What are Attachment Styles – and Can I Work to Change Mine?

Ever wonder why you get anxious in some relationships but not others, or why trust doesn’t always come easily? A lot of it comes down to attachment styles: patterns we pick up as kids that stick with us into adulthood, shaping how we love, trust, and connect with others.^{1 2}

Understanding your attachment style can reveal why you behave in certain ways in relationships and open pathways to growth and healthier, more secure connections.

What are Attachment Styles?

Attachment styles are basically guides for how we relate to people—whether in romance, friendship, or even at work. Psychologists like John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth found that the ways we bond with our caregivers as kids set the stage for our adult relationships.

Think about it: the way your early caregivers responded to your needs—whether consistently, inconsistently, or not at all—shaped how safe you feel asking for help, expressing feelings, or trusting others now.

There are four main adult attachment styles:

• Secure – Comfortable with closeness and independence.
• Anxious (preoccupied) – Crave connection but fear being abandoned.
• Avoidant (dismissive) – Value independence and struggle with intimacy.
• Disorganized (fearful) – Want closeness but are often unsure or scared of it.

How are Attachment Styles Developed?

As kids, we look to our caregivers to feel safe and understood. When parents or guardians are responsive, consistent, and emotionally available, kids usually develop secure attachment: a sense that people can be trusted and that their needs matter.

But not everyone has that experience. If caregivers are inconsistent, neglectful, or even frightening, kids may develop insecure attachment. That can look like:

• Anxious: Worrying that people won’t stick around, constantly seeking reassurance.
• Avoidant: Learning to rely on yourself and pull away from closeness.
• Disorganized: Feeling confused about whether closeness is safe, swinging between wanting and fearing connection.

The important thing is that these patterns aren’t set in stone. Understanding how your attachment style developed is the first step toward recognizing your relationship habits and learning how to feel safer and more confident with others.

What are the Four Attachment Styles?

The four adult attachment styles in attachment theory are secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.

Secure attachment style

When you’re securely attached, you feel comfortable balancing intimacy and independence. You trust yourself and others, manage conflicts effectively, and build stable, healthy relationships. Secure attachment promotes clear communication, empathy, and productive problem-solving. In the workplace, these individuals collaborate efficiently, accept feedback constructively, and lead with confidence and care.

Secure attachment is characterized by:

• Positive view of self and others.
• Balance of intimacy and independence.
• Comfort with trusting and being trustworthy.
• Greater life satisfaction and stability than individuals with other attachment styles.

Get our clinician’s perspective:

“Secure attachment is formed during the early stages of childhood and begins with healthy bonding to your caregiver(s) and your environment. Not forming secure attachment during childhood can negatively impact the ability to form healthy relationships as an adult and lead to having negative views of oneself.

With therapy, you can develop secure attachment by building trust, enhancing communication skills, challenging negative beliefs, practicing self-compassion, and building self-esteem.“

Aaron Mostin, AMFT

Anxious attachment style (anxious-preoccupied)

Adults with anxious attachment crave closeness but fear abandonment. Fear motivates behaviors like seeking constant reassurance, overextending themselves, or reacting strongly to perceived rejection. These actions aim to feel secure, but can overwhelm partners or colleagues and sometimes create the very distance they fear.

Anxious attachment is characterized by:

• Negative self-image, but a positive view of others.
• Persistent seeking of reassurance, fears of abandonment.
• High emotional expressiveness, anxiety disorders, or dependency.

Avoidant attachment style (dismissive-avoidant)

Adults with avoidant attachment prioritize independence, sometimes at the expense of connection. They cope with discomfort by withdrawing, minimizing needs, or avoiding intimacy. Although this strategy protects them from vulnerability, it can leave partners or friends feeling rejected or disconnected. Avoidantly attached individuals often prefer solo work and avoid collaborative environments.

Avoidant attachment is characterized by:

• Positive self-image, but a negative view of others.
• Preference for emotional distance or independence (sometimes to the point of isolation).
• Rarely relies on others for support.

Disorganized (fearful) attachment style

Disorganized attachment combines anxious and avoidant traits, producing a push-pull dynamic. You may crave closeness one moment and retreat the next, confusing others and perpetuating instability. Trauma or inconsistent caregiving often contributes to this pattern, which can affect both personal and professional relationships.

Fearful or disorganized attachment is characterized by:

• Mixed feelings about intimacy.
• Desire for connection, but fear of closeness.
• Can be associated with trauma, inconsistent caregiving, anxiety, and emotional disregulation.

How Do Attachment Styles Impact Us?

When you have secure attachment, you tend to have healthy self-esteem, form stable adult relationships, and manage conflicts effectively. With insecure attachment—whether anxious, avoidant, or fearful—you’ll often experience emotional turmoil, struggle to trust others, and face challenges in building lasting bonds.

How attachment influences health

Attachment style can affect stress regulation, healthcare adherence, and emotional resilience. For example, dismissive-avoidant individuals may distance themselves from medical advice, impacting treatment outcomes. 

Insecure attachment is also a risk factor for substance use disorder, while substance use disorder can likewise inhibit the ability to form close relationships with securely attached individuals.

How attachment styles develop in childhood

Attachment types develop in childhood first as a result of how we interact with those closest to us. The role of caregivers in creating and shaping attachment styles is often to encourage or model healthy (or unhealthy) behaviors. 

Secure attachment in childhood usually develops when caregivers are attentive, emotionally present, and responsive to a child’s needs, creating a sense of safety and predictability. If needs and challenges are met with comfort and care, a child learns that problems are reliably solvable and difficulties are predictably surmountable. 

In contrast, insecure attachment styles (with attendant avoidant, anxious, or disorganized behavior) often present when caregiving is neglectful, inconsistent, or overbearing. If emotional needs are ignored and dismissed instead of cared for and addressed, avoidant attachment patterns may develop.

Unpredictable responses can prompt anxiety, as it’s not a reliable expectation that needs will be met. Disorganized attachment may result from environments where trauma and fear are present, and in these cases, caregivers may be seen as both sources of comfort and distress. 

Understanding how attachment styles develop in childhood can help unpack how the associated behaviors manifest in adulthood.

How each of the four attachment types manifests in adults

Each adult attachment style shows up through specific behavior patterns that shape how we approach other people and relationships—whether romantic, platonic, or professional. When we understand our attachment style, we can better recognize why we respond emotionally in certain ways and why we fall into familiar communication patterns or dynamics.

Secure attachment: Securely attached adults feel comfortable with both intimacy and independence. They own their emotions, take responsibility for their relationships, and build healthy, balanced connections. This attachment style fosters clear communication, trust with partners, friends, and colleagues, and a proactive, problem-solving approach to conflict. In the workplace, securely attached people collaborate effectively, accept feedback constructively, and lead with empathy.

Anxious attachment: Anxiously attached adults crave closeness but fear abandonment. You’ll often notice this attachment style when someone acts clingy, reacts strongly to perceived rejection, or constantly seeks reassurance. These individuals may overextend themselves at work to earn approval and struggle with criticism when things go wrong.

Avoidant attachment: Avoidantly attached adults prioritize independence, sometimes to their own detriment. When confidence turns into emotional distance, avoidant attachment often drives the behavior. These individuals struggle with vulnerability, avoid forming close connections, and resist intimacy. They usually prefer solo work and feel uncomfortable in collaborative settings.

Disorganized attachment

Disorganized attachment is exactly what it sounds like – a jumble. You’ll often observe a mix of avoidant and anxious behaviors, desiring closeness but fearing being hurt, or swinging between desiring closeness and rejecting intimacy. Professionally, you may see disorganized attachment present as resisting trust, authority, or consistency.

How insecure attachment creates negative patterns in relationships

Insecure attachment—whether anxious, avoidant, or disorganized—can deeply affect how we connect and communicate in relationships of all kinds. Every interaction we have is shaped not only by our own attachment style but also by the other person’s, and by how those styles interact.

When an anxious attachment style shows up, fear of abandonment often drives behaviors like over-texting, people-pleasing, or constantly seeking reassurance. These efforts come from a genuine desire to feel secure, but can overwhelm partners or friends and create the very distance the anxious person fears.

Avoidant attachment tends to create the opposite pattern. People with avoidant tendencies often cope with emotional discomfort by withdrawing, minimizing needs, or shutting down when things feel too intimate. This distancing protects them from vulnerability in the short term, but can leave others feeling rejected or unwanted.

Disorganized attachment combines both anxious and avoidant traits, leading to a push-pull dynamic. Someone might crave closeness one moment and retreat the next, confusing partners and perpetuating instability.

Ultimately, insecure attachment styles are rooted in an effort to feel safe—but they often go too far, becoming a source of conflict and emotional turbulence. Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward healing and developing secure, healthy connections built on trust, communication, and mutual respect.

How to Know Your Attachment Style

Ah, the world of self-help and self-diagnosis! The most reliable way to explore your attachment style and how it affects your life and relationships is with the help of a professional, who can help you work through and deepen your understanding of why you think the way you do and why you relate to others in the ways that you do. However, there are plenty of online attachment style quizzes that can help you self-diagnose your attachment style as a way to get started.

When to Worry About Your Attachment Style

Remember that all people are periodically insecure. We all get anxious, avoidant, or disorganized at times, and it certainly isn’t cause for concern when you feel anxiety over a real problem, reluctance to confront or address problems, or have your own ‘mental junk drawer’ of random stuff that just bounces around from time to time. 

It’s time to seek treatment if behaviors that you suspect are driven by your attachment style get in the way of your relationships (with yourself or with others). If you find yourself thinking, “I don’t know why I do that, but it seems like I always do!” or if you hear people repeatedly tell you that you’re acting in a specific way, you may be seeing patterns driven by insecure attachment that could be changed through support from a therapist or treatment program.

Can I Work to Change My Attachment Style?

Yes. Through self-awareness, healthy relationships, and therapy, insecure styles can evolve into more secure patterns. This transformation is often called earned secure attachment. Therapy can help you develop boundary setting, dialogue skills, and co-regulation with securely attached people.

While attachment styles are theorized to initially develop in early childhood, they can evolve over time based on your life experiences, self-awareness, and potential therapeutic interventions. Understanding one’s adult attachment style can provide valuable insights into relationship patterns and pave the way for personal growth and healthier connections with others, along with providing a direction forward toward developing a more secure attachment style.

Therapeutic interventions, particularly those rooted in attachment theory, can provide a supportive environment for individuals to explore the origins of their attachment patterns, understand how these patterns affect their current relationships, and develop healthier ways of relating to those around them.

Several therapeutic approaches can help you in working to develop a more secure attachment style and can include:

Cognitive-behavioral therapy

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy helps individuals identify and challenge negative thought patterns and behaviors related to attachment issues. It provides practical strategies to develop healthier interpersonal skills and manage emotions more effectively.

Attachment-based therapy

This specialized kind of therapy focuses on resolving attachment-related issues. Therapists working within this modality assist clients in exploring past attachment experiences to better understand the impact on their outlook while working to develop new interpersonal skills.

Mindfulness-based therapy

Mindfulness practices can enhance self-awareness and emotional regulation, empowering individuals to respond to situations consciously rather than reacting based on past conditioning.

Furthermore, it’s important to note that supportive therapeutic services are accessible in a variety of settings, including on an outpatient basis and via telehealth. Virtual therapy sessions provide accessible and convenient support without the need for commuting, and skilled therapists can guide individuals through the process of understanding and transforming their attachment styles despite any geographical distances at play.

Looking to Develop a More Secure Attachment Style?

Understanding attachment styles illuminates the intricate threads that weave our emotional connections with others. By delving into the origins, impact, and transformation of these styles, you can empower yourself to build healthier, more fulfilling relationships in all aspects of your life. With the right support, individuals can work toward developing more secure attachments, paving the way to living a life with more capacity for trust, intimacy, and emotional well-being.

At Clear Behavioral Health, we’re committed to providing comprehensive and compassionate care. Our diverse range of treatment options is designed to empower you on your journey toward healing and recovery, ensuring you receive the personalized attention and evidence-based therapies necessary for lasting, positive change.

If you or a loved one is struggling to build close relationships and suffering from mental health symptoms, give us a call to learn more about our mental health programs online and throughout California. Help is only a call or click away. Let’s get started on building a better tomorrow together.