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Our Attachment Over Time.
- JuandriB
- Oct 20, 2020
- 8 min read
Updated: Jun 5
A common theme that comes up during therapy is the question of attachment styles.
We often work around this theory because a great deal of our success in relationships` (or lack thereof) can sometimes be explained by how we learned to relate to others throughout our childhoods.
The premise of Attachment Theory is based on the emotional bonds we form with our caregivers early in life and how these experiences may influence the way we connect with romantic partners, friends, family members, and even colleagues later on.
For us to understand our attachment towards others, let's first understand the different attachment styles.
These styles differ in a number of significant ways, ranging from how we experience closeness and emotional intimacy, our ability to communicate our needs, our response to conflict, and our expectations of others and relationships.
Before We Begin: A Quick Disclaimer About Attachment Styles
I always tell clients to take psychological theories with a pinch of salt. Human beings are complicated. I don't believe we fit neatly into categories, whether we're talking about personality, diagnoses, or attachment styles.
Most of us will recognise parts of ourselves in more than one attachment style. You might generally be secure in friendships but become anxious in romantic relationships. You might be secure most of the time but become avoidant after a painful breakup. Attachment styles exist on a spectrum.
The goal isn't to put yourself into a box.
The goal is to better understand the patterns that may be influencing your relationships.
The Four Main Attachment Styles
1. Secure Attachment Style
Securely attached individuals tend to feel comfortable with both intimacy and independence. They are generally able to trust others, communicate openly, and maintain healthy boundaries.
Secure attachment is exactly what it sounds like - secure. These individuals often make supportive romantic partners, friends, family members, and parents because they are comfortable both giving and receiving emotional support.
Traits of individuals with a secure attachment style:
Comfortable in warm, loving, emotionally close relationships
Manages emotions well and does not become overly distressed by relationship difficulties
Communicates emotions and needs honestly and openly
Does not avoid conflict when healthy discussion is needed
Accepts both their own and their partner's need for independence
Trusting, empathetic, tolerant, and forgiving
Can depend on others and allow others to depend on them
As parents, securely attached individuals tend to be warm, sensitive, and responsive to their children's needs. Children raised in these environments generally experience consistent love, support, and emotional availability.
2. Anxious Attachment Style
Individuals with an anxious attachment style tend to crave closeness and connection but often feel insecure within relationships. They frequently worry about rejection, abandonment, or whether they are truly loved and valued by others. Because of this, they often seek reassurance and may struggle with being alone.
Traits of individuals with an anxious attachment style:
Constantly worried about rejection and abandonment
Preoccupied with relationships
Requires ongoing reassurance
Takes others' moods and behaviours personally
Can appear highly emotional, defensive, controlling, or argumentative during conflict
Often struggles with boundaries
Tends to have a positive view of others but a more negative view of themselves
May blame others while struggling to recognise their own role in relationship difficulties
As parents, anxious individuals may be loving but inconsistent in their emotional availability, which can contribute to anxiety in their children.
3. Avoidant Attachment Style
As the name suggests, avoidantly attached individuals tend to value independence above closeness. They are often uncomfortable with emotional intimacy and may keep others at arm's length. They usually prefer self-reliance and may find it difficult to depend on others or allow others to depend on them.
Traits of individuals with an avoidant attachment style:
Emotionally distant and sometimes rejecting
Keeps intimate partners at arm's length
Equates intimacy with a loss of independence
Prefers autonomy over togetherness
Struggles to depend on others
Often avoids emotional conversations
May avoid conflict until emotions eventually build up and overflow
Has a positive view of self but a more negative view of others
Maintains rigid emotional boundaries
As parents, avoidant individuals may appear emotionally unavailable, disengaged, or detached.
4. Anxious-Avoidant (Fearful) Attachment Style
Individuals with an anxious-avoidant attachment style often find themselves caught in an emotional tug-of-war. They crave closeness and intimacy but are simultaneously frightened by it. They want connection but fear being hurt. This style is sometimes referred to as fearful attachment because of the conflicting needs that exist within it.
Traits of individuals with an anxious-avoidant attachment style:
Often carries unresolved experiences from the past
May struggle to trust others
Simultaneously seeks independence and intimacy
Struggles to tolerate emotional closeness
Finds emotional regulation difficult
Can appear argumentative, defensive, withdrawn, or emotionally overwhelmed
May experience significant relationship instability
This attachment style is often associated with childhood experiences involving inconsistency, neglect, trauma, or fear.
Good News Or Great News?
I'll start with the good news. Your attachment style can change.
Now for the great news. It's usually slow and difficult.
Why is that great news? Because it gives you time to work on yourself. To learn healthier ways of communicating. To build better boundaries. To become more aware of your patterns. To practise trusting others. To become more secure in your relationships.
Research has consistently shown that attachment patterns can shift over time, particularly through healthy relationships, self-awareness, and therapeutic work.
There is always hope.
Understanding Your Own Attachment Style
The first step in understanding attachment styles is understanding your own. If you're curious, there are several useful attachment questionnaires available online. One I often recommend is the Relationship Structures Questionnaire available through YourPersonality.net. (**Please note that online questionnaires are educational and self-reflective tools. They do not provide a clinical diagnosis and should be interpreted alongside your personal experiences and, where appropriate, professional guidance.**)
What I like about this questionnaire is that it explores attachment across different relationships rather than assigning you a single label. You may discover that you're secure with friends but more anxious in romantic relationships, or that your attachment style shifts depending on the person and situation. Remember that these questionnaires are tools for self-reflection rather than diagnosis.
The goal isn't to find a label.
The goal is to gain insight.
Attachment styles can change over time and are often far more nuanced than simple categories suggest. Understanding your attachment patterns can help you better understand yourself and your interactions with others, ideally leading to healthier and more fulfilling relationships.
How Attachment Styles Show Up In Relationships
These different attachment styles often configure themselves into relationships in fairly predictable ways. In the simplest form, insecurity tends to find insecurity, and security tends to find security. I have also seen in practice that significant life events, trauma, loss, or relationship experiences can influence attachment patterns and sometimes shift people towards more insecure styles. This is one of the reasons why awareness is so important. Attachment influences so many aspects of our lives, often in ways we don't realise. Understanding it can help us change it.
So What Can We Do With This Information?
People often ask me:
"Okay, great... now what do I do with this information?"
And my answer is always fairly similar.
I can't tell you what to do - that's not my job. What I can do is share what the research tells us. Research suggests that securely attached individuals tend to have a positive view of both themselves and others. Anxiously attached individuals often have a negative view of themselves but a positive view of others. Avoidantly attached individuals tend to have a positive view of themselves but a more negative view of others.
Anxious-avoidant individuals often struggle with negative perceptions of both themselves and others. Understanding this can provide a useful roadmap. Anxious individuals may benefit from focusing on self-esteem, self-worth, and healthier boundaries. Avoidant individuals may benefit from practising vulnerability, opening up to others, and allowing themselves to receive support.
Attachment Styles Are Not Life Sentences
And if you're reading this and thinking that your attachment style has served you well and that everything has worked out just fine, then my advice remains the same:
I can't tell you what to do.
But I can tell you what the research has consistently found.
Securely attached individuals tend to report greater relationship satisfaction, stronger support networks, better emotional wellbeing, and lower rates of depression and isolation. They also tend to experience more stable and fulfilling relationships over time.
If there is one thing I hope you take away from this article, it is this:
Attachment styles are not life sentences. They are patterns.
Patterns that develop for good reasons, often as adaptations to our early experiences and environments. And while these patterns can become deeply ingrained, they can also change. Understanding your attachment style is not about labelling yourself as anxious, avoidant, fearful, or secure.
It is about developing awareness. Awareness of how you relate to yourself. Awareness of how you relate to others. And awareness of how those patterns may be helping (or hindering) you in your relationships.
The more aware we become, the more choice we have. We can begin to respond rather than react. We can challenge old assumptions about ourselves and others. We can learn healthier ways of communicating, trusting, setting boundaries, and connecting.
After all, healthier relationships begin with understanding ourselves.
Take the Relationship Structures Questionnaire and, if you'd like support making sense of the results or exploring how attachment patterns are showing up in your life, feel free to get in touch.
Further Reading
If attachment styles and relationships interest you, these are some of the books I most commonly recommend:
Attached – Amir Levine & Rachel Heller
Probably the most accessible introduction to attachment styles and how they show up in adult relationships.
For those interested in exploring the research behind attachment theory, the following articles provide a useful starting point and reflect some of the more recent developments in the field:
Attachment Security and How to Get It (2023) – Fraley & Roisman
A comprehensive review examining how attachment patterns develop and, importantly, how they can change across adulthood. One of the most hopeful papers in the attachment literature, highlighting that attachment security is not fixed and can be influenced by relationships and life experiences. Available at:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371587801_Attachment_security_and_how_to_get_it
Attachment-Related Differences in Emotion Regulation in Adults (2023)
A systematic review exploring the relationship between attachment and emotion regulation. The authors found that secure attachment is consistently associated with healthier and more adaptive emotional regulation patterns. Available at:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10296607/
Association Between Adult Attachment and Mental Health (2024)
A recent study examining the relationship between attachment security, coping, self-efficacy, and mental wellbeing. The findings support previous research showing strong associations between attachment security and psychological wellbeing. Available at:https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1330581/full
Adult Attachment and Emotion Regulation Flexibility in Romantic Relationships (2024)
This study explores how attachment insecurity influences emotional regulation within romantic relationships and highlights the importance of flexibility in managing emotional experiences and relationship stress. Available at:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/14/9/758
Practitioner Review: Clinical Insights from Attachment Theory (2026)
A recent review discussing how attachment theory can inform clinical practice and understanding of emotional regulation, relationships, and psychological wellbeing across the lifespan. Available at:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13102048/
One of the reasons attachment theory continues to be so influential is that the research consistently points towards the same hopeful conclusion: while our early relationships matter, they do not determine our future. Attachment patterns can evolve through self-awareness, healthy relationships, corrective experiences, and therapeutic work.
You may also find my recommended reading list helpful.
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