Can Attachment Styles Be Changed Through Therapy?
- Matthew Frener
- 10 minutes ago
- 10 min read
Last updated: 11th April
If you have ever found yourself pulling away when someone gets too close, or spiralling with anxiety when a partner goes quiet, you already know that your attachment patterns run deep.
They feel less like choices and more like the weather: something that happens to you, not something you do.
That feeling is understandable.
Attachment styles are formed early, shaped by thousands of small interactions with caregivers before you had the language to describe them.
But the idea that they are fixed for life is not supported by the evidence.
Research is increasingly clear that attachment patterns can shift meaningfully in adulthood, and that therapy is one of the most reliable ways to make that happen.
The key insight: Change is not about swapping one personality for another. It is about building enough safety, over time, to update the internal beliefs that have been driving your relationships for years. |
This article looks at what the evidence actually says, what that process involves in practice, and what to realistically expect if you decide to do this work in therapy.
What Is an Attachment Style, and Why Does It Matter in Adulthood?
Attachment theory, originally developed by John Bowlby in the 1960s and expanded by Mary Ainsworth, describes how the quality of early caregiving shapes a child's internal working model: a set of beliefs about whether the world is safe, whether other people can be trusted, and whether you are worthy of care.
These models become templates that influence how you relate to others for the rest of your life.
In adults, attachment patterns generally fall into four categories:
Style | Core belief | Common patterns in relationships |
Secure | "I am loveable; others are trustworthy" | Comfortable with closeness and independence |
Anxious (preoccupied) | "I need closeness but fear abandonment" | Hypervigilance to rejection; difficulty self-soothing |
Avoidant (dismissing) | "I am self-sufficient; closeness is risky" | Emotional distance; discomfort with dependency |
Fearful-avoidant (disorganised) | "I want closeness but it is dangerous" | Approach-avoidance cycles; often linked to trauma |
These are not personality types.
They are learned strategies, developed because they were adaptive at some point.
The child who learned to suppress emotional needs to keep a dismissing parent close was doing something intelligent.
The problem is that the same strategy tends to misfire in adult relationships, where the conditions have changed but the nervous system has not been updated.
This is precisely why the patterns feel so hard to shift. They are not cognitive habits you can simply decide to drop. They are wired into how your body responds to relational threat: who you choose, how you interpret ambiguity, how quickly you escalate or shut down. |
Understanding your own attachment style and how it affects your relationships is often the first step in making meaningful change.
What the Evidence Says: Can Attachment Styles Actually Change?
The short answer is yes. The more accurate answer is: yes, with important nuance about what changes, how much, and over what timeframe.
The systematic review evidence
A 2025 systematic review examined 39 empirical studies published between 2000 and 2024, all of which measured attachment security before and after psychotherapy using validated instruments.
Across a wide range of therapy modalities and client populations, most studies reported meaningful shifts toward greater attachment security.
Crucially, the most robust effects emerged in longer-term treatments, and the changes occurred even when attachment was not explicitly the focus of therapy.
A separate systematic review published in PLOS ONE found that attachment patterns can be modified by significant life events and therapeutic interventions, and that insecure attachment is a transdiagnostic vulnerability factor strongly linked to anxiety, depression, and relational difficulties.
Addressing it in therapy therefore has implications beyond relationships alone.
One study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (2024) followed 330 adult clients across 44 therapists and found that clients who developed a secure attachment to their therapist showed significant reductions in interpersonal problems by the end of treatment.
The mechanism was clear: the therapeutic relationship itself was producing the change, not just the techniques. |
What "earned security" means
Researchers use the term earned secure attachment to describe what happens when someone with an insecure attachment history develops the relational capacities associated with security.
This is distinct from having always been secure.
People with earned security often retain some vulnerability to stress or relational triggers, but their overall functioning, self-perception, and ability to form close relationships shifts substantially.
The distinction matters clinically. The goal of therapy is not to erase your history. It is to help you hold that history with coherence rather than being flooded by it, and to develop new relational expectations through experience rather than just insight. |
"You don't have to have had a secure childhood to tell a coherent story about an insecure one. And that coherence is itself healing." - Research on Adult Attachment Interview findings (Mary Main, UC Berkeley)
What does not change easily
It is worth being honest about the limits. The evidence supports meaningful change in attachment security, but:
Change is typically gradual, unfolding over months or years rather than weeks
Insecure patterns can resurface under stress, particularly in new or intense relationships
People with earned security may still carry some residual vulnerability to depression compared to those with continuous secure attachment
The quality of the therapeutic relationship is a significant predictor of outcome; a poor therapeutic fit can slow or undermine progress
How Therapy Actually Changes Attachment Patterns
This is the part most articles skip. Knowing that change is possible is one thing.
Understanding the mechanism is what makes it feel real and achievable rather than abstract.
The therapeutic relationship as a corrective experience
The most important finding across the research is this: the therapeutic relationship is not just the vehicle for change, it is the change itself. Internal working models do not update through insight alone. They update through repeated relational experience that contradicts the old template.
For someone with an anxious attachment style, therapy offers a consistent, boundaried relationship where the therapist is reliably present, does not abandon or punish emotional expression, and can tolerate the client's needs without becoming overwhelmed. Over time, the nervous system begins to register that closeness is not inherently dangerous.
For someone with an avoidant style, the therapist offers a relationship where dependency is not shamed, where vulnerability is met with care rather than rejection, and where the client's need for space is respected rather than fought. The implicit message is: "You can be known and still be safe."
This is what researchers call a corrective attachment experience: a relational encounter that provides something the client's nervous system has never had the chance to internalise.
What changes in the brain and body
The concept of neuroplasticity is relevant here. The brain's capacity to rewire itself through repeated experience means that new relational patterns, practised consistently over time, can gradually replace old ones at a neural level.
This is not a metaphor.
Research on the window of tolerance, developed by Dan Siegel, describes how therapy helps clients expand their capacity to remain present with difficult emotional states without either shutting down or becoming flooded.
Clients often describe this shift as feeling "more spacious inside": able to sit with discomfort, tolerate ambiguity in relationships, and respond rather than react.
The role of narrative coherence
A second mechanism is the development of what attachment researchers call earned coherence: the ability to tell a clear, integrated story about your early experiences without being emotionally overwhelmed by it.
Research using the Adult Attachment Interview consistently shows that narrative coherence, not a happy childhood, is one of the strongest predictors of secure attachment in adults.
Therapy helps build this coherence