Children do not decide to become people who push others away. They adapt to environments that make closeness feel dangerous. A child whose parent responded to emotional need with anger learns that expressing need is a provocation. A child whose caregiver was warm one day and cold the next learns that attachment is unstable and that the safest position is at a distance. A child who experienced loss early, whether through death, divorce, or abandonment, may conclude that getting close to people leads inevitably to being hurt. These conclusions are drawn before the child has the cognitive capacity to evaluate them, and they persist into adulthood as unexamined assumptions about how relationships work.
For adults near Boynton Beach who are trying to understand why they keep pushing everyone away, Dr. David Steinbok's psychodynamic therapy provides a framework for revisiting those early conclusions. His office in Boca Raton, Florida serves as the setting for this work, where the patient's relational history can be explored at a pace that respects the defenses rather than demanding their immediate removal.
