How can we help avoidant clients to drop their defences and allow deep emotions to emerge? In her sixth blog about working with highly defended clients, Attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist Linda Cundy discusses the centrality of affect regulation and mourning in this work, taking in the role of countertransference, self-compassion and humour, Fairbairn’s ‘moral defence’ and Stern’s ‘moments of meeting’.