Can we change our attachment styles?
My last relationship ended in a 37-second phone call. After almost a year of being in each other’s lives, we angrily barked ‘I’m done!’ down the line and never saw each other again. That Guinness World Records-worthy ending was followed by another personal record for me: I was single for two years — the longest time I’d spent uncoupled since I started dating in my teens.
In that time, I swore off relationships entirely. It wasn’t all as a result of that break-up. It just happened to be very closely followed — and I’m talking like a week after — by a traumatic family event that resulted in me becoming estranged from one of my parents. For well over a year, the idea of being emotionally intimate with someone made me bristle with a mixture of anxiety and disgust. “I don’t even think most couples are happy,” I’d confide to my other single friends, “I think they’re just trying to convince themselves they are.” Usually, this observation was met with a choir of non-committal ‘hmms’ or perhaps a collection of sympathetic head tilts. As outwardly angry as I appeared to be at the idea of coupledom, there was still a part of me that desperately craved it. I wanted the stability that we’re told romantic relationships offer us.
I wanted to feel safe to be vulnerable with another person, but I knew on some level that I couldn’t. “Well, that’s because of your disorganised attachment style,” my then-therapist said while I relayed this inner tension to them. Like most people, I’d heard of attachment styles mostly through social media: TikTok skits about anxious/avoidant relationships being doomed to fail, Instagram infographics, and, my personal post-break up vice, the r/attachment_theory subreddit.
The r/attachment_theory sub is the perfect place to go if you’re not quite ready to face the reality that you and your ex weren’t compatible, or that sometimes people drift apart, and especially if you don’t want to acknowledge that sometimes you both just fuck it up. You can cherry-pick your way around the posts, blaming everything that went wrong in the relationship on your attachment styles (even if you don’t actually know theirs, just pick one that fits your narrative).
As tempting as it was, I didn’t want to get stuck in a Reddit pity-party forever. With the prospect of a new relationship with someone who seemed to have their shit together on the line, I figured I better start looking inwards. Could I finally unfuck my attachment style?
Attachment styles 101
There’s a long, heavy silence. I stare into the screen at the stranger joining me, in a small box on Zoom. I’d hoped I could just sit with my camera off and take notes during the online workshop called ‘Exploring Your Attachment Style: Understanding Relationship Patterns’.
But as the class got going, and after hearing (and trying to ignore) the long sigh from the therapist when she realised there would only be two of us, I had to give in and turn my camera on. This (deeply awkward) Zoom intro course is all part of the first step in trying to “take a journey of self-discovery”. As it turns out, I can’t just unfuck years of conditioning over the course of a few months. My aim, instead, should be directed towards learning more about my attachment issues and using that information to adapt my behaviour.
“Attachment styles are not fixed. While they are often shaped in early childhood, they can evolve over time through conscious effort, self-awareness, and healing relationships,” Kate Daly, relationship expert and co-founder of online divorce services company amicable, tells me. “Change is most likely when we’re intentional about recognising our triggers, understanding their origins and working towards healthier ways of relating to ourselves and others.” Our attachment styles develop during our early childhood and are mostly impacted by the kinds of relationships we develop with our primary caregivers. “It’s all about the bond, and whether that child is feeling safe and secure or not,” explains Simone Bose, a relationship therapist at Relate.
If it wasn’t already obvious from the aforementioned estrangement, I grew up in a home with rather tumultuous family dynamics. The most succinct picture I can paint for you is that I’m always the person friends come to in a crisis because I’ll know exactly what to do, but my search history over the past few years has included ‘Christmas tradition ideas’ and ‘how to tell if shoes fit’. While I’ve spent a lot of both hours and actual cash on therapy in an attempt to make me a functioning adult, when it comes to relationships, I end up feeling like a scared little kid who doesn’t know whether to (metaphorically) run and hide, or trying to make several desperate bids for attention. Not exactly sexy.
The good news? I can work on the way I’ve been moulded, as, ultimately, Bose adds, all attachment disorders are rooted in self-esteem issues. So, working on my perception of how worthy I am of love is the most important step. “It’s also about helping people to regulate their bodies, because they have been wired in such a way that they react in their bodies to certain things. It brings up the fight, flight, freeze response and reminds them of situations in their past,” Bose explains. To that end, she helps her clients by recommending things that will help them better know themselves, as well as learning techniques to help them regulate their emotional responses. I decide to bunk off the rest of the introductory course and dive straight into change… but not before I have a vague panic that skipping more of the course is down to a desire to push the one other person on the Zoom call away… Clearly, I have a lot of work to do.
