Learn what attachment is, how early unmet needs shape attachment styles, and how therapy approaches like IFS, inner child work, and schema therapy can help you heal and build secure relationships.
Understanding Attachment and How to Heal It
Attachment is one of the most powerful psychological forces shaping our relationships, emotional regulation, and sense of self. It influences how we connect with romantic partners, friends, children, and even how we relate to ourselves.
When attachment wounds go unaddressed, they can quietly drive patterns of anxiety, withdrawal, conflict, and self-doubt. The good news is that attachment style is not a life sentence. With insight and the right therapeutic support, it can shift.
What Is Attachment?
Attachment refers to the emotional bond that develops between a child and their primary caregiver. This bond creates an internal blueprint for how relationships work. It answers core questions such as:
• Am I safe with others?
• Will someone show up when I need them?
• Am I worthy of care?
• Can I trust people?
When caregivers respond consistently, warmly, and predictably, a child develops a sense of safety and security.
When care is inconsistent, intrusive, emotionally unavailable, or frightening, the child adapts in order to survive emotionally. These adaptations become attachment patterns (and schemas).
Attachment is not about weakness. It is about survival. Human beings are wired for connection. When connection feels uncertain, the nervous system reacts accordingly.
How Attachment Forms
Attachment forms in the earliest years of life, often before we have language. Babies and young children rely completely on caregivers to meet both physical and emotional needs. These needs include:
• Safety and protection
• Emotional soothing
• Consistency and predictability
• Validation of feelings
• Encouragement of autonomy
When these needs are consistently met, a child internalizes the belief: I am safe, I matter, and others are reliable.
When these needs are unmet — whether through neglect, emotional unavailability, chronic stress in the home, trauma, or inconsistent caregiving — a child’s nervous system adapts.
The child cannot change the caregiver, so they change themselves. They may become hyper-vigilant, overly independent, emotionally shut down, or highly anxious about closeness.
Earlier unmet needs often lead to deeply rooted beliefs such as:
• “I am too much.”
• “My needs are a burden.”
• “People always leave.”
• “I cannot rely on anyone.”
• “I must handle everything alone.”
These beliefs operate outside conscious awareness but influence adult relationships in powerful ways through schemas.
The Different Attachment Styles
Attachment theory commonly describes four main attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.
Secure Attachment
Individuals with secure attachment generally feel comfortable with closeness and independence. They trust that others will be there for them and feel worthy of love. Conflict does not automatically threaten the relationship. They can express needs without overwhelming fear of rejection.
Secure attachment develops when caregivers are consistently responsive and emotionally attuned.
Anxious Attachment
Anxious attachment develops when caregiving is inconsistent — sometimes available, sometimes not. This unpredictability leads to hyper-awareness of relational cues.
Adults with anxious attachment may:
• Fear abandonment
• Seek reassurance frequently
• Feel distressed when a partner pulls away
• Interpret neutral events as rejection
Their nervous system is primed to detect signs of loss.
Avoidant Attachment
Avoidant attachment often forms when emotional needs are dismissed, minimized, or discouraged. The child learns that vulnerability does not feel safe.
Adults with avoidant attachment may:
• Value independence to an extreme
• Feel uncomfortable with emotional closeness
• Suppress vulnerable feelings
• Withdraw during conflict
Their adaptation is self-protection through distance.
Disorganized Attachment
Disorganized attachment typically develops in environments that feel both unsafe and necessary — such as when a caregiver is frightening, unpredictable, or a source of trauma.
Adults with disorganized attachment may:
• Long for closeness but fear it
• Experience intense relational instability
• Struggle with trust and emotional regulation
• Alternate between anxious and avoidant patterns
This style reflects a nervous system caught between approach and avoidance.
Attachment Styles Are Adaptations, Not Identity
It is important to understand that attachment styles are adaptive strategies. They formed for a reason. They helped you survive emotionally in your early environment.
But what helped you survive then may no longer serve you now.
If you find yourself repeating painful relational cycles, it is not because you are broken. It is because old protective patterns are still running the show.
Can Attachment Style Change?
Yes. Attachment can shift toward greater security through corrective emotional experiences, especially within safe and attuned therapeutic relationships.
The brain remains plastic throughout life. When new relational experiences consistently contradict old expectations, neural pathways begin to reorganize. Over time, new beliefs can take root:
• “My needs matter.”
• “Closeness can be safe.”
• “I can set boundaries and still be loved.”
• “I am worthy of care.”
This process takes intention and support. Insight alone is rarely enough. Emotional healing usually requires experiential work.
Healing Attachment in Therapy
Several therapeutic approaches are particularly effective in addressing attachment wounds.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS views the psyche as made up of “parts.” Many attachment-driven reactions come from protective parts that formed in childhood.
For example:
• An anxious part may scan for signs of abandonment.
• An avoidant part may shut down feelings.
• A critical part may try to prevent rejection through self-attack.
IFS helps clients develop access to their calm, compassionate core Self. From this grounded place, they can build relationships with wounded parts rather than being overwhelmed by them. Over time, protective parts relax because they no longer have to carry the burden alone. Vulnerable parts are healed so that they no longer trigger protective reactions.
This creates internal security — a foundation for secure external attachment.
Inner Child Work
Inner child work involves reconnecting with younger parts of ourselves that carry unmet needs and emotional pain.
Many adults intellectually understand their childhood experiences but have never emotionally processed them. When therapy creates space to validate, nurture, and reparent those younger parts, something profound shifts.
The unmet needs for safety, comfort, validation, and protection can begin to be met internally and within the therapeutic relationship. This reduces the urgency and reactivity that often shows up in adult relationships.
Schema Therapy
Schema therapy identifies deeply rooted patterns (schemas) that formed in response to unmet needs. Common attachment-related schemas include:
• Abandonment
• Mistrust/Abuse
• Emotional Deprivation
• Defectiveness/Shame
• Subjugation
These schemas shape how we interpret others’ behaviour. A delayed text becomes “They are mad at me.” A disagreement becomes “I am unlovable.”
Schema work combines cognitive, emotional, and experiential interventions to heal these early wounds. Through techniques such as imagery rescripting and limited reparenting, clients experience corrective emotional responses that gradually soften rigid patterns.
What Secure Attachment Feels Like
Secure attachment is not the absence of conflict or fear. It is the ability to navigate closeness and distance without losing your sense of self.
It feels like:
• Being able to ask for what you need
• Tolerating discomfort without panic
• Trusting repair after conflict
• Maintaining boundaries without guilt
• Feeling fundamentally worthy of care
Security develops both internally and relationally.
Moving Toward Secure Attachment
Healing attachment is not about blaming caregivers or dissecting the past endlessly. It is about understanding how your nervous system learned to survive and gently updating those patterns.
You deserve relationships that feel steady rather than chaotic, safe rather than threatening, and connected rather than distant.
If you recognize yourself in these patterns and are ready to shift toward greater security, we invite you to contact us today and begin the work of building relationships — including the one with yourself — that feel grounded, secure, and emotionally fulfilling.
Attachment wounds may shape your story, but they do not have to define your future.
References:
Roelofs J, Onckels L, Muris P. Attachment Quality and Psychopathological Symptoms in Clinically Referred Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Early Maladaptive Schema. J Child Fam Stud. 2013 Apr;22(3):377-385.
Simard V, Moss E, Pascuzzo K. Early maladaptive schemas and child and adult attachment: a 15-year longitudinal study. Psychol Psychother. 2011 Dec;84(4):349-66.
