What Are Attachment Styles? Understanding Secure, Anxious, Avoidant, and Disorganized Attachment
Have you ever wondered why you feel especially anxious when someone you care about becomes distant, why you have difficulty trusting others, or why intimacy sometimes feels uncomfortable? These patterns may be connected to your attachment style.
Attachment styles describe patterns in how we relate to other people, particularly in close and romantic relationships. They can influence how we experience intimacy, trust, conflict, emotional closeness, and separation.
Understanding your attachment style can provide valuable insight into relationship patterns, but it is important to remember that attachment styles are not fixed personality types or diagnoses. People can develop more secure ways of relating through self-awareness, healthy relationships, and therapy.
At Brooklyn Somatic Therapy, founders and directors Rebecca Stone and Dr. Binny Kagedan lead and supervise a team of therapists who help clients explore attachment patterns, relationship dynamics, trauma, and the nervous system. Their integrative approach combines somatic therapy with evidence-based therapeutic modalities to help clients create deeper and more secure connections.
What Are Attachment Styles?
Attachment theory originated from the work of British psychologist John Bowlby and was later expanded through the research of Mary Ainsworth and others. The theory explores how early relationships with caregivers can influence the ways we seek safety, connection, and support.
Our early experiences can contribute to internal expectations about relationships. For example, we may develop beliefs about whether other people are dependable, whether it is safe to express our needs, or whether we can rely on someone when we are vulnerable.
These patterns can continue into adulthood, particularly in romantic relationships and other close connections.
The four attachment styles commonly discussed are:
Secure attachment
Anxious attachment
Avoidant attachment
Disorganized attachment
These categories can be useful for understanding relationship patterns, but they should not be treated as rigid labels. A person's attachment patterns can vary depending on the relationship, circumstances, and experiences they have had throughout life.
Secure Attachment
People with more secure attachment patterns generally feel comfortable with emotional closeness while maintaining a sense of independence.
They may be more likely to:
Trust others
Communicate their needs openly
Feel comfortable with intimacy
Manage conflict without immediately fearing abandonment
Give and receive emotional support
Maintain healthy boundaries
Secure attachment does not mean someone never experiences jealousy, anxiety, conflict, or relationship difficulties. Rather, it often means they have greater capacity to navigate those experiences without feeling that the relationship itself is constantly under threat.
Importantly, secure attachment can also develop over time. Therapy and healthy relationships can provide opportunities to experience safety and connection in new ways.
Anxious Attachment
Anxious attachment is often associated with a strong desire for closeness combined with a fear that the other person may leave, lose interest, or stop caring.
Someone with anxious attachment patterns may:
Worry about being rejected or abandoned
Seek frequent reassurance
Feel highly sensitive to changes in communication
Overanalyze messages or interactions
Have difficulty feeling secure when a partner is emotionally distant
Fear that something is wrong in the relationship
For example, if a partner takes longer than usual to respond to a text, someone with anxious attachment may immediately begin wondering whether the relationship is in trouble.
These reactions are not necessarily a conscious choice. They can involve deeply learned emotional and nervous system responses that developed over time.
Avoidant Attachment
Avoidant attachment is often associated with discomfort around emotional dependence or vulnerability.
People with avoidant attachment patterns may:
Prefer significant independence
Feel uncomfortable relying on others
Have difficulty expressing vulnerable emotions
Pull away when relationships become very intimate
Minimize their own emotional needs
Feel overwhelmed when a partner wants greater closeness
Someone with avoidant patterns may genuinely care deeply about another person while still experiencing closeness as uncomfortable or threatening.
This can sometimes create a difficult dynamic when paired with someone who has anxious attachment patterns. One person may seek more connection while the other responds by creating more distance, reinforcing both people's fears.
Disorganized Attachment
Disorganized attachment, sometimes referred to as fearful-avoidant attachment, can involve conflicting desires for closeness and protection.
A person may deeply want connection while simultaneously feeling unsafe with intimacy. They may move toward someone for comfort and then suddenly pull away.
Possible patterns include:
Wanting closeness but fearing it
Difficulty trusting others
Strong emotional reactions in relationships
Fear of abandonment combined with fear of intimacy
Difficulty knowing whether to move toward or away from another person
Feeling confused or conflicted about relationships
Disorganized attachment is often associated with experiences in which a person did not consistently experience safety or predictability in important relationships. However, attachment patterns are complex, and they cannot be determined simply by looking at someone's childhood history.
Can Your Attachment Style Change?
Yes. Attachment patterns are not necessarily permanent.
Our nervous system continues to learn from our experiences throughout life. Relationships that provide consistency, safety, emotional responsiveness, and healthy boundaries can create new experiences of connection.
Therapy can also help people recognize attachment patterns and understand what happens internally when they experience closeness, conflict, rejection, or separation.
This is where a somatic approach can be particularly valuable.
Rather than only asking, "Why do I react this way in relationships?", somatic therapy can help explore what happens in your body and nervous system when an attachment trigger occurs.
You might notice your heart racing when someone becomes distant, tension in your body during conflict, or an impulse to withdraw when someone gets emotionally close. Becoming aware of these responses can create space between the trigger and the automatic reaction.
How Somatic Therapy Can Help With Attachment Patterns
Attachment patterns are not only cognitive. They can involve deeply ingrained emotional and physiological responses.
Somatic therapy works with both conscious and unconscious material, helping clients explore how past experiences continue to influence their present-day relationships.
Depending on the individual's needs, therapy may incorporate approaches such as somatic therapy, EMDR, parts work, and memory rescripting. These approaches can help clients process experiences that may continue to shape their beliefs about safety, trust, intimacy, and relationships.
The goal is not to simply identify yourself as "anxious" or "avoidant." Instead, therapy can help you understand the underlying patterns and develop greater flexibility in how you respond.
Attachment Therapy in Brooklyn, NYC
If you are looking for attachment therapy in Brooklyn or a therapist who works with relationship and attachment patterns, finding a practice with an integrative approach can be an important part of the process.
Brooklyn Somatic Therapy serves clients throughout Brooklyn and New York City, helping individuals explore attachment, trauma, anxiety, relationship difficulties, and emotional patterns.
Rebecca Stone and Dr. Binny Kagedan are the founders and directors of the practice and lead and supervise the team of therapists. Their clinical leadership supports a collaborative practice where therapists integrate somatic approaches with evidence-based trauma and psychotherapy modalities.
The practice serves clients from neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn, including Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights, Williamsburg, and surrounding areas.
Understanding Your Attachment Style Is a Starting Point
Learning about attachment styles can help you recognize patterns that may have previously felt confusing. You may begin to understand why you seek reassurance, pull away from intimacy, fear abandonment, or struggle to trust others.
But an attachment style is not a life sentence.
With greater awareness, supportive relationships, and appropriate therapy, people can develop new ways of experiencing connection and responding to emotional triggers.
If you are struggling with relationship patterns, anxiety around intimacy, difficulty trusting others, or recurring cycles of closeness and distance, exploring attachment with a qualified therapist can be a meaningful step toward creating healthier and more secure relationships.