4 Types of Attachment: What's Your Style?

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Here Is How to Identify Your Attachment Medically reviewed by Lori

Lawrenz, PsyD — By Morgan
Mandriota on October 13,
Style 2021

Attachment types Secure attachment Avoidant attachment

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Anxious attachment Disorganized attachment What’s next

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Secure. Avoidant. Anxious. Disorganized. Which type of

attachment style do you have?

Have you ever noticed that you usually think and act in certain ways in romantic relationships?

Maybe you’re a bit jealous and afraid of being alone for too long. Or perhaps you feel confident
and totally trusting of your partner.

One possible explanation for these patterns is attachment theory. Knowing your unique
attachment style can help you become more self-aware and build healthier long-term
partnerships. Changing attachment styles is possible.

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4 Types of Attachment: What's Your Style? 8/8/23, 11:00 AM

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Attachment style theory Too Much Belly Fat? Top Cardiologists

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Founded by psychoanalyst John Bowlby in the 1950s and expanded by Mary Ainsworth,
attachment theory outlines how your bond with your primary caregivers sets the foundation for Wellnessguide101.com Learn More ›
how you navigate relationships throughout life.

“The theory states that the primary goal of a human infant is to maintain proximity to its
caregiver, [which] was necessary for survival during our evolution,” explains Krista Jordan, PhD,
a psychologist and couples therapist in Texas.

“Bowlby believed that because of this evolution, infants and toddlers were monitoring their
parents to see what strategies would allow them to stay close,” Jordan says.

The four types of attachment styles:

secure
avoidant (aka dismissive, or anxious-avoidant in children)
anxious (aka preoccupied, or anxious-ambivalent in children)
disorganized (aka fearful-avoidant in children)
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Avoidant, anxious, and disorganized are considered insecure attachment styles.

If a child can consistently rely on their parents to fulfill their needs growing up, they’re likely to
develop a secure attachment style. They’ll see relationships as a safe space where they can
express their emotions freely.

On the other hand, insecure attachment styles develop if a child has had a strained bond with
their caregivers. This happens when the child learns they may not be able to rely on others to Too Much Belly Fat? Top Cardiologists
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fulfill basic needs and comfort.
Wellnessguide101.com Learn More ›
Enter: Attachment style, adulthood, and romantic relationships
“We unconsciously expect our romantic partners to act as our parents did, and therefore, we
act in certain ways due to these expectations,” says Jordan. These tendencies play out
whether or not we realize it.

According to a 2018 study !, women score higher on anxiety and men score higher on
avoidance when it comes to relationships. But these gender differences are small and have no
direct impact on a person’s attachment style.

Regardless of your primary relationships, you can change attachment styles.

“The most important takeaway is realizing that someone can change from an insecure

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4 Types of Attachment: What's Your Style? 8/8/23, 11:00 AM

attachment style and develop healthy and secure bonds in future relationships,” explains
Katarzyna Peoples, PhD, a relationship counselor and core faculty member at Walden
University’s Counseling Education and Supervision doctoral program.

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What’s a secure attachment style?

Secure attachment is defined by an ability to build healthy, long-lasting relationships, says
Peoples.
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How it develops Wellnessguide101.com Learn More ›

Secure attachment is the result of feeling secure with your caregivers from childhood and
being able to ask for reassurance or validation without punishment.

Ultimately, you felt safe, understood, comforted, and valued during your early interactions.

Your caregivers were probably emotionally available and aware of their own emotions and
behaviors.

“Hence, children model (imitate) secure attachment as well as receive it from their caregivers,”
Peoples adds.

Signs
Signs of a secure attachment style include:

ability to regulate your emotions

easily trusting others
effective communication skills
ability to seek emotional support
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comfortable being alone

comfortable in close relationships
ability to self-reflect in partnerships
being easy to connect with
ability to manage conflict well
high self-esteem Too Much Belly Fat? Top Cardiologists
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ability to be emotionally available
Wellnessguide101.com Learn More ›
How it manifests in relationships

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“Securely attached people grow up feeling secure emotionally and physically and can engage
in the world with others in a healthy way,” says Peoples.

As a result, people with secure attachment styles tend to navigate relationships well. They’re
generally positive, trusting, and loving to their partners.

“They trust their partners’ intentions and jealousy is often not an issue for them,” adds Peoples.
“Securely attached people feel that they’re worthy of love and don’t need external
reassurance.”

What’s an avoidant attachment style?

Avoidant, dismissive-avoidant, or anxious-avoidant are all words for the same insecure
attachment style.
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“[It’s] defined by failures to build long-term relationships with others due to an inability to
engage in physical and emotional intimacy,” says Peoples.

How it develops
In childhood, you may have had strict or emotionally distant and absent caregivers.

Your caregivers may have:

left you to fend for yourself

expected you to be independent
reprimanded you for depending on them
rejected you when expressing your needs or emotions
been slow to respond to your basic needs

“Some avoidant-producing parents are outright neglectful but others are simply busy, slightly
disinterested, and more concerned with things like grades, chores, or manners than feelings,
hopes, dreams, or fears,” adds Jordan.

