If you caught Episode 20 of the podcast, you know we went there this week, attachment styles, where they come from, and why they show up everywhere from your relationship to your group chat to how you handle feedback at work.
This is one of the topics I teach in grad school when we talk about trauma, so I tried not to get too academic-y on the pod. But I wanted a place to lay it all out in writing too, for anyone who wants to sit with it a little longer. So let’s talk about it.
Where attachment styles come from
Attachment theory started with British psychiatrist John Bowlby, who proposed that infants have an innate, biological need to stay close to their caregivers for survival. The quality of that early bond becomes a kind of internal template, it shapes what we expect from other people: whether they can be relied on, whether closeness is safe, and what happens when we reach for someone and need them.
Bowlby’s colleague Mary Ainsworth built on this with her famous “Strange Situation” study in the 1970s. Toddlers and their moms were placed in a room with toys, a stranger entered, the mom stepped out briefly, and then she came back. Researchers weren’t as interested in whether the toddler got upset when mom left because most did. They were interested in what happened when she came back.
From those reunions, four patterns emerged:
- Secure — comforted quickly, went back to playing
- Anxious — clingy, hard to soothe even after mom returned
- Avoidant — acted like they didn’t care whether she left or came back
- Disorganized — contradictory reactions, seeking her out and pushing her away at the same time (this category was added later, and I’m including it here for simplicity)
An important caveat before we go further
This is a theory. A framework. A lens. It is not a diagnosis, and it’s not the full explanation for who you are or why every relationship in your life has gone the way it’s gone.
I say this because I see attachment language misused constantly…used to excuse behavior (“I’m just avoidant, deal with it”) or to diagnose other people from the outside (“she’s definitely anxious attachment”). That turns a reflection tool into a way to label, dismiss, or build a case against someone.
Hold this loosely. Use it to get curious about yourself and yes, inevitably, about other people too. Just don’t use it as a verdict.
The four styles, and what they can look like as an adult
Secure tends to form when caregivers consistently noticed a baby’s signals, interpreted them correctly, and responded, even when it was inconvenient. As adults, securely attached people tend to be comfortable with both closeness and independence. They voice their needs without fearing the relationship will blow up, they don’t need constant reassurance from friends, and they can take feedback at work without spiraling into self-doubt.
Anxious (preoccupied) often forms from inconsistent caregiving, warm and attentive one moment, distracted or unavailable the next, in a way that wasn’t predictable. As adults, this can look like hypervigilance to a partner’s mood, reading neutral behavior as a bad sign (“their text was short, so they must be mad”), overgiving in friendships to feel secure, and overfunctioning at work to earn approval.
Avoidant (dismissive) tends to form when caregivers were consistently distant or dismissive of emotion, ,like, “stop crying, you’re fine,” or an emphasis on independence before a child was ready for it. Adults with this style often pull away when relationships get emotionally close, keep friendships at a reliable-but-not-vulnerable distance, and show up at work as the low-maintenance employee who doesn’t ask for much.
Disorganized (fearful avoidant) forms when a caregiver was frightening or unpredictable, often tied to abuse, chaotic households, or a caregiver’s own unmanaged trauma, addiction, or severe mental illness. As adults, this can show up as wanting closeness and fearing it at the same time, pulling a partner in, then panicking and pushing them away. This is considered the least common and least studied of the four styles in adults.
A quick reminder: these are correlational findings from observational research, not cause and effect. One avoidant-coded moment from a parent doesn’t sentence a child to a lifetime of avoidant attachment. This is about consistent patterns over time, not single moments.
A cultural lens (because it wouldn’t be my podcast without one)
Familismo is a real cultural strength, not a pathology, but it can get tangled up with things. Closeness that’s chosen and mutual is secure. Closeness driven by guilt, fear of rejection, or an inability to have a self separate from the family unit shades into anxious patterns. And a securely attached person who simply values family closeness can get mislabeled as “anxious” by frameworks built on individualistic, Western nuclear-family norms rather than our collective ones.
Machismo often socializes boys and men toward avoidant-presenting behavior, like, don’t cry, handle it yourself, vulnerability is weakness…layered on top of (or instead of) individual parenting style.
Marianismo, the expectation that women are self-sacrificing and endlessly accommodating, can reinforce anxious-presenting patterns: overgiving to secure love, difficulty asserting needs for fear of seeming selfish, identity fused with being needed.
Respeto, deference to elders and authority, not talking back, can shape a narrower, conflict-specific version of avoidant attachment: going quiet in conflict rather than voicing disagreement.
And for caregivers managing immigration fear, economic struggle, language isolation, or the trauma of migration itself: inconsistency in caregiving isn’t always about a lack of love. It can come from acute survival stress. It’s not that these cultural patterns explain away attachment dynamics, it’s that they can be both cultural and contributing to attachment patterns at the same time. Yes, and.
Can attachment styles change?
Yes. Researchers call it “earned security”, adults with difficult childhood attachment histories can still develop secure attachment later in life. The key predictor isn’t what happened to you; it’s whether you can process it, reflect on it, and hold your history as something you understand rather than something that’s just running you.
What tends to help:
- Therapy: including attachment-focused approaches, though this work shows up across many types of therapy
- Corrective relationships: reliably safe people you rebuild trust with through small, repeated experiences, not one big moment
- Active self-reflection: journaling, therapy, or an honest friend who names your patterns back to you
This takes sustained effort over time. Your attachment style is not your personality or a life sentence. It’s a pattern your brain and nervous system built to keep you safe with what you had nd patterns that formed can be revised.
Some questions to sit with
- When someone you care about pulls away, what’s your first instinct…chase and seek reassurance, shut down, or calmly check in?
- Have you ever felt guilty for needing closeness that’s actually just a healthy value? Or, on the flip side, have you used “that’s just my culture” to avoid looking at a pattern that’s actually hurting you?
- Where do you feel most secure right now and where do you feel most anxious or shut down?
None of these have a right answer. If something came up for you, take it as information, not a diagnosis.
Thank you for listening to Episode 20. If this was helpful, share it with someone who’d benefit from it, and let me know your thoughts using the link in the show notes. If you haven’t signed up for the newsletter yet, you can do that at thechicanatherapist.com — that’s where I share info on upcoming retreats, blog posts, and new episodes.