Meditation
When I think about ‘clearing my head’, I’m led down a spiralling path of what it would even mean to have a head clear of thoughts, and whether it’s possible to do so while *thinking* about clearing your head, and if you don’t think about it, then do you just stop thinking… and so on.
It’s boring and feels overdone, but meditation, annoyingly, is meant to be one of the most universal solutions to attachment issues. “There’s a direct correlation between meditation and being able to regulate your nervous system to be able to sit with challenging emotions,” explains Rowenna Clifford, a cognitive hypnotherapist.
Armed with the Calm app, I settle on a seven-day course focused on self-worth, remembering what Bose told me about insecure attachment being more to do with our inner sense of self-worth than, say, how many of our pictures our parents put up on the fridge when we were little.
But, laying on my bedroom floor taking deep breaths, I can’t help but feel sceptical about how much meditation practice could actually help me with my love life. My mind drifts between the prompts from Tamara Levitt, the voice on the recording, and other thoughts that bubble to the surface, ‘What do I need to do tomorrow?’ ‘Damn, I need to hoover’.
Then, about halfway through, as I breathe in positive energy and exhale the negative baggage of the day as instructed, I feel a wave of calm wash over me, and with it feelings of self-acceptance spread through my chest like a warm glow. As Levitt encourages me to think about my achievements, I start to consider my career and life from a different angle. I think about the relationships in my life, platonic and romantic, and how I’ve always done the best I can with the tools I had available at the time — no matter how those relationships ended. While I might be hard on myself for shutting down arguments with previous partners, I still try my best to share my feelings afterwards — even if I struggle to do so.
Midway through the week, I get lost on the way to a date, and instead of getting panicky that she’s going to think I’m a bad person for being late and not want to see me again, I send her a quick voice note explaining what’s happened and take some time to do some deep breathing (even though it feels a bit silly in the middle of a busy London street). By the time I arrive, I’ve managed to calm myself down enough that I’m breezy and a bit apologetic, rather than asking her a dozen times if she’s sure it’s okay I’m late. But, of course, only a small part of that ‘work’ was down to meditation. Ten minutes a day does not result in a totally healed self — it just isn’t that easy. Time to try a bit more soul-searching.
Journalling
Remember when journalling was simply known as ‘writing in your diary’? Now, it’s had a rebrand and has almost mythical status among those online who say things like it ‘saved their sanity’. But can a pen really hold that much power? “Journalling provides a space to explore our emotions, identify patterns in relationships, and challenge negative thought processes,” says Daly. “It fosters self-awareness, which is critical for understanding attachment behaviours.”
Unsure where to start, I search for ‘disorganised attachment prompts’ and find a set of 10 on Pinterest that look the most appealing. They include questions such as: ‘What is your biggest fear in relationships, and how does it manifest in your behaviours?’ and, ‘How can you begin to differentiate between healthy relationships and those that reinforce your attachment fears?’ Okay, so no avoiding the tough stuff.
At first, I find it difficult to fill the page. Even though I know no one will see what I write, I catch myself coming up against a barrier. I keep my responses surface level, jotting down the kinds of things that I think I should be saying, rather than how I actually feel. Apparently, this is more common than I realise. “Self-censorship in journalling, even in private, is surprisingly common. It often stems from our internalised judgment or fear of confronting uncomfortable truths about ourselves. People with avoidant attachment styles may experience this more acutely, as they tend to suppress emotions and maintain a sense of control over their inner world,” explains Daly. It turns out the avoidant side of my attachment style is rearing its head even when I’m alone with my thoughts.
Like meditation, though, it turns out practice really does make perfect and by mid-week, I’m filling up the pages. I reflect on my past relationships, re-evaluating some of the ways I reacted. I think about who I want to be in my relationships and how I might need to change my behaviour to actualise that. This includes small things — such as trying to get better at balancing how much alone time I need with how much I’m seeing other people — to much bigger things, such as how early into dating I bring up the fact I don’t really care about getting married. The prompts that still stump me, though, are the ones centred on my relationship with my parents.
By the end of the week, I definitely feel more clear-headed after my nightly exorcising of whatever has been clouding up my brain throughout the day. But my struggles with some of the more challenging prompts hint that there’s going to be a few issues that I can’t work through without any direction or accountability. It’s time to turn to a professional.
