Steve Marriott - Systemic Psychotherapist

18/02/2026

Calming the couples “Attachment storm”
Do you work with couples in distress?
Or maybe you know firsthand how distressed and unravelled you can feel in conflict with a partner.
Read on if you recognise this trauma vortex…

An “attachment storm” is a couple’s reciprocal descent into relationship rupture, emotion dysregulation and feeling fragmented in self. When mutual misunderstandings, compounding mistrust, over sensitivity, unpredictability and unsafety lead to the closing of one’s heart and mind to self and other. This can lead to unbearable personal distress, extreme behaviours and a profound sense of estrangement and isolation.

“When one person’s need ignites the other’s unresolved trauma, a catastrophic attachment paradox occurs, producing a cycle of continuous rupture. The one you need keeps hurting you; the only one who can make it better is making it worse.”

When the one you love becomes a stranger, when the one you know deeply becomes impenetrable or unknown to you, when the one who knows you no longer recognizes you— this can feel deeply threatening and activates old survival programming.

Such devastating interactions have been described as “disorganised attachment”, where one’s attachment figure is also the source of terror.

“The person who is one’s 'safe haven' and 'secure base', the one who heals, regulates and cares for you, is also the one who can hurt and frighten you.”

In the depths of such terror is the longing, “If only my partner softened, welcomed me back into the familiarity of our relational space, my ordinary world would click into place in a nano-second”

We now know from attachment research and clinical practice with distressed couples that slowing down the moment, clarifying misunderstandings, calming down nervous systems and regaining emotional attunement and reflective capacity — moment by moment — is central to the development of secure attachment.

Attachment theory is a comprehensive developmental theory that explains both optimal human functioning and how healthy relationships grow resilience. It also shows how insecure attachment is connected to most mental health and behavioural challenges, and dysfunctional relationship patterns.

If you work with couples and want to:
• Learn more about attachment theory in practice
• Find a way to help couples neutralise these storms
• Hold onto your own emotional stability and not get pulled into the couple vortex

Please get in touch via my website for professional supervision
stevemarriott.com.au

I have been working with couples, families and individuals for 25 yrs as a psychotherapist specialising in systemic, attachment and trauma-based approaches. I also provide training and supervision of mental health clinicians.

Quotes taken from Virginia Goldner, on-camera clinical supervisor to Orna Guralnik on the award-winning docuseries, Couples Therapy
“Romantic Bonds, Binds, and Ruptures: Couples on the Brink”

30/11/2025

"There is no formula for raising emotionally healthy children. But there is one rule that might save us from the grip of the Mental Health Industrial Complex: don’t pathologize emotion.

Fear, anger, sadness, and confusion are not diseases; they are signals – communications that are part of the messiness of being alive. Take them seriously, but keep them in the realm of the understandable, not the medical. Hold diagnoses lightly, if you must hold them at all."

Mental health labeling in children may be harming resilience—turning normal emotions into disorders and fueling a profit-driven system.

30/11/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BhJhaBDZE/

10/11/2023

Cooking up some training on maintaining a solid self within complex relationship dynamics...
Watch this space 🤹‍♀️

29/10/2023

For all my therapist friends out there... if you're interested in EMDR, working with client 'parts' and structural dissociation, check out the free ebooks by Janine Fisher

Free E-Books To gain access to my E-books please complete the forms below for the books you wish to receive. Self-harm and Suicidality Get the book Transference/ countertransference Dilemmas in the Treatment of Traumatized Patients Get the book The Treatment of Structural Dissociatation in Chronical...

07/07/2023

On a silent meditation retreat over the next week.
The theme, "Seeing that frees", in freezy Canberra.
My weeks are full of intense relational contact so dropping back into deep spaciousness is a very welcome change.

27/06/2023

Ive just launched my new website!! Its full of info about how I work with relationship complexity and facilitating secure attachment in couples and families, individual psychotherapy, clinical supervision and professional training.

There is also lots of writing, videos and resourses on trauma treatment, EMDR, contemporary attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology.

If you are interested in receiving ongoing free resources please feel free to subscribe
https://stevemarriott.com.au/

24/03/2023

So great to be a part of changing healthcare culture. NSW Health supporting all the child and adolescent mental health clinicians in this region to be more relationship attachment focused.
Seeing children's difficulties and brain development as fundamentally influenced by their relationship environment, beyond (and inclusive of) symptoms, brain chemicals and diagnosis.
Early intervention to facilitate securely attached relationships is the best medicine for kids.
Final day of training 50 nurses, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and paediatricians in Systemic Family Therapy.

31/08/2022

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/counselling/steve-marriott-individual-couple-family-therapist-bangalow-nsw/779423

Steve Marriott - Individual Couple Family Therapist, Clinical Social Work/Therapist, Bangalow, NSW, 2479, (07) 5655 7538, I have a busy private practice based in Bangalow and provide counselling and psychotherapy services to individuals, couples and families. I am an Accredited Mental Health Social....

17/06/2022

Anxiety-driven intensive parenting burns out parents while harming children’s competence and mental health

"we need to normalize saying yes to prioritizing adult friendships and an adequate amount of sleep. We need to reassure one another—explicitly, publicly—that being a whole person is being a good parent....
the causal link between parental well-being and child well-being is quite strong. Anxiety-driven intensive parenting has even been implicated as one factor in the rising youth mental-health crisis. Freedom from intensive methods provides both parents and their children with the ability to fashion a healthier life....
Where intensive parents are carpenters, hammering children into a particular shape one stroke at a time, gardening parents pour their labor into creating preconditions of “love, safety, and stability” for their kids to grow in potentially unpredictable ways."

It’s the prevailing American child-rearing model across class lines. But there’s a better way.