Can Attachment Styles Change? Moving from Anxious and Avoidant Attachment Towards Secure Attachment
- Locus of Life
- Jul 18, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 29
Many people who become interested in attachment styles have been through similar struggles in love and relationships more than once.
You may find yourself wondering, “Why do I become so anxious?” “Why am I so affected by the other person’s response?” or “Why do I long for closeness, yet pull away when someone comes near?”
When this pain continues for a long time, it can begin to feel as though it is simply part of your personality. You may even start to think, “Perhaps this is just how I am,” or “Maybe I will always be like this.”
But the first thing I want to say is this: attachment styles are not fixed for life. You do not need to define yourself only by the patterns, reactions, or emotional habits you have now.
When anxious and avoidant attachment patterns make you feel, “Will I always be this way?”
For a long time, I believed that I had an anxious attachment style. Looking back on my relationships before marriage, I can see clearly that I depended heavily on the other person, and that my emotions were deeply affected by how they responded to me.
Then, after moving to the UK, I found myself in an unfamiliar culture, surrounded by a different language and way of life. I often felt as though I had lost my sense of place. During that time, I leaned on my former husband as my emotional anchor and became deeply dependent on him.
Living overseas takes a great deal of energy in itself. When you are adapting to a new environment and have few people around you that feel truly safe, anxiety and loneliness can easily grow stronger. In those circumstances, it is not unusual for your emotional world to become centred on one particular person. That response is not weakness. It is often a sign that you were doing your best to find safety and connection.
What I began to understand when I thought I was simply anxious
How anxiety grew stronger through change and uncertainty
At one point, I found myself asking, “Why did I become so anxious in the first place?” Learning about attachment theory became a turning point that invited me to look more deeply at my past.
I could see that I was someone who felt anxious very easily. But was that really my whole self? As I began to ask that question, something new slowly started to come into view.
What I saw when I looked back at my younger self
When I think of myself as a child, I remember someone who laughed more freely, trusted others more naturally, and expressed feelings more openly. Remembering that younger version of myself led me to wonder whether, at heart, I may once have had a more secure sense of connection.
But as we grow, we are shaped by many kinds of relationships and experiences: family, friends, school, social expectations, and moments of hurt or loneliness. When painful experiences build up, the heart often learns to protect itself by becoming more guarded.
“I must not be disliked.”
“I have to meet expectations.”
“If I show how I really feel, I may get hurt.”
When these inner lessons accumulate, they can show up as anxious attachment patterns that cling tightly to connection, or avoidant attachment patterns that pull away from it.
Attachment styles are not fixed
Attachment is not simply personality; it develops through relationships
Attachment style is not just a personality label. It reflects how we have learned safety, closeness, uncertainty, and protection through our relationships with others.
That is why there is no need to decide, “I am anxious, so something is wrong with me,” or “I am avoidant, so I can never be close to anyone.” The purpose of understanding attachment is not to place a label on yourself. It is to begin noticing your inner patterns with more clarity, so that your way of relating can gradually become gentler and steadier.
Anxious and avoidant attachment patterns can change, slowly and gently
Through deepening my self-understanding, through parenting, through new relationships, and through my own counselling process, I found that the way I related to myself and others could change.
Change rarely happens all at once. But even being able to notice, “There is anxiety here,” or “I can feel myself wanting to pull away,” can begin to shift something in the foundation of your inner world.
Whether your attachment pattern feels more anxious, avoidant, or disorganised, it is possible to move closer to secure attachment. This is not a path open only to a fortunate few. It is something that can become possible, little by little, through a different kind of relationship with yourself.
What helps when moving from anxious or avoidant attachment towards secure attachment
Begin by noticing your own patterns
The first step is to notice when anxiety becomes stronger, or when you feel the urge to distance yourself from others. Perhaps you feel deeply unsettled when a message goes unanswered. Perhaps asking for help feels difficult. Perhaps you long for closeness, but withdraw when it is offered.
These reactions do not appear for no reason. They make sense in the context of what you have lived through.
To notice your patterns is not to criticise yourself. It is to understand, with more kindness, “This is where I tend to struggle.”
Gently revisit the feelings connected to your past
Another important step is to look back, carefully and gently, at your earlier experiences. Childhood memories, family relationships, and events that have stayed in your heart may all hold clues to the emotional reactions you have now.
