Can you change your attachment style?

Breaking patterns.

I’m someone who comes from a family where physical touch and external displays of love are unheard of. My parents never had a particularly romantic, fairytale marriage, and my family often found it hard to communicate or show our feelings because of it.

As first-generation immigrants whose sole focus was ensuring the survival of our family, my parents’ attention and energy was mostly funnelled into our education and work. As a result, almost everything I’ve learnt about healthy communication in my adult life has come from my friends.

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Attachment theory is the hottest topic in my social circles right now. The theory suggests that our early relationships with caregivers shape our relationships across the rest of our lives. It’s not a new concept to think that our parents (for better or worse) influence who we become and it’s common to joke about our worst traits being our parents’ fault.

The different attachment styles

Generally, a secure attachment develops if a caregiver is consistently responsive and supportive. In contrast, an insecure attachment might form from a caregiver who is absent or inconsistent. There are four types overall: secure, anxious-resistant, avoidant and disorganised-disoriented.

I fell into the ‘anxious attachment’ style, characterised by low self-esteem and high anxiety in my relationships with others. All of my actions were connected to whether they would make other people like me. It made relationships exhausting – not only for me, but for my partners and friends as well.

After a particularly painful breakup, years of healing, reflecting and therapy helped me feel more secure in myself than ever before. I started to feel less like a burden and more like I was a person worthy of love. Although my current partner is incredibly supportive, I’ve found that I no longer rely on constant reassurance as much as I used to.

The good and bad in attachment styles

Having experienced so much change and growth in my relationships makes me wonder whether attachment styles are as fixed as we assume. According to trauma relationship therapist Tess Reilly-Browne, relying on your attachment style too heavily can be problematic.

“For the everyday person, attachment styles mostly do provide some insight into how a person is interacting and this can be useful for them to untangle simple issues,” Tess says. “However, for me, and within my therapeutic practice, attachment styles feel somewhat simplistic.”

For Tess, labelling a person’s attachment style isn’t always helpful, as it doesn’t address the root cause. Instead, she recommends compassionately trying to untangle what has influenced an attachment style, or caused a person to respond in certain protective ways. “Rather than describing or seeing a person by the trauma response that has led them to that attachment style, I therapeutically explore how that trauma response was created,” she explains.

Tess does this by adopting Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Nervous System theory. According to this theory, the state of our nervous system affects how we respond to trauma. “Due to trauma [from interpersonal relationships], many of us become stuck in our protective nervous systems,” she says.

Is it fixed?

Looking back at my experience with an avoidant partner, I can now see how my past anxious behaviour hurt and exhausted others. Now, my current girlfriend and I have a mutual love for each other that we show through our actions and words. It’s a type of reassurance I could’ve only dreamed of in my past relationships.

In our conversation, Tess is careful to note that while our attachment styles can feel impossible to release or undo, they aren’t forever. Our attachment styles can change, depending on the different relationships we have throughout our lives. As our parents become less central in our lives, our romantic relationships and friendships can become our primary sources of attachment. Someone with an insecure attachment style can develop a secure one through healthy, loyal and supportive relationships.

For more on changing your attachment style, try this.