You know that feeling when you look back at your relationships and realize you keep doing the same thing over and over?
Maybe you’re the person who gets really anxious and needs constant reassurance. Or maybe you’re the one who pulls away the second things start feeling too serious.
Attachment styles are not categorical. You are NOT your attachment style! Different people bring out different patterns in us. Your attachment style can shift from relationship to relationship, even from situation to situation. You’re not “an avoidant person” or “an anxious person.” You’re a person who responds in different ways depending on who you’re with and what’s happening between you.
We work with people every single day who are exhausted from repeating the same painful patterns. It happens in romantic relationships, sure, but also with family and friends.
If that resonates with you, keep reading. Understanding attachment styles might be exactly what you need.
What Are Attachment Styles?
Think back to when you were little.
When you were scared or hurt or just needed a hug, how did the adults around you respond? Were they there for you consistently? Did they brush you off? Were they sometimes loving and sometimes distant, leaving you confused about what to expect?
Those early experiences shaped something really fundamental about how you connect with people today. That’s what attachment styles are. They’re basically the relationship patterns we learned as kids that we carry into every connection we make as adults.
And here’s the thing: these patterns show up everywhere. In how you date, how you maintain friendships, how you interact with your family, even how you show up at work.
Once you start seeing your attachment style, you’ll probably have a lot of “oh, THAT’S why I do that” moments.
The 4 Attachment Styles: Which One Sounds Like You?
Researchers have identified four main attachment styles.
As you read through these, try not to judge yourself. Your attachment style developed when you were just trying to survive and get your needs met as a kid. It made sense then, even if it’s not serving you well now.
1. Secure Attachment
This is basically the attachment style equivalent of winning the lottery.
People with secure attachment feel pretty comfortable getting close to others AND being independent. They don’t freak out about conflict, they can ask for what they need, and they trust that the people they love actually love them back.
If this is you, you probably don’t overthink it when your friend doesn’t text back right away.
You can have a disagreement with your partner without spiraling into “they’re going to leave me.” You’re okay giving people space because you’re not constantly worried they’re going to disappear.
2. Anxious Attachment (or Anxious-Preoccupied)
Oh, this one hits close to home for a lot of people.
If you have an anxious attachment style, you want closeness SO badly, but you’re also terrified people are going to leave. You might read way too much into things. Your partner takes an hour to text back and your brain goes straight to “they don’t care about me anymore.”
You’re the friend who panics a little when someone cancels plans because part of you wonders if they’re actually just done with the friendship.
In romantic relationships, you might need a lot of reassurance. Like, a LOT. You might ask “do you still love me?” more often than you’d like to admit.
This usually comes from having caregivers who were inconsistent. Sometimes they were there for you, sometimes they weren’t, and you never quite knew which version you’d get. So you learned to stay on high alert and work really hard to keep people close.
3. Avoidant Attachment (or Dismissive-Avoidant)
People with avoidant attachment are really good at taking care of themselves.
Maybe TOO good, if that makes sense. You pride yourself on not needing anyone. Getting too close makes you uncomfortable. When relationships start feeling too intense or intimate, you find ways to create distance.
You might be the person who says you’re “just not ready for a relationship right now” (even though you’ve been saying that for years).
Or maybe you keep friendships pretty surface-level because going deeper feels vulnerable and unsafe. With family, you probably learned early on that showing emotions or needing things wasn’t going to work out well for you.
This attachment style usually develops when caregivers were emotionally unavailable or dismissive. Maybe they told you to “toughen up” or “stop being so sensitive.”
You learned that depending on others leads to disappointment, so it feels way safer to just depend on yourself.
4. Fearful-Avoidant Attachment (or Disorganized)
This one is honestly the hardest to live with.
You want closeness desperately, but it also terrifies you. It’s like being stuck on the worst emotional rollercoaster ever.
You want someone to get close, but when they do, you panic and push them away. Then once there’s distance, you’re overwhelmed by this fear of losing them and you pull them back. This push-pull thing is exhausting for everyone involved, and you probably know it, which makes you feel even worse.
This attachment style often comes from childhood situations where the people who were supposed to keep you safe were also the ones who hurt you or scared you. That’s an impossible situation for a kid’s brain to handle.
You needed them, but they weren’t safe. That confusion doesn’t just go away when you grow up.
How Attachment Styles Show Up Everywhere
Here’s what’s wild: attachment styles aren’t just about dating, even though that’s usually where we notice them first. They affect literally every meaningful relationship in your life.
In romantic relationships: Your attachment style is there in every fight you have, every time you try to get close (or avoid it), every moment you’re trying to figure out if you can trust this person with your heart. It’s the lens through which you see everything your partner does.
In friendships: Notice how you are with your friends? Some people need constant contact and get worried if they don’t hear from someone for a few days. Others are fine going months without talking. Some people share everything, others keep things pretty private. That’s your attachment style at work.
In family relationships: Even as adults, we’re still playing out these patterns with our families. Maybe you’re the one who always has to check in, or maybe you’re the one who needs lots of space. Maybe you can’t set boundaries with your mom, or maybe you keep everyone at arm’s length.
If you’re a parent: This one’s big. Your attachment style affects how you respond when your kid is upset, how comfortable you are with their emotions, how you handle their needs for independence versus closeness. The good news? Knowing your attachment style can help you parent more intentionally and maybe even break some of those old patterns.
Here’s the Good News
If you’re reading this and thinking “oh god, I’m definitely anxious/avoidant/fearful,” please don’t spiral.
First of all, be kind to yourself. Your attachment style isn’t your fault. It’s not a character flaw. It’s what you learned to do to survive and get your needs met when you were little.
Also, most people aren’t purely one attachment style. You might be secure with your friends but anxious in romantic relationships. You might be avoidant with your family but pretty secure with your chosen community. It’s not black and white.
And here’s the really important part: attachment styles can change.
With awareness, time, and usually some good therapy, you can develop what’s called “earned secure attachment.” Basically, you can learn to feel safe in relationships even if that wasn’t your experience growing up. People do it all the time.
You Don’t Have to Do This Alone
Look, just understanding your attachment style is huge.
It explains so much. All those times you didn’t understand why you kept doing the same thing, why relationships felt so hard, why you couldn’t seem to break out of certain patterns. Having a framework for understanding it can be genuinely life-changing.
But understanding is just step one.
Actually changing these deep patterns? That takes time and patience and, honestly, usually some professional support. These patterns go DEEP. They’re not something you can just think your way out of.
That’s where therapy comes in. A good therapist can help you:
- Actually feel safe enough to explore these patterns without judgment
- Understand where your attachment style came from
- Start recognizing it when it’s happening in real time
- Try out new ways of relating to people
- Build the secure attachment you didn’t get to have as a kid
Whether you’re struggling in your romantic relationship, having a hard time maintaining friendships, dealing with complicated family stuff, or just wanting to understand yourself better, working on your attachment style can genuinely transform your life.
You deserve relationships that feel good. You deserve to feel secure and loved and like you can be yourself.
No matter what your attachment style is right now, that future is possible for you. We’ve seen it happen so many times.