This does not mean forcing yourself to remember everything. The point is not to judge the past. It is to notice what you may have been feeling at the time: sadness, loneliness, fear, anger, or the wish to be understood.
When you begin to name those feelings gently, healing can begin.
What it means to heal your inner child
This is where the idea of the inner child can be helpful. It means noticing the younger, more vulnerable parts of yourself that may still be carrying pain, and beginning to meet them with care.
If certain feelings were not fully received in childhood, they can continue to be stirred in adult relationships. In moments like that, it can help to speak inwardly to the younger part of you with tenderness: “That was painful, wasn’t it?” “You really did your best.” “You are not alone now.”
Healing does not mean erasing the past. It means turning towards the feelings that were once left alone, and allowing them to be held differently now. Little by little, that is how a deeper sense of safety begins to grow.
Practical ways to move towards secure attachment
Write down your feelings and get to know your inner world
Journalling can be a very helpful way to understand yourself more clearly. Try writing not only about what happened, but also about what you felt, what thoughts appeared, and how your body responded. Over time, patterns often become easier to recognise.
Build safe relationships little by little
Relationships in which you feel emotionally safe can help attachment heal. You do not need to share everything perfectly. Simply practising saying a little more, asking for a little help, or letting yourself be seen in small ways can gradually teach the nervous system that connection can be safe.
Let small experiences of success build confidence
Saying what you think, asking for support, setting a boundary, or expressing a need — these small actions matter. Each one can strengthen the feeling that you are allowed to exist within a relationship without losing yourself.
Create daily practices that help your mind and body settle
Anxiety is not only something that happens in the mind; it is felt in the body too. A walk, slow breathing, yoga, music, a warm drink, or time in nature can all help you return to the present moment.
The more often you can gently bring yourself back to “here”, the more you begin to build an inner foundation of steadiness and care.
The quiet strength of choosing to believe you can heal
What supports these changes, over time, is a quiet inner willingness to keep believing, “I will be all right.”
Fear and anxiety often return in waves. They may not disappear completely. But each time they return, choosing to believe, “Even so, I can move through this,” becomes a quiet source of strength.
There is a sentence that has supported me for many years:
“People are only given difficulties they can overcome.”
I have been comforted by these words many times. In seasons when life felt heavy, or when I wanted to stop where I was, this belief helped me feel that there was still meaning in what I was going through, and that I could take one more step.
Difficulties are not simply hardships to endure. Sometimes they also become invitations to understand ourselves more deeply. And depending on how we hold them, they may become part of the way we grow.
In closing — the capacity for secure connection is still within you
When you are struggling with attachment, it is easy to judge yourself only by who you are now. But within you, there is still the capacity to feel safe in connection.
It may be difficult to see at the moment, but that does not mean it has disappeared. Somewhere within you, the ability to trust, to soften, and to feel held still remains.
To understand yourself, to care for yourself, and to learn to trust yourself again may take time. But people do change, one small step at a time.
There is nothing wrong with you. You adapted in the ways you needed to. And because of that, it is also possible to begin creating safer, steadier ways of relating from here.
If facing this alone feels too much at the moment, it may help to speak with someone and begin sorting through your thoughts and feelings together.
At Locus of Life, I gently support people in deepening their understanding of attachment patterns and building the inner foundations for a life that feels more their own. My hope is to walk alongside you as you begin creating a sense of safety and belonging within yourself.
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Struggles linked to anxious and avoidant attachment can be hard to explain, especially because they are often invisible from the outside. That is why you may find yourself wondering, “Is this really something I can talk about?”
You may also feel, “I am not sure I can explain it well,” or “I have not fully made sense of what I am feeling yet.”
But you do not need to have everything neatly organised before reaching out. It is completely all right if you do not yet know exactly what feels painful, or why. Your worries do not have to be severe to be worthy of care.
Especially if you have spent a long time living overseas and carrying things on your own, it can be easy to fall into the habit of thinking, “I should be able to manage this by myself.” This free 30-minute online session is simply a gentle, pressure-free space where you can pause, breathe, and begin putting words to what is on your heart at your own pace.
If you find yourself thinking, “Maybe I would like to talk to someone, just a little,” you are very welcome to come here when that feels right for you.
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