Hypnotherapy
I meet Birgitta Ronn, a clinical hypnotherapist at her cosy clinic room in south London. Hanging around outside before our appointment, I notice a pit of nerves in my stomach as I wonder what kind of deep-seated secrets or shame I might confess to this stranger without even knowing it. She quickly puts me at ease. The room smells sweetly of incense, it’s decorated with fairy lights, and I feel like I’ve walked into the lair of a kindly witch from a children’s fairy tale, except Birgitta’s qualifications are framed on the walls.
Our 90-minute session starts with 30 minutes of talking, where we explore more about what kind of relationships I want to have and what barriers are holding me back from them. We talk about my fear of meeting new people or putting myself in new settings, meandering through how that might stem from my experiences of being bullied as a child. She asks how I might start to let go of that fear of rejection, and, more importantly, the ways in which I am rejecting myself before others can. It feels like a light bulb moment.
Then she invites me to lay down on the faux-fur-lined bed and get comfortable, ready for the 60-minute hypnosis. The process is nothing like what I imagine — which, if I’m being honest, was mostly someone waving a pocket watch in front me while I got very sleepy — instead, the session is basically a guided deep meditation. To help me relax into a trance-like state, she guides me through a series of techniques including envisioning myself walking down a long wide set of stairs before floating effortlessly in warm, inviting water.
Then, when I’m fully relaxed, she begins to ask me to imagine the version of myself I want to be in relationships and social settings; how does that person act? What is important to them? On Birgitta’s instructions, I watch them on a big screen in my mind before stepping into the frame myself. “In hypnotherapy, a gentle but very effective way of calming our nervous system, we can address the fear and lack of safety that often surfaces within relationships where we feel vulnerable,” Birgitta explains to me. “By rewriting the original script (often created in childhood) that tells us love isn’t safe, we’re able to create a new story that is more suitable to who we want to be today.”
After the session, I feel like I’m in a dream-like state for the rest of the day. It turns out, your mind is extremely malleable during this time. While I wander through my day, I can feel my synapses fizzing away, working through some of the issues Birgitta and I focused on. This feeling continues for days after. The next morning, I wake up and deep clean my entire flat. I feel motivated and energetic and, frankly, sexy.
Over the next days and weeks, I reflect more on who I want to be and the practical steps I might need to take to get there. I start to take some of those steps. But none of this momentum feels forced or rushed as it has during previous attempts to become That Girl. I act when inspiration strikes me, which it does frequently throughout the week, including deciding to have a slightly uncomfortable conversation about our relationship with the person I’m dating that I’d been putting off. Afterwards, we both have a little cry but feel closer than ever.
Verdict
After two years of being single, it feels good to be dating again — even if I’m still struggling to truly open up. The two months I spent exploring my attachment style also gives me a good excuse to talk to her about some of the issues I’ve had in previous relationships — such as shutting down arguments or seeking validation too frequently — and she repays me in kind by telling me about some of hers.
A few days later, I take a free online quiz and discover that I’ve now moved into an anxious attachment style. Er... okay, so it’s not exactly the outcome I was hoping for, but it does feel like progress at least.
Instead of being a combination of the worst of both worlds, I’ve managed to tame my avoidant characteristics somewhat and can now focus on working through my more anxious tendencies.
While the process may not have cured my childhood trauma — who knew? — it did encourage me to do something I struggle with because of it; carving out time for myself and tending to my own emotional needs. I started believing that if I could fix my attachment issues, it might make me a better partner and more able to show up for others. And while that may be the case in the long run, what it’s helped with in the short term is showing me that I must tend my own garden first, especially if I ever expect it to be a welcoming place for others. But, more importantly, I deserve my own flowers, too.
The attachment styles
Simone Bose runs us through them…
Secure: This is from a childhood where the caregiver provided a secure ‘base’ from which the child can feel safe to go off and explore the world, knowing that their caregiver was nearby — emotionally and literally — to return to. Those with secure attachment styles may have an easier time forming healthy and lasting relationships.
Anxious: If a child’s caregiver is distant, stressed, or unable to give that much-needed attention, the child may subconsciously learn that they have to create a fuss in order to get their needs met. Anxiously attached people tend to crave validation and emotional support from their romantic partners, which can put a strain on the relationship.
Avoidant: If a child’s caregiver (unknowingly) rewards them for being quiet or, worse, creates an environment where they feel unsafe to express themselves or their needs, that person may grow up to have an avoidant attachment style — struggling to show emotions or communicate effectively. Avoidantly attached people tend to be hyper-independent and closed off from their romantic connections.
Disorganised: The third and most elusive of the insecure attachment styles, this develops when a child is raised in an unstable or unsafe home. It is often the result of an upbringing where abuse or neglect was present.
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