AF-EMDR therapist in Los Angeles. Susan Quinn Therapist, LMFT bringing an attachment-focused approach to clients whose deeper work is relational, developmental, or about who they’ve become.
AF-EMDR Training
Trauma Specialisation
Across California
Attachment-Focused EMDR (AF-EMDR) is a specialised application of EMDR designed for relational and developmental trauma. It takes the eight-phase EMDR protocol and adds something most trauma protocols don’t have built in: explicit, sustained relational attunement, and a strong emphasis on resource-building before any reprocessing begins.
Standard EMDR is brilliant for events the moment something happened, the memory that won’t settle. AF-EMDR is built for what happens when there isn’t one moment. When the wound is the relational climate you grew up in. The chronic absence. The unpredictability. The early sense that something about you was the problem.
These wounds don’t store as discrete memories. They store as templates automatic, body-level assumptions about whether closeness is safe, whether you’re worth showing up for, whether what you need will be met. AF-EMDR addresses those templates directly.
AF-EMDR is built on the standard eight-phase EMDR protocol but emphasises five additional elements that make it effective for relational and developmental wounds.
AF-EMDR begins with understanding the relational landscape caregivers, early experiences of being seen or unseen, the moments that taught you what closeness means.
We build internal resources before any targeting begins secure-figure imagery, self-compassion installations, somatic anchors that let you stay regulated as deeper material surfaces.
We locate the relational injuries not events alone, but the formative experiences that shaped how you attach. These become the targets.
Standard EMDR processing, but with the therapist actively present, attuned, and offering relational repair in real time. Closeness is part of the work, not separate from it.
Over time, the goal isn’t only symptom relief. It’s a felt sense of safety in connection what attachment researchers call earned secure attachment.
Here’s an honest sketch of who AF-EMDR tends to help, and where another approach might be the better starting point.
AF-EMDR is most effective for clients whose primary work is relational and developmental rather than event-based. That includes:
Standard EMDR is built to reprocess specific traumatic events. Attachment-Focused EMDR adds a layer: it targets the relational wounds that shaped how you feel about yourself and how you connect with others. The therapist is more actively present and attuned during AF-EMDR, and resource installation is more extensive. The result is that AF-EMDR reaches developmental and relational material that standard EMDR alone often doesn’t.
AF-EMDR builds on standard EMDR with additional training that integrates attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology into the core EMDR protocol. Clinicians who practice AF-EMDR have completed advanced training beyond basic EMDR certification, with an emphasis on resource installation, relational attunement, and the application of EMDR to developmental and relational wounds.
No. AF-EMDR is particularly powerful for developmental and relational trauma, but it’s also effective for any client whose work involves patterns in connection, self-worth, or felt safety. Many clients come to AF-EMDR after standard EMDR or talk therapy has helped with discrete events but hasn’t shifted the underlying relational template.
My office sits on San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood minutes from Santa Monica, West LA, and Beverly Hills. For clients across California, telehealth makes the same work possible from home.
Primary office · 90049
20 min · Telehealth
20 min · In-person
20 min · Telehealth
20 min · Telehealth
20 min · Telehealth
No commitment, no paperwork. A chance to talk through what you’re carrying and see whether EMDR and whether I might be the right fit.