make under pressure.
We map which way you move with whom, what each move reaches for and what it costs. Then we build other options: asking without chasing, taking space without vanishing and finding your way back after a rupture.
Our starting point is one relationship that matters to you today. I ask what happens in you when it feels close, distant or difficult, and a little about the family you grew up in. You leave with my first understanding of your pattern and a sense of direction.
No preparation is needed. Feeling a little exposed in a first session about relationships is normal, and it is a fine place to start. Book your first session or begin with a free 30-minute call.
Plan for a course over several months, usually weekly or fortnightly, rather than a few conversations. Attachment patterns form over years and change through repeated experience. Patterns tied to painful early experiences usually take longer.
From 22 years of practice, I would rather you commit to a clear first stretch and review it honestly than drift. We look at what has changed in your relationships and decide together whether to continue, meet less often or end.
For most people, yes. Many find intimacy easier to talk about from their own room, and regular screen meetings still build reliable contact. It also carries on when you move country.
You need a private space where you cannot be overheard, headphones, a stable connection and a laptop or tablet. If the pattern belongs to a couple and your partner will not come, online couples therapy alone may suit you better.
With me, individual psychotherapy comes as 1-hour video sessions, each holding 50 minutes of therapy. Fees are listed in US dollars on my prices page, kept current.
If you expect a longer stretch of work, a therapy bundle saves 10 per cent and gives you the safety of a structured plan. The bundle options sit side by side on therapy discounts and bundles.
Book your first session directly, or ask for a free 30-minute call if you would rather talk first. A few words about what keeps repeating in your relationships is all I need.
If no time suits you, or a breakup has made things urgent, contact me directly. I keep some room for acute cases, usually a time within days, which acute online psychotherapy explains.
You can also send me an email
I want therapy to help you understand your experience and make choices you can use in everyday life. We pay attention to feelings, needs and the responses that happen before you have time to think.
Our online room should offer enough trust and honesty to explore what is difficult. I bring attention and professional judgement. You bring your experience, questions and the right to say when something does not fit.
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P.S. I’ll call you in a bit!
