Attachment Styles: The Patterns That Shape Us
Have you ever stopped and wondered why certain relationships in our lives can feel so effortless while others leave you feeling drained, anxious, or shut down? Or why it can feel so hard to ask for help? Or even why you don’t trust yourself enough to follow through on healthy habits?
That last one has been HUGE in my own life.
When I started doing healing work several years ago, I realized that the answers to some of these questions here often trace back to our attachment styles.
In other words, the patterns we unconsciously formed in childhood to feel safe, loved, and accepted. These patterns don't just affect our romantic relationships; they show up everywhere: in friendships, work, parenting, boundaries, and even in how we care for our own Minds and Bodies.
This week in the Full Circle Wellness community, we’re diving into the deep and revealing world of attachment, or rather, how we attach, relate and connect to others.
Let’s set some ground work, and define the four key areas we’ll be exploring together:
The Four Primary Attachment Styles
We will all develop an attachment style in early life based on how our caregivers responded to our emotional needs. Maybe they were readily available. Maybe they neglected your needs. Maybe there was a little back and forth of both.
While our nervous systems are incredibly adaptive, not all adaptations actually end up being supportive in adulthood. If, for instance, your needs were neglected, you might develop an anxious attachment that never leaves you, causing friction in your relationships later in life.
Let’s break it down:
Secure Attachment – You feel comfortable with closeness and independence. You're able to trust others and yourself, you communicate your needs, and you can regulate your own emotions well.
Anxious Attachment – You often fear abandonment and seek constant reassurance. You may struggle with feeling “too much” or worry you’re not enough, and this insecurity drives you to “check”, often. This may also cause you to “cling” or grasp tighter to a connection if you fear you will lose it.
Avoidant Attachment – You prioritize independence and may downplay your needs. Vulnerability can feel threatening, and closeness may be uncomfortable, so you avoid it when it presents itself. This may cause you to run when things get “too close,” as this closeness triggers discomfort for you.
Disorganized Attachment – A blend of anxious and avoidant traits, often rooted in trauma. Remember the hypothetical parent that neglects your needs one minute, and readily available the next? This kind of emotional whiplash can create disorganized attachment. It might like you feeling like you crave connection, but you may then push it away, fearing both intimacy and abandonment.
Ultimately, these styles are not fixed labels—they’re simply patterns, and patterns can change with awareness.
Awareness is always the first step to healing.
Self-Care, Boundaries, and Stress Responses
While your attachment style strongly influences how you relate to others, it also shapes how you relate to yourself.
For example:
Anxiously attached folks might people-please, overcommit, or feel guilt when prioritizing self-care, meaning you put yourself at the bottom of the list.
Avoidantly attached individuals may isolate, suppress emotions, or struggle to ask for help—even when they desperately need it, worsening any emotional distress they may be feeling.
Disorganized attachment can create inner chaos, leading to cycles of self-neglect, burnout, or emotional shutdown. I’ve related to this the most in my personal experience and I can tell you… it’s exhausting! And, if you’re living this way, I want desperately to give you HOPE, courage, and motivation to begin believing that you can make a transformation, squash this pattern and learn to thrive.
Know that insight gives you power - the power to build new, supportive behaviors rooted in self-trust and compassion. But it takes action to make the change…
The Link Between Attachment Wounds, Burnout & Chronic Stress
When we carry unhealed attachment wounds, our nervous system stays stuck in survival mode (fight, flight, fawn or freeze) constantly scanning for threats to safety, connection, or worthiness. Just grasping this concept makes me feel exhausted! I think about all of the time I used to spend frozen, shut down and desperate for change, and I don’t want that for anyone.
If you’ve experienced this, then you already know. I don’t need to describe it to you. But, if you’ve been feeling funky and you’re just not sure… take a look at how unhealed attachment wounds can show up in your life:
This can look like…
Chronic anxiety, overthinking, or needing to control,
Exhaustion from overgiving or overfunctioning,
Emotional numbness, shutdown, or escapism (drugs, alcohol, binge eating, binge watching tv, doom scrolling, etc.),
Perfectionism, procrastination, or inner criticism.
It’s interesting, and so I want to point out here, how all of these coping mechanisms are just Protector Parts that have shown up in your life to help you quell the pain of an inner Exiled Part (the Part that experienced the trauma to begin with). Protectors try to control, or over-give, or numb out, or perfect, to “stay safe”, but it’s always just a bandaid. But I digress. This is a deep dive on a different conversation, but if you want to understand more about Internal Family Systems, check out this episode of our podcast right here. It’s a great method for doing deep healing work!
Which is SO necessary here.
Healing attachment is truly nervous system work. It’s learning how to feel safe in your body, not just in your relationships. And when you begin to do that, everything starts to shift—your energy, your boundaries, and even your inner voice.
Healing & Cultivating Secure Attachment
If you’re reading this all and you’re like “dang, this is me!”, know that you’re not broken. Nor are you behind. You’re simply learning all of these new things about yourself, and now you can start to learn how to show up for yourself in new ways, that will expand this journey you’re on with yourself.
Ways that create real safety, and not just survival.
If you’re just getting started, here are few things you can try:
Practice self-soothing and emotional regulation techniques like Emotional Freedom Tapping (EFT), breath work, meditation, EMDR, sound bathing, prayer, etc.
Allow yourself to need others—and be selective about who earns your trust, but do reach out and ask for help.
Set and honor healthy boundaries without guilt. Learn to say NO. Learn to take time for yourself when you need to do so.
Reparent your inner child with love, patience, presence and curiosity. Let your Parts tell you what they’re feeling and what they need.
Celebrate small moments of connection, safety, and self-trust! Giving yourself props for the wins is major.
Attachment healing, like all other healing, is a journey that’s never really over. But it’s one worth taking. And you don’t have to walk it alone.
In Full Circle Wellness this week, we’re holding space for your stories, your patterns, and your power to shift. Whether your journey starts with curiosity or deep reflection, you're right on time.
Come as you are, join us right here.
& Be Well
L
