Attachment Therapy in Manhattan

I'm Dr. Danny Liu, an Asian American attachment therapist and clinical psychologist in Manhattan. Most of the people I work with are capable, accomplished adults who still feel thrown by relationships. It tends to surface in the same handful of places: dating, conflict, the quiet after a text goes unanswered, the moment you want to get closer to someone and freeze instead.

You might already know your pattern by heart. But knowing it and being able to change it are two different things, and that gap is most of what therapy is for. Underneath the pattern there's usually an old belief still running quietly: I have to perform to be loved. I'm too much. I can't really count on anyone.

Many of the people I see grew up in immigrant households where feelings weren't discussed much, where love looked like sacrifice and long hours more than words, and where letting on that you were struggling didn't feel safe. That shapes how you love later. I grew up in a home like that too, so this isn't only something I studied.

Anxious Attachment

When your attachment leans anxious, other people's moods start to feel like your weather. A short reply, a canceled plan, a partner who goes quiet, and you're suddenly replaying everything you said. You might send the text and regret it, over-give to keep someone close, or feel like you're the only one holding the relationship together. Usually this goes back to a childhood where love was real but came and went without much warning, so staying alert became the way to hold onto it. A lot of our work is you learning that you don't have to earn your spot with someone all over again every single day.

Avoidant Attachment

Avoidant attachment usually looks fine from the outside. You're independent, you solve your own problems, you don't make a fuss. What's harder to see is how alone that can get. If you grew up sensing your needs were an inconvenience, the safest thing was to stop having them, or at least stop showing them. So closeness can register as pressure, and when someone gets too near you find a reason to step back. That isn't coldness. It's that closeness once came at a cost, and part of therapy is making it feel safe to want it again.

Disorganized Attachment

Disorganized attachment, sometimes called fearful-avoidant, is the one I find gets misunderstood the most, and it's a growing focus of my practice. It's the bind of wanting closeness and fearing it in the same breath. It tends to form when the person you counted on as a child was also the person who scared or confused you, so love and danger got tangled together early. As an adult that can look like running hot and cold, reaching for someone and then blowing it up, feeling desperate for them and crowded by them in the same week. It's disorienting to live inside, and it starts to make sense once you can see where it came from. This work is slower and more careful, and it's some of the most meaningful I do.

Watch: How Attachment Styles Actually Form

In this episode of Beyond the Surface, I break down where each attachment style actually comes from, and how something that helped you survive childhood ends up quietly running your adult relationships.

Episode 2: How Childhood Adaptations Shape Our Attachment Style

Common Areas I Support

• Feeling pressure to "get it right" in dating or relationships
• Attracting avoidant or emotionally unavailable partners
• Falling into familiar relationship patterns despite wanting something secure
• Difficulty expressing needs without guilt or fear of judgment
• Worrying constantly about what the other person is feeling

In our work, we go back to where these patterns started and loosen their grip on the present. Over time, closeness stops being something you have to manage and starts being something you can actually let yourself have.

Frequently Asked Questions