As a result, Peoples says these children may learn to adopt a strong sense of independence so
they don’t have to rely on anyone else for care or support.

Signs
You might have an anxious-avoidant attachment style if you:

persistently avoid emotional or physical intimacy

feel a strong sense of independence
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are uncomfortable expressing your feelings

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are dismissive of others

have a hard time trusting people
feel threatened by anyone who tries to get close to you
spend more time alone than interacting with others
believe you don’t need others in your life
“commitment issues“

How it manifests in relationships

Anxious-avoidant attached adults may tend to navigate relationships at an arm’s length, says Was this article helpful?
Peoples.

“The need for emotional intimacy is simply lacking in this type of individual, so romantic Yes No
relationships are not able to reach any level of depth,” she adds.

“While they allow romantic partners to engage with them, they avoid getting emotionally close,”
Peoples explains. “A partner may feel as if they can never get inside and will inevitably be
stone-walled or dismissed when the relationship feels too serious for the anxious-avoidant
partner.”

What’s an anxious attachment style?

Anxious attachment style — also known as anxious-ambivalent or anxious-preoccupied — is
another type of insecure attachment characterized by:

fear of rejection
fear of abandonment
depending on a partner for validation and emotional regulation
codependent tendencies

How it develops
This attachment style stems from inconsistent parenting that isn’t attuned to a child’s needs.

“These children have difficulty understanding their caregivers and have no security for what to
expect from them moving forward. [They’re] often confused within their parental relationships
and feel unstable,” says Peoples.

“Children with this attachment style experience very high distress when their caregivers leave.
Sometimes, the parents will be supportive and responsive to the child’s needs while at other
times, they will not be attuned to their children,” she adds.

If you have an anxious attachment style, Jordan notes that your parents may have also:

alternated between being overly coddling and detached or indifferent

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been easily overwhelmed

been sometimes attentive and then push you away
made you responsible for how they felt

“Therefore, these children often grow up thinking they are supposed to take care of other
people’s feelings and often become codependent,” Peoples says.

Signs
Signs you might have an anxious attachment style include:

clingy tendencies
highly sensitive to criticism (real or perceived)
needing approval from others
jealous tendencies
difficulty being alone
low self-esteem
feeling unworthy of love
intense fear of rejection
significant fear of abandonment
difficulty trusting others

How it manifests in relationships

According to Peoples, people with anxious attachment styles usually feel unworthy of love and
need constant reassurance from their partners.

“They often blame themselves for challenges in the relationship and can exhibit frequent and
intense jealousy or distrust due to poor self-esteem,” she says.

Ultimately, there’s a deep-rooted fear of being abandoned, rejected, or alone. And those fears
typically express themselves in these ways.

What’s a disorganized attachment style?

“Anxious-disorganized attachment is defined as having extremely inconsistent behavior and
difficulty trusting others,” says Peoples.

How it develops
The most common causes of a disorganized attachment style are childhood trauma, neglect, or
abuse. Fear of their parents (their sense of safety) is also present.

Children with this attachment style may seem confused.

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“Caregivers are inconsistent and are often seen as sources of comfort and fear by their
children, which leads to their disorganized behaviors,” explains Peoples.

Signs
Signs of a disorganized attachment style include:

fear of rejection
inability to regulate emotions
contradictory behaviors
high levels of anxiety
difficulty trusting others
signs of both avoidant and anxious attachment styles

Jordan notes that this type is also associated with mental health conditions in adulthood,
including:

mood disorders
personality disorders
self-harm
substance use disorder

How it manifests in relationships

In relationships, people with disorganized attachment styles tend to have unpredictable and
confusing behavior. Jordan says they alternate between being aloof and independent and
being clingy and emotional.

“While they desperately seek love, they also push partners away because of the fear of love,”
says Peoples. “They believe that they’ll always be rejected, but they don’t avoid emotional
intimacy. They fear it, and they also consistently seek it out, only to reject it again.”

“They perceive their partners as unpredictable, and they themselves behave in unpredictable
ways within their relationships as they continue to wrestle between the need for security and
fear,” she adds.

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Looking forward
“Making sense of the way one interacts with their partner and knowing why they react in
certain ways can make the journey of healing much easier,” says Peoples. “New patterns of

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thinking can emerge, and behaviors can be corrected.”

Beware, though: “The only reliable mechanisms for identifying adult attachment are the Adult
Attachment Interview or the Adult Attachment Projective,” says Jordan, who notes that these
tests are administered by highly trained research psychologists.

Peoples notes that people with insecure attachment styles might need further help if they want
to develop a more secure attachment type.

“In many cases, the individual may need to talk to a counselor to make sense of their childhood
experiences and how they affect future relationships,” she adds. “It may not be an easy
journey, but it will be well worth it.

If you want to know what your attachment style is, you can take our medically-reviewed
Attachment Style Quiz.

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Explore online talk therapy options

BetterHelp

Last medically reviewed on October 13, 2021

! 3 sources " # $ % FEEDBACK: & '

Jordan K. (2021). Personal interview.

Peoples K. (2021). Personal interview.

Simpson JA. (2017). Adult attachment, stress, and romantic relationships.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4845754/

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