Diane Poole Heller PhD is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and expert in attachment theory and trauma resolution. Her signature approach, DARe (Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning experience), provides therapists and individuals with relevant skills and practical exercises that facilitate healing from attachment and trauma wounds.

Diane’s training programs, books, lectures, and work as a therapist have helped countless people on their healing journeys toward experiencing greater intimacy, wholeness, and more fulfilling relationships.

She is also the author of three books: The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships, a practical guide to restoring and reconnecting with our innate secure attachment as adults; Crash Course, on accident trauma; and the audiobook, Healing Your Attachment Wounds: How to Create Deep and Lasting Relationships.

Her film, Surviving Columbine, aired on CNN and supported community healing after the Columbine High School shootings.

From Diane

As a therapist and practitioner of attachment theory and trauma resolution, my driving passion and life’s mission have been helping people understand how to create deep and lasting relationships by strengthening secure attachment skills, repairing attachment wounds, and supporting resilience and post-traumatic growth.

I’ve spent over 30 years discovering, practicing, and teaching new tools, approaches, and strategies that alleviate suffering and foster healing—from corrective exercises that resolve trauma to complete frameworks and training that “repatterns” insecure attachment adaptations.

I’ve helped people diminish the intensity of their symptoms, shift their behaviors, enhance resilience, and often recover completely. And I’ve spent decades guiding and training other therapists in this work.

After working with thousands of clients and therapists worldwide, I am convinced that not only do we all have the potential and capability to heal and build resilience but that we are, in fact, innately designed to do so!

MY HEALING JOURNEY

Like many in the therapy field, I came to the work looking for healing and resolution for my own trauma and attachment wounds.

After suffering a terrible car accident and traumatic brain injury in 1988, just two weeks before my wedding, I started to experience trauma symptoms––not only from the event itself but also from painful experiences from my past.

My experience was not uncommon. Trauma often works this way, linking or pulling other traumas into consciousness…bringing past childhood or relational wounding to the present. 

In searching for relief from my trauma, I discovered Dr. Peter Levine and his Somatic Experiencing work. Here, I learned why symptoms bind excess arousal from overwhelming events, how to work with autonomic nervous system regulation, and how to evoke (and complete) unfinished or inhibited self-protective responses.

As I discovered how to apply straightforward strategies, tools, and corrective exercises, my trauma symptoms reduced significantly. And as I began to feel better, I re-learned how to reconnect with myself and my loved ones.

It was such a powerful experience that I trained as a Somatic Experiencing facilitator and spent the next 25 years training other therapists worldwide––developing many of the same trauma and attachment strategies, tools, and methods I still use today to teach clinicians and individuals how to support and facilitate healing from trauma and early attachment wounds.

The Relationship Between Trauma & Attachment

As I worked with clients and therapists over time, I noticed the critical connection between relational or attachment wounding and trauma—and I shifted my focus to helping people reconnect the broken connections that can arise in the face of isolation and dissociation that accompanies most trauma. 

I developed my signature framework and training, DARe (Dynamic Attachment Repatterning experience), to help reshape the unhealthy patterns, adaptations, and behaviors we learned in less-than-ideal childhood circumstances. 

The DARe approach guides clinicians and individuals toward greater intimacy, wholeness, and fulfilling lives by integrating simple strategies, relevant skills, and corrective experiences that strengthen secure attachment skills and support new, healthier ways of relating to ourselves and others in the present.

I wrote my book, The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships, to encourage people to understand that it is possible to restore and reconnect at all levels, regardless of our past. We are biologically programmed for secure attachment––and our job (on our healing journey) is to find out what’s interfering with it and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant.

Whether you’re a therapist, a counselor, a coach, or just someone who wants to understand and heal your own painful experiences, you’ll find a wide array of resources and supportive training material here.

Thank you for doing this vital self-work with us at Broughton, giving yourself the gift of a future you can embrace with authenticity and joy. Our team and I are here to support you however we can.