PACT therapy (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) is a form of couples counseling developed by Stan Tatkin. It focuses on helping partners build secure, healthy relationships by understanding how attachment styles, nervous system responses, and moment-to-moment interactions affect their connection. PACT therapists work with couples in real time, observing how they communicate and guiding them to respond to each other with greater awareness, safety, and cooperation. The goal is to create a secure-functioning relationship where both partners feel protected, valued, and emotionally connected.

Our attachment with our primary partner is at the heart of our relationship. We may feel secure or insecure in our relationships. To understand the basis of this emotional bond, it’s helpful to appreciate Attachment theory. This is a psychological framework explaining how early relationships between infants and their primary caregivers (mom, dad, grandmom, grandad) shape our emotional bonds, sense of security, and relationship patterns later in life. This theory proposes that children form internal models of relationships based on how caregivers respond to their needs. Consistent, responsive and appropriate care tends to produce secure attachment, while inconsistent, neglectful, or intrusive caregiving can lead to insecure attachment styles (such as anxious, avoidant). These styles exist on a continuum so we cannot say that someone is secure or insecure because at times we are all secure or insecure. In other words, when a relationship is stained, our insecure attachment systems are activated and we behave in ways that promote dysfunction.

As your therapist, I will actively push you toward a Secure Functioning relationship by helping you create a relational system grounded in safety, sensitivity, social justice, collaboration, and mutuality. Rather than remaining neutral, I will carefully track your interactions and encourages behaviors that protect your relationship as a shared unit. I will help you recognize how their actions affect each other’s nervous systems and coach you to respond with greater sensitivity and attunement, ensuring that you both feel emotionally and physically safe. I will also emphasizes fairness and social justice within your relationship, challenging dynamics where one might consistently hold more power or where needs are ignored. Through real-time interventions, I will promote collaborative problem-solving and mutual responsibility, encouraging you to make decisions that work well for both of you and the relationship as a whole. In doing so, the couple gradually develops patterns of cooperation, accountability, and care that support a stable, Secure Functioning partnership, where your attachment systems settle down.