Healing Your Attachment Style
Your attachment style isn't permanent. With self-awareness, practice, and often professional support, anyone can develop “earned security.” Here's how.
Yes, You Can Change Your Attachment Style
Research shows 25-30% of people shift their attachment style over a 4-year period. The most common shift is from insecure to secure, especially with therapy or a supportive relationship.
Read the full research →Healing Anxious Attachment
You love hard. You care deeply. And sometimes that intensity feels like it works against you. Healing anxious attachment isn't about loving less — it's about building enough internal security that love doesn't feel like a threat.
Recognise Your Triggers
Start tracking what activates your anxiety. A delayed text? A changed plan? Knowing your triggers is half the battle. Keep a trigger journal for one week.
Build a Self-Soothing Toolkit
Before reaching for your phone, reach for your toolkit: deep breathing, journaling, walking, calling a friend. The goal is to prove to yourself that you can handle discomfort without your partner.
Challenge the Story
Your brain is a meaning-making machine, and with anxious attachment, it defaults to the worst interpretation. Practice asking: "What's the most likely explanation?" and "What would I tell a friend?"
Communicate Needs Directly
Replace protest behaviour (stonewalling, testing, clingy texts) with direct communication: "I'm feeling anxious and could use some reassurance."
Build Identity Outside Relationships
Invest in friendships, hobbies, career goals, and personal growth. The more anchored your sense of self, the less threatened you'll feel by normal relationship fluctuations.
Practice Distress Tolerance
Sit with anxiety for 10 minutes before acting on it. Then 20. Then 30. You're training your nervous system to realise the discomfort passes.
Healing Avoidant Attachment
You're not broken. You learned to protect yourself by shutting down emotional needs that weren't met. Healing avoidant attachment means gradually discovering that vulnerability isn't weakness — it's the doorway to the connection you actually want.
Notice When You Withdraw
Pay attention to the micro-moments when you want to shut down, change the subject, or physically leave. What triggered it? Awareness of the pattern is the first step to changing it.
Start Small With Vulnerability
Share one feeling per day with someone you trust. It doesn't have to be deep — "I felt proud of myself today" or "Work stressed me out" counts.
Stay Present During Discomfort
When a conversation gets emotional, practice staying rather than leaving. Even 30 more seconds of staying present is progress.
Question the Independence Narrative
The belief that "I don't need anyone" was adaptive as a child. As an adult, it's a prison. Interdependence — relying on others while maintaining autonomy — is the actual goal.
Receive Without Deflecting
When your partner expresses love, try to actually receive it instead of deflecting, joking it off, or changing the subject. Let it land.
Express Appreciation
Start verbalising what you value about your partner and your relationship. It doesn't come naturally, but it builds the emotional muscle you need.
Healing Fearful-Avoidant Attachment
You want love desperately and fear it equally. That push-pull isn't a character flaw — it's your nervous system trying to protect you from something that was genuinely dangerous in your past. Healing fearful-avoidant attachment is often the longest journey, but it's also the most transformative.
Seek Professional Support
This isn't optional for most fearful-avoidants. The roots of this style often involve trauma that benefits from guided processing. EMDR, somatic experiencing, or attachment-focused therapy are particularly effective.
Map Your Push-Pull Cycle
Track when you shift from wanting closeness to pushing away. What triggers each shift? The more you can predict the pattern, the less power it has.
Don't Trust Your Deactivation
When you suddenly feel nothing for your partner, recognise it as deactivation — not truth. Don't make relationship decisions in this state. Wait 48 hours.
Build Safety in Small Doses
Secure attachment builds through repeated small experiences of safety, not through one dramatic breakthrough. Tell your partner one thing that scares you. Let them show up for you.
Regulate Your Nervous System
Grounding techniques, cold water on your face, bilateral stimulation, and breathwork can help calm the intense emotional swings.
Practice Consistency
The antidote to disorganised attachment is organised behaviour. Create small relationship routines that you stick to even when your emotions fluctuate.
Our Book
What's My Attachment Style?
The complete guide to understanding your attachment patterns and building healthier relationships.
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