Skip to content
  • Mental Health Issues
    • Anxiety
    • ADHD
    • Bipolar Disorder
    • Depression
    • Grief
    • Narcissism
    • OCD
    • Personality Disorders
    • PTSD
  • Relationships
    • Dating
    • Marriage
    • Sex & Intimacy
    • Infidelity
    • Relationships 101
    • Best Online Couples Counseling Services
  • Wellness
    • Anger
    • Burnout
    • Stress
    • Sleep
    • Meditation
    • Mindfulness
    • Yoga
  • Therapy
    • Starting Therapy
    • Types of Therapy
    • Best Online Therapy Providers
    • Online Therapy Reviews & Guides
  • Medication
    • Anxiety Medication
    • Depression Medication
    • ADHD Medication
    • Best Online Psychiatrist Options
  • Reviews
    • Best Online Therapy
    • Best Online Therapy with Insurance
    • Best Online Therapy for Teens
    • Best Online Therapy for Anxiety
    • Best Online Therapy for Depression
    • Best Online ADHD Treatments
    • Best Online Psychiatry
    • Best Mental Health Apps
    • All Reviews
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Editorial Policy
    • Advertising Policy
    • Find a Local Therapist
    • Join Our Free Directory

Join our Newsletter

Get helpful tips and the latest information

Choosing Therapy on Facebook
Choosing Therapy on Instagram
Choosing Therapy on Twitter
Choosing Therapy on Linkedin
Choosing Therapy on Pinterest
Choosing Therapy on Tiktok
Choosing Therapy on Youtube
ChoosingTherapy.com Logo

Newsletter

Search Icon
  • Mental Health Issues
    • Anxiety
    • ADHD
    • Bipolar Disorder
    • Depression
    • Grief
    • Narcissism
    • OCD
    • Personality Disorders
    • PTSD
  • Relationships
    • Dating
    • Marriage
    • Sex & Intimacy
    • Infidelity
    • Relationships 101
    • Best Online Couples Counseling Services
  • Wellness
    • Anger
    • Burnout
    • Stress
    • Sleep
    • Meditation
    • Mindfulness
    • Yoga
  • Therapy
    • Starting Therapy
    • Types of Therapy
    • Best Online Therapy Providers
    • Online Therapy Reviews & Guides
  • Medication
    • Anxiety Medication
    • Depression Medication
    • ADHD Medication
    • Best Online Psychiatrist Options
  • Reviews
    • Best Online Therapy
    • Best Online Therapy with Insurance
    • Best Online Therapy for Teens
    • Best Online Therapy for Anxiety
    • Best Online Therapy for Depression
    • Best Online ADHD Treatments
    • Best Online Psychiatry
    • Best Mental Health Apps
    • All Reviews
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Editorial Policy
    • Advertising Policy
    • Find a Local Therapist
    • Join Our Free Directory
  • What Are Attachment Styles?What Are Attachment Styles?
  • Secure AttachmenSecure Attachmen
  • Anxious AttachmentAnxious Attachment
  • Avoidant AttachmentAvoidant Attachment
  • Disorganized AttachmentDisorganized Attachment
  • FormationFormation
  • InfluencesInfluences
  • DiscoverDiscover
  • Change StylesChange Styles
  • Get HelpGet Help
  • ConclusionConclusion
  • Additional ResourcesAdditional Resources
  • InfographicsInfographics
Attachment Articles Attachment Styles Emotional Attachment Secure Attachment Avoidant Attachment

What Are Attachment Styles & How Do They Influence Adult Behavior?

Author: Michael Kinsey, PhD

Headshot of Naveed Saleh MD, MS

Medical Reviewer: Naveed Saleh, MD, MS Licensed medical reviewer

Headshot of Naveed Saleh MD, MS

Naveed Saleh MD, MS

Dr. Saleh is an experienced physician and a leading voice in medical journalism. His contributions to evidence-based mental health sites have helped raise awareness and reduce stigma associated with mental health disorders.

See My Bio Editorial Policy
Published: October 19, 2022
  • What Are Attachment Styles?What Are Attachment Styles?
  • Secure AttachmenSecure Attachmen
  • Anxious AttachmentAnxious Attachment
  • Avoidant AttachmentAvoidant Attachment
  • Disorganized AttachmentDisorganized Attachment
  • FormationFormation
  • InfluencesInfluences
  • DiscoverDiscover
  • Change StylesChange Styles
  • Get HelpGet Help
  • ConclusionConclusion
  • Additional ResourcesAdditional Resources
  • InfographicsInfographics

Attachment styles are the scripts our brains form to stay safe and emotionally stable in close relationships.1 Attachment styles determine how emotionally and physically close a person is to other people, especially caregivers. Secure attachment in infancy and childhood leads to more emotional intelligence in adulthood.

