Understanding Your Attachment Style
Understanding Your Attachment Style (And Why the Way You Love Isn’t Your Fault)
By Barbara Egan, LPC-MHSP, ACS, RCC, Founder & Owner of Alive Counselling
A few years into practice, a client sat across from me and said something I still think about: “I don’t know why I do this. He texts me back an hour late and my whole body goes into panic mode. Meanwhile my sister’s husband could disappear for a day and she’d just shrug.”
She wasn’t broken. She wasn’t “too much.” She had an attachment style — and once she understood it, she stopped fighting herself and started healing.
If you’ve ever wondered why you cling, why you shut down, why you pick the same kind of partner over and over, or why closeness sometimes feels like the safest thing in the world and other times like the scariest — this post is for you.
What Are Attachment Styles?
Attachment theory comes from the work of psychiatrist John Bowlby and psychologist Mary Ainsworth, who studied how infants bond with their caregivers. What they discovered changed the field of psychology: the way we were cared for as children creates a template — a set of unconscious beliefs about whether people can be trusted, whether love is safe, and whether we are worthy of it.
That template doesn’t stay in childhood. It follows us into friendships, dating, marriage, parenting, and even how we relate to our own boss. Attachment style isn’t a personality flaw or a diagnosis — it’s a survival strategy that made perfect sense at the time it was formed.
The Four Attachment Styles
| Attachment Style | Core Belief | Origin in Childhood | Shows Up In Relationships As |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secure | “I am worthy of love and others are trustworthy.” | Caregivers were consistently responsive and attuned | Comfortable with closeness and independence; communicates needs directly; resolves conflict without panic |
| Anxious (Preoccupied) | “I am not enough; I have to work to keep love.” | Caregiving was inconsistent — sometimes warm, sometimes unavailable | Craves reassurance; fears abandonment; overanalyzes texts and tone; can appear “clingy” or “too much” |
| Avoidant (Dismissive) | “I can only rely on myself.” | Caregivers discouraged emotion or dismissed needs; independence was rewarded, closeness wasn’t | Values self-sufficiency; uncomfortable with vulnerability; pulls away when things get emotionally intense |
| Disorganized (Fearful-Avoidant) | “I want love, but love is dangerous.” | Caregiving was frightening, chaotic, or unpredictable — sometimes from the same person who was also a source of comfort | Alternates between craving closeness and pushing it away; partner may feel like they’re “walking on eggshells” |
Where These Patterns Come From…And Why
None of this is about blame. A parent doing their best while overwhelmed, grieving, working three jobs, or carrying their own unhealed wounds can still raise a child who develops an insecure attachment style — because a child’s nervous system isn’t asking “does my parent love me?” It’s asking, moment to moment, “am I safe? Can I count on this person to come back?”
When the answer is consistently yes, a child’s brain organizes around safety. When the answer is unpredictable, the child’s brain organizes around vigilance — and that vigilance becomes the blueprint for adult relationships.
In the Counseling Room: A client I’ll call “M.” grew up as the oldest of five, functioning almost as a second parent by age nine. In her adult relationships, she couldn’t tolerate needing anyone — she’d end relationships the moment a partner needed something from her, before they had the chance to disappoint her first. That wasn’t coldness. That was a nine-year-old’s survival strategy, still running the show thirty years later.
What Each Style Looks Like in Relationships
- Secure: Can say “I felt hurt when you canceled” without it turning into a fight or a spiral. Trusts their partner’s love even during conflict.
- Anxious: Reads a delayed reply as rejection. May over-give, over-apologize, or seek constant reassurance — not because they’re needy, but because their nervous system learned that love has to be earned and monitored.
- Avoidant: Feels suffocated by “too much” emotional talk. May seem distant right when a relationship is deepening — a self-protective retreat, not a lack of care.
- Disorganized: Wants intimacy desperately and fears it equally. Might pull a partner close, then create distance, then panic about the distance they created.
The hardest — and most common — pairing therapists see is anxious and avoidant partners together: one pursuing, one retreating, both convinced the other one is the problem. In reality, they’re often triggering each other’s original wound.
How to Heal an Insecure Attachment Style
The encouraging truth backed by decades of research: attachment style is not a life sentence. This is often called earned secure attachment, and it’s absolutely achievable. Here’s what the healing process generally involves:
- Name your pattern. Awareness interrupts the automatic reaction. You can’t change what you can’t see.
- Understand the origin without staying stuck there. Insight isn’t the finish line, but it does replace shame with compassion — for the child you were and the adult you are.
- Practice new relational experiences. Attachment heals in relationship — with a therapist, a securely attached partner, close friendships, or a support community. It’s relational to the core, and it re-wires relationally.
- Learn to self-soothe before you seek soothing. Especially for anxious attachment, learning to regulate your own nervous system reduces the urgency that drives reactive behavior.
- Build tolerance for closeness. Especially for avoidant attachment, healing means slowly increasing your capacity to stay present in vulnerable moments instead of exiting.
- Work with a trained therapist. Attachment wounds formed in relationship are most effectively healed in relationship — which is exactly what good therapy provides.
You are not doomed to repeat your patterns. Your brain is capable of forming new neural pathways at any age — a concept called neuroplasticity. The nervous system that learned to protect you can also learn that it’s safe to trust.
Try This: An Attachment Timeline Exercise
One of the most helpful tools we use in session is a simple timeline exercise — a practice popularized by trauma therapist Aundi Kolber in her book Try Softer. It’s a gentle, structured way to start connecting the dots between your past and your present.
- Draw a horizontal line on a page. Mark your earliest memory on the left and today on the right.
- Along the line, plot 5–8 significant relational moments — a house move, a parent’s absence, a divorce, a friendship, a first heartbreak, a wedding, a loss.
- Next to each one, jot a single word for what you needed in that moment, and whether you got it.
- Step back and look for the pattern. Where did you learn “I have to earn love”? Where did you learn “people leave”? Where did you learn “I’m safe”?
This isn’t about assigning blame — it’s about building the kind of self-awareness that makes change possible. Many clients find this exercise is even more powerful when walked through with a therapist who can help hold the harder moments with you.
Recommended Reading
- Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller — the most accessible overview of adult attachment styles and how they play out in dating and partnership.
- Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us Out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode—and into a Life of Connection and Joy by Aundi Kolber — a trauma-informed, nervous-system-focused approach to healing attachment wounds, source of the timeline exercise above.
Curious What Your Attachment Style Is?
A free, well-researched starting point is the Attachment Style Quiz from The Attachment Project — is a resource I love using with clients and debriefing together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my attachment style change? Yes! Attachment style is a pattern, not a permanent identity. With awareness, consistent corrective relational experiences, and often the support of therapy, people move toward secure attachment — sometimes called “earned security.”
Is one attachment style “bad” and another “good”? No. Anxious and avoidant attachment developed as intelligent adaptations to real childhood circumstances. The goal isn’t judgment — it’s understanding, so the pattern stops running your relationships on autopilot.
Can two people with insecure attachment styles have a healthy relationship? Absolutely — many do, especially once both partners understand their own patterns and their partner’s. Insight turns “you’re too needy” or “you’re so cold” into “I see what’s happening, and I know what you actually need right now.”
How do I know if I need therapy versus just reading about this? If your attachment pattern is affecting your relationships, your parenting, or your sense of self-worth, working with a therapist accelerates healing significantly — because attachment wounds heal fastest in the context of a safe, attuned relationship, which is exactly what therapy offers.
Does attachment style affect parenting too? Yes. Our own attachment history shapes how we parent, often unconsciously. Many clients come to therapy specifically to break a generational pattern before passing it on to their own children.
Ready to understand your attachment story and start healing the patterns that no longer serve you? Book a session with one of our therapists at Alive Counselling today.
Barbara Egan, LPC-MHSP, ACS, RCC, Founder of Alive Counselling in Kelowna, British Columbia.