Attachment Styles

Do you know your Attachment Style?

There are 4 main attachment styles, with behaviours in each style, existing on a spectrum from mild to severe. Do you recognise yourself in any of these?

Secure Attachment - A healthy relationship style marked by trust, emotional openness and a balanced approach to intimacy and independence. A secure person is comfortable giving and receiving love, has open communication and can handle conflict confidently.

Avoidant Attachment (Dismissive Avoidant) - A relationship style of prioritising independence and emotional distance. A person with this style often struggles with commitment, vulnerability, intimacy and the needs of another person, fearing the loss of their autonomy.

Anxious Attachment (Preoccupied) - A person with this style fears abandonment and loss of connection. They are emotionally sensitive, hypervigilant to changes in the relationship and seek regular reassurance, often leading to abandonment of their own needs within the dynamic.

Disorganised Attachment (Fearful Avoidant) - An attachment marked by a push-pull dynamic, a person with this style craves closeness whilst fearing vulnerability. It can lead to intense highs and lows, distrust and emotional pain, making it difficult to feel safe and secure within a relationship.

How are they formed?

Attachment styles originate in early childhood based on how caregivers responded to our emotional needs. Consistent, nurturing care creates secure attachment, whilst inconsistent, neglectful, intrusive or abusive caregiving often leads to development of an insecure attachment. These early patterns shape how we connect, trust and regulate emotions in relationships throughout life.

Recognising and addressing patterns of insecure attachment will help you transform your relationships. Whether you are more avoidant, anxious or disorganised, we often don’t know certain behaviours are unhealthy if they have always been our normal.

There is no shame in recognising this within us. Shining a light on your own dynamics, helps guide you to identify insecure behaviours, recognise when to uphold boundaries, focus on actions rather than words and discern when over-empathy causes you to abandon your needs, or when emotional distancing causes you to suppress your needs.

People with anxious attachment tend to lose themselves at the expense of preserving connection, whilst people with avoidant attachment tend to lose the connection to preserve themselves.

This can at times, result in the anxious person staying in unhealthy relationships too long and the avoidant person leaving healthy relationships too soon.

When we get ourselves into negative cycles of communication and behaviour, we lose our point of reason and rationality, our survival instincts activate, and our extreme protective parts become polarised with each other.

What can we do to heal?

The great thing about attachment styles is they can be changed. Behaviours are fluid, this is not something inherently wrong with you, this is something that once aware of, you can choose to actively change.

Healing our insecure attachment behaviour involves building self-awareness, learning how to regulate emotions, identifying core wounds, practicing communication and boundaries, developing self-soothing techniques and rewiring negative thought patterns.

Would you like help navigating your attachment behaviours? Counselling sessions are available here at Securely You