What Is an Attachment Style? Understanding the Four Types and How They Shape Relationships

An attachment style describes the way we think about, behave, and form emotional bonds in our close relationships. These styles are organized into two categories: Secure Attachment or Insecure Attachment. Think about the word "secure" like safety. Do you feel emotionally, physically, and mentally safe in your relationships so that you are able to feel close to them, trust them, and feel acceptance from them? If you do, then you most likely have a secure attachment style. If you tend to be guarded or feel anxious in relationships, and do not feel emotionally, physically, and mentally safe to feel close, trust, and be accepted, then you most likely have an insecure attachment style.

But how do these different styles effect our relationships? Let's take a look at the different attachment styles and how they can play out in relationship dynamics.

Secure Attachment

What does it mean to have a secure attachment style? When you feel secure in relationships, you feel safe, confident, stable, self-aware, and embody high self worth. The view of yourself is not dependent on other's perception or validation of you. Instead, you are able to be independent and engage in your own interests. You are capable of expressing your needs, communicating assertively, resolving conflict, providing attentiveness, and offering affection. Intimacy does not intimidate you. Being close in relationships is welcome, and comes with comfort and ease. You feel safe to be yourself.

In relationships, individuals with a secure attachment style bring all these qualities to the relationship. There is emotional closeness, flexibility, tolerance, connectedness, safety, stability, and mutual respect and understanding. Partners can be themselves while feeling accepted, seen, known, and understood through the ebbs and flows of life.

Insecure Attachment

There are three different types of insecure attachment: anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, and disorganized attachment.

Anxious Attachment

When an individual has an anxious attachment, also known as preoccupied attachment, you tend to view yourself negatively but view others positively. What this means is there tends to be an emphasis on external validation and acceptance from others rather than from self. Some ways this can show up in behaviors is through people pleasing, avoiding conflict, neglecting self while pouring into others, prioritizing what others want and need even if this is not in alignment with your values, and difficulty holding boundaries.

When in relationships, that need for external validation and acceptance often gets placed on your partner to feel accepted, seen, known, and understood in order to feel as though you have value. This can at times look like an attempt to prove your worth to others because the idea of being alone is highly distressing due to a fear of rejection and abandonment. To soothe these highly distressing feelings, anxiety and anxious behaviors take over to seek closeness, acceptance, and reassurance.

In relationships, anxious attachment looks like feeling incomplete without your partner, needing excessive support and assurance, struggling with being alone, jealousy, being preoccupied with your partner's availability and commitment to you, sensitivity to criticism, and high value and importance placed on the relationship. The desire to feel close is important to anxiously attached individuals, but the behaviors that often seek that closeness can produce the opposite effect.

Avoidant Attachment

On the other end of the spectrum is avoidant, otherwise known as dismissive, attachment. This attachment style is the inverse of anxious attachment in a lot of ways. Avoidantly attached individuals view themselves positively but other's more negatively. Highly independent and self-reliant, when you are avoidantly attached you tend to depend mostly on yourself. Avoidants do not rely on others, do not seek out emotional support, and don't seek out relationships to feel worthy. Instead, relationships are kept at a distance, lacking in intimacy and emotional closeness. Some behaviors that can show up for the avoidant include hyper-independence, withdrawal, and avoiding situations and people.

In relationships, avoidants come across as uninterested, detached, or distant. Avoidants do not share their needs or feelings in relationships, and will instead shut down or withdraw during emotional conversations or conflict. Although the avoidant wants to be in a relationship, closeness feels distressing due to a fear of rejection and abandonment. To soothe these highly distressing feelings, avoidant behaviors take over to regain independence. This can look like spending time away from their partner engaging in their own interests, shutting down, and not prioritizing the relationship.

Disorganized Attachment

If you take a look at the graphic above, secure attachment is best summarized as low avoidance, low anxiety; avoidant attachment as high avoidance, low anxiety; and anxious attachment as high anxiety, low avoidance. The last attachment style is called disorganized attachment where there is high anxiety and high avoidance. This attachment style can lean more anxious (oscillating) or avoidant (impoverished), but to simplify, disorganized attachment is a combination of the two previous insecure attachment styles.

Due to the high avoidance and high anxiety, emotional instability is common and heightened within relationships. The swing between anxious and avoidant behaviors can also be exhausting and confusing. With disorganized attachment, you want to be close to your partner (anxious tendency) but also fear the closeness (avoidant tendency). Lack of emotional regulation skills, intensity, and difficulty communicating is common.

From Awareness to Change

Now that you know the different attachment styles, you may be wondering where do you go from here? Whether you see yourself in a few different styles, or one, the important thing to know is that attachment style is not set in stone. You are capable of developing a more secure attachment and having healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

The common thread among the attachment styles is a need to feel safe within relationships. How each style goes about meeting those needs changes based on the attachment style. In an upcoming post, we will dig further into the motivations that drive the different needs of each style and how attachment style pairings play out in relationships.

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