How you attach to people may explain a lot about your inner life

Early interactions with caregivers can dramatically affect your beliefs about yourself, your expectations of others, and how you cope with stress and regulate your emotions as an adult

In 2006, a team of Norwegian researchers set out to study how experienced psychotherapists help people to change. Led by Michael Rinnestad, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oslo, the team followed 50 therapist-patient pairs, tracking, in minute detail, what the therapists did that made them so effective. Margrethe Halvorsen, a post-doc at the time, was given the job of interviewing the patients at the end of the treatment.

That's how she met Cora - a woman in her late 40s, single, childless, easy to like. As a kid, Cora (a pseudonym) had suffered repeated sexual abuse at the hands of her mother and her mother's friends. Before entering therapy, she habitually self-harmed. She'd tried to kill herself a number of times, too, her body still scarred by the remnants of suicides not carried through.