ADVERTISEMENT

Improve Communication with Your Partner in Therapy.

BetterHelp has over 30,000 licensed therapists who provide convenient and affordable online therapy. BetterHelp starts at $65 per week and is FSA/HSA eligible by most providers. Complete a brief questionnaire and get matched with the right therapist for you!

Visit BetterHelp

What Are Attachment Styles?

Attachment styles are the scripts our brains learn to keep safe and emotionally stable in close relationships.1 Attachment is characterized by patterns of adaptations that young children develop to maximize their chances at survival. Childhood is where we need to take a closer look at secure and insecure patterns of attachment that develop early in a child’s life.

When we ride a bike, by analogy, we stay upright by creating forward momentum while keeping our weight centered within a certain range. Attachment styles operate by a similar principle. Staying “upright” in relationships is about managing proximity or closeness. This can be both in a literal sense (moving towards or away from a caregiver), or in an abstract, emotional sense (showing more or less emotional reactivity).

Secure Attachment

Secure attachment is a basic trust in the availability of help and emotional support from the people in one’s social network. Secure attachment in childhood develops out of having reliable caregivers who are sensitive to a child’s nonverbal expressions of need. Attachment to a competent caregiver is a necessity given how much brain development must occur after humans are born.

While we all grow out of the utter helplessness of infancy, humans never outgrow the need to be a valued member of social groups. Security with caregivers extends to security with friends, peers, teachers, the larger community, and eventually, society as a whole.

Characteristics of secure attachment include:

  • Emotional flexibility
  • Ability to self-reflect and to see relationship conflicts from multiple perspectives
  • Valuing relationships
  • Capacity to be trusting and vulnerable
  • Ability to express emotional needs and confront conflict in a coherent and direct manner
  • Freedom to express a full range of emotions with the ability to return to equilibrium on receiving comfort and care
  • Perception by others as being emotionally vital (i.e., fresh, engaged/engaging, energetic, spontaneous, and relatable)

Stable relationships, employment history, and overall contentment with one’s place in the world are all results of secure attachment.2

Anxious Attachment

People with anxious attachment desperately want to participate in the social world yet consistently find themselves in drama, chaotic situations, and overall uneasiness.2

Characteristics of anxious (preoccupied) attachment include:

  • Heightened emotions around relationships and a high level of emotional sensitivity (especially around abandonment and past disappointments)
  • Difficulty returning to emotional baseline after conflict
  • Marked anger or indications of vigilance against anger (e.g., extremely meek, indirect, highly anxious and inarticulate when confronted)
  • History of volatile relationships
  • Perception by others as emotionally “hot” or “overheated”

ADVERTISEMENT

Top Rated Online Therapy Services

BetterHelp  – Best Overall

“BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that quickly connects you with a licensed counselor or therapist and earned 4 out of 5 stars.” Take a free assessment

Online-Therapy.com – Great Alternative

In addition to therapy, all Online-Therapy.com subscriptions include a self-guided CBT course. Visit Online-Therapy.com

Avoidant Attachment

People with avoidant attachment see social participation as pointless and foolhardy. They  resign themselves to living at the margins of society. People with avoidant attachment gravitate towards people and situations they can control.2

Characteristics of avoidant (dismissive) attachment include:

  • Sees self as a lone wolf and lacks a collaborative mentality with others
  • Devalues relationships and minimizes own dependency needs
  • Expresses very few emotions
  • Exhibits limited awareness of feelings and poor ability to elaborate and reflect on negative emotional states
  • Sees others as soft or weak
  • Perceived by others as emotionally “cold” (especially in the sense of being withdrawn and rigid)

Disorganized Attachment

Disorganized attachment is the most extreme form of insecure attachment. This level of attachment is frequently born from disruptive childhood experiences, like abuse, neglect, and other traumas.

Characteristics of disorganized attachment include:

  • A strong need to fit in
  • A strong need to survive
  • A fear of the primary caregiver and limited trust in relationships
  • A fear of rejection
  • Negative emotions like shame, anxiety, confusion, and doubt

How Are Attachment Styles Formed?

Around four months old, infants develop the capacity to give and respond to social cues. Between four months and one year of age, children share smiles, laughs, and other communicative expressions with their caregivers. Organized patterns of attachment emerge out of the hours and hours of back and forth interaction between children and their caregivers.

Attachment styles are sets of expectations that form in a child’s mind as they experience more frequent and complex human interactions. By around one year of age, children have encountered enough social data to have classifiable patterns of attachment.

Attachment patterns are most easily observed during times of stress in the relationship, such as separation from a caregiver. Mary Ainsworth developed an experimental procedure called “The Strange Situation,” which allowed trained observers to identify a child’s primary attachment pattern.1 The procedure worked by creating mild stress to a child’s attachment system through short separations from the caregiver, and brief, scripted interactions with a “stranger” (that is, a member of the research team). The way that they interacted with the stranger was a determinant of their attachment style.

How Do Attachment Styles Influence Adult Behavior?

Attachment experiences are our first encounters with the outside world, which we may refer to as “social reality.” Human beings’ relationship with the social world can be viewed as a reflection on early attachment experiences with a primary caregiver (or a composite of main caregivers).

The skills that make up emotional intelligence are directly impacted by early relationships with caregivers formed in early attachment. Reading social cues, delay of gratification, setting healthy boundaries, and resolving conflict are all important aspects of the emotional intelligence needed to function in a complex social world.

Delay of gratification is one aspect of emotional intelligence that predicts long-term success.3 If a child is unable to trust caregivers, then faith in a fair society will be extremely difficult to foster. How then could such a person believe that foregoing pleasure now for rewards in the future is worthwhile?

How Do I Find Out My Attachment Style?

The gold standard for assessing adult attachment patterns is the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), a 90-minute interview that a trained interviewer administers, records, and transcribes. Coders who receive 80 hours of specialized training and complete a rigorous reliability test over the course of 18 months, review the transcripts and assign the relevant attachment pattern.

People interested in having their attachment pattern formally assessed or wish to speak with a clinician trained in this system can contact one of the handful of certified trainers for a referral. Conceptually, the AAI is quite complex and its inner workings have been protected as proprietary knowledge. However, the creators of the AAI published a helpful overview of the system in Clinical Applications of the Adult Attachment Interview for people interested in learning more about how it works.

Social psychologists use a much more straightforward method for assessing attachment style. Most research on attachment published in social psychology journals makes use of a 36-item, self-report questionnaire called the Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) scale.4 This questionnaire is available to complete for free online. Results from this questionnaire will result in an assignment to the best-fitting attachment style according to how the respondent answers questions assessing two dimensions of attachment: anxiety and avoidance.5

Can You Change Your Attachment Style?

Attachment styles become a central point of your identity and personality. However, there is always a chance for you to change a quality or feature you do not like.

If you are interested in changing your attachment style, here are some tips that might help:

1. Understand & Identify Your Patterns in Relationships

In the beginning, you’ll need to identify and understand your current patterns, uncovering where they come from and the impacts they have on your life. You could find positives linked to your style, or you might find that it only brings pain and unhappiness.

2. Find Ways to Boost Your Self-Esteem

You may be too dependent on your relationships and attachments to boost your self-esteem. Ideally, your self-esteem exists apart from your relationships. To separate the two, find ways to focus on your positive qualities and develop your strengths.

3. Work on Your Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence allows you to understand your experience, but it also helps you better relate to the people around you. By increasing your emotional intelligence, you can interact with others in healthier ways.

4. Befriend People Who Are Securely Attached

Depending on your attachment style, you could be more drawn to people with problematic attachment styles. Try to resist this urge and seek out people who seem happy, securely attached, and in healthy relationships. Otherwise, your attachment styles could become more of a hindrance.

5. Resolve Childhood Trauma With Therapy

Attachment styles usually stem from childhood issues and experiences. Rather than trying to fix attachment in the present, return to the past with a therapist to acknowledge and resolve persisting problems.

Finding a Therapist for Attachment Issues

All forms of talk therapy have at least some built-in attachment work and can thus help with attachment issues. The mere act of returning to a reliable figure (in this case, a therapist) to receive emotional and practical help underscores the importance and value of human attachment.

Many forms of psychotherapy make extensive use of the therapeutic relationship, referencing the dynamics between clinician and patient, to make unknown algorithms in the attachment system observable and conscious. Search an online therapist directory for a therapist who leans heavily on attachment-based, relational, or interpersonal methods.

In fact, the quality of the working relationship between therapist and patient, is recognized as one of the most robust factors in creating therapeutic change.6Working through, or repairing, inevitable ruptures in the therapeutic relationship allows for more effective and more hopeful relationship patterns to take hold.7

Final Thoughts on Attachment Styles

Attachment styles are inherently neither good nor bad. Each organized pattern of attachment has adaptive qualities based on the environment in which you were raised; sometimes these adaptations generalize well to the rest of your life, and sometimes they don’t. If your usual assumptions, patterns of behavior, and resulting outcomes aren’t working for you, you can work to change them.

Additional Resources

To help our readers take the next step in their mental health journey, ChoosingTherapy.com has partnered with leaders in mental health and wellness. ChoosingTherapy.com is compensated for marketing by the companies included below.

Online Therapy 

BetterHelp Get support and guidance from a licensed therapist. BetterHelp has over 30,000 therapists, who provide convenient and affordable online therapy. BetterHelp starts at $65 per week and is FSA/HSA eligible by most providers. Take a free online assessment and get matched with the right therapist for you. Free Assessment

Psychiatry, with You in Mind

Talkiatry Our psychiatrists can diagnose your condition, prescribe medication, and monitor your progress. Most psychiatry visits cost patients $30 or less* Free Assessment

Drinking Moderation

Sunnyside Want to drink less? Sunnyside helps you ease into mindful drinking at your own pace. Think lifestyle change, not a fad diet. Develop new daily routines, so you maintain your new habits for life. Take a 3 Minute Quiz

Relationship Help

OurRelationship (Free Couples Course) OurRelationship has been proven to help couples improve communication, intimacy, and trust. 94% would recommend it to a friend. Get Started

Mental Health Support Group App

Circles Anytime, anonymous, and free. Never feel alone during life’s greatest challenges. Drop-in to live conversations and share thoughts, ask questions, or learn from others on the same journey. Join Circles Now

*Includes copayment, deductible, coinsurance, and $0 Visits. Excludes no shows.

SPONSORED
Online Anxiety Test

Online Anxiety Test

A few questions from Talkiatry can help you understand your symptoms and give you a recommendation for what to do next.

Take Test
Best Online Therapy Services of 2025: Our Firsthand Experiences & Recommendations

Best Online Therapy Services

There are a number of factors to consider when trying to determine which online therapy platform is going to be the best fit for you. It’s important to be mindful of what each platform costs, the services they provide you with, their providers’ training and level of expertise, and several other important criteria.

Read more

Attachment Styles Infographics

What Are Attachment Styles? How Do Attachment Styles Influence Adult Behavior? Can You Change Your Attachment Style?

General Well-being Newsletter

A free newsletter for those impacted by mental health issues. Get helpful tips and the latest information.

Sources Update History

ChoosingTherapy.com strives to provide our readers with mental health content that is accurate and actionable. We have high standards for what can be cited within our articles. Acceptable sources include government agencies, universities and colleges, scholarly journals, industry and professional associations, and other high-integrity sources of mental health journalism. Learn more by reviewing our full editorial policy.

  • Ainsworth MDS, Blehar MC, Waters E, Wall S. (1978). Patterns of attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

  • Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent–child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books.

  • Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. I. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244(4907), 933-938.

  • Brennan, K.; Clark, C.; Shaver, P. (1998). Self-report measures of adult romantic attachment. In J. Simpson and W. Rholes, Attachment theory and close relationships. New York: Guilford Press.

  • Watkins, Christopher Daniel, “Convergence versus divergence of social and developmental measures of adult attachment: Testing Jay Belsky’s proposals.” PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2016. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/397

  • Horvath, A. O., & Symonds, B. D. (1991). Relation between working alliance and outcome in psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 38(2), 139–149. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.38.2.139

  • Safran, J. D., Muran, J. C., & Eubanks-Carter, C. (2011). Repairing alliance ruptures. Psychotherapy, 48(1), 80.

Show more Click here to open the article sources container.

We regularly update the articles on ChoosingTherapy.com to ensure we continue to reflect scientific consensus on the topics we cover, to incorporate new research into our articles, and to better answer our audience’s questions. When our content undergoes a significant revision, we summarize the changes that were made and the date on which they occurred. We also record the authors and medical reviewers who contributed to previous versions of the article. Read more about our editorial policies here.

October 19, 2022
Author: No Change
Reviewer: No Change
Primary Changes: Updated for readability and clarity. Reviewed and added relevant resources. Added “Disorganized Attachment” and “Can You Change Your Attachment Style?”. New material written by Eric Patterson, LPC, and reviewed by Kristen Fuller, MD.
February 11, 2021
Author: Michael Kinsey, PhD
Reviewer: Naveed Saleh, MD, MS
Show more Click here to open the article update history container.

Your Voice Matters

Can't find what you're looking for?

Request an article! Tell ChoosingTherapy.com’s editorial team what questions you have about mental health, emotional wellness, relationships, and parenting. Our licensed therapists are just waiting to cover new topics you care about!

Request an Article

Leave your feedback for our editors.

Share your feedback on this article with our editors. If there’s something we missed or something we could improve on, we’d love to hear it.

Our writers and editors love compliments, too. :)

Leave Feedback
ChoosingTherapy.com Logo White
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Write for Us
  • Careers
  • Editorial Policy
  • Advertising Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service

FOR IMMEDIATE HELP CALL:

Medical Emergency: 911

Suicide Hotline: 988

View More Crisis Hotlines
Choosing Therapy on Facebook
Choosing Therapy on Instagram
Choosing Therapy on X
Choosing Therapy on Linkedin
Choosing Therapy on Pinterest
Choosing Therapy on Tiktok
Choosing Therapy on Youtube

© 2025 Choosing Therapy, Inc. All rights reserved.

X