Have you ever wondered why some people seem to long for closeness, while others instinctively pull away, or why certain relationships feel like a haven while others feel like an emotional rollercoaster?
The answer often lies in a concept known as attachment style: the emotional blueprint we all have that unconsciously shapes how we relate, depend on, and respond to people in our lives.
Attachment style is our earliest relationship model the combination of experiences, responses, and signals we received as children from our primary caregivers. But the patterns we learned as kids don’t just disappear in adulthood. Instead, they continue to exert a powerful influence on how we form emotional bonds, trust (or not), and communicate in our most important relationships.
The Four Attachment Styles
Attachment style is not about how we act in relationships but how we feel on the inside.
When under stress or emotional threat, different attachment styles react with varying strategies of approach or avoidance, including:
Secure Attachment: The Safe Haven
When securely attached, we trust that others are safe to be vulnerable with and rely upon. In a sense, secure people are so because they have already been loved, and so they love in return. When issues arise in relationships, people with a secure attachment style tend to communicate openly, empathise with the other person, and work to find solutions or compromises. When our attachment script is secure, we view conflict as a problem to be solved by two people — not a power struggle to win or lose. Typically, those with a secure attachment have a history where caregivers were responsive, consistent, and emotionally attuned. This history created an expectation in a child that they are safe, seen, and soothed when they need care and connection.
In relationships, secure attachment means the person can:
Express needs without shame or guilt.
Offer empathy and reassurance to their partner.
Navigate conflict calmly without excessive fear or defensiveness.
Value interdependence over control or abandonment
The gift that a secure attachment style brings to relationships is the sense of safety and security that is the foundation for all healthy, loving relationships.
Anxious Attachment: The Pursuer
Attachment anxiety is characterised by a fear of abandonment and an intense desire for closeness. We often call this attachment style anxious or anxious-preoccupied. When anxious, we worry that our partner does not love us or that they may leave us. We want to be reassured of their love and commitment, but the more we try to elicit reassurance from them, the more we can overwhelm the other person.
Early experiences of love for the anxious person meant it was sometimes available and sometimes withdrawn. In these circumstances, the child believes they have to cling, perform, or please to keep love at their side.
In adult relationships, the anxious attachment style often leads to behaviour such as:
The anxious person panics when the other pulls away.
The anxious person obsesses over their messages, calls, or tone.
The anxious person requires constant reassurance and proof of the other’s love.
The anxious person feels overly responsible for the relationship.
The gift that anxious attachment can bring to a relationship: depth of sensitivity and empathy, which, when coupled with a sense of self-worth and security, can become emotional intuition.
Avoidant Attachment: The Withdrawer
In contrast to anxious attachment, the avoidant person fears closeness. We often call this attachment style avoidant or dismissive-avoidant. The person with this attachment style is in touch with a fear of being trapped or engulfed by relationships.
Avoidant people learned early on that their caregivers were emotionally unavailable or unresponsive to their needs. This caused the child to believe that closeness was unsafe or, at best, futile.
In relationships, the avoidantly attached person often:
Finds it hard to express their emotions
Withdraws when conflict happens
Feels smothered by too much dependency
Puts autonomy before connection
The gift that the avoidant person brings to relationships: the capacity to provide calm and self-reliance, traits which, in a more connected person, can become emotional balance.
Disorganised Attachment: The Push–Pull Dynamic
Characterised by both a desire for and a fear of closeness. Sometimes called fearful-avoidant, this attachment style combines the anxieties of the anxious person and the avoidant person. This attachment style often results when caregivers have been both a source of comfort and of fear, as can happen in traumatic childhoods where the caregivers might be neglectful, abusive, or unpredictable.
In relationships, this can cause a person to experience:
Desire for intimacy but fear of rejection
Sudden emotional swings or emotional shutdowns
Difficulty trusting the intentions of others
Feelings of being “too much” and “not enough” all at once
The gift that disorganised attachment can bring to relationships: with healing, this attachment style can evolve into a deep emotional empathy, insight, and courage.
A Pathway to Secure Attachment
But the good news is this: our attachment style is not set in stone. Attachment styles are not fixed personality traits; they are our habitual ways of being in relationships. And all relationships, with the right healing and self-awareness, can be rewired.
How? In the right conditions, people can learn to move toward secure attachment. In relationships, we might grow toward security when we can bring:
Awareness: Notice our triggers and relational habits without judging them.
Self-regulation: Learn to soothe down our own anxiety and fear first.
Boundaries: Set clear limits in relationships to create safety, rather than controlling people.
Repair: After conflict, move towards the other person and work for repair rather than staying stuck in blame.
Meet with a therapist who can provide a consistently safe and secure therapeutic relationship, which can help rewrite our internalised attachment templates.
Attachment Healing as a Journey
The goal of attachment healing is not to become “perfectly secure”. The goal is to move toward an increased capacity to stay connected with ourselves and others in the face of fear and conflict.
Attachment is a story about how love was given to us, taken away from us, and sometimes misunderstood.
In therapy, we can begin to re-author the attachment story and find a new way to relate where love feels safe, boundaries are held, and connection does not feel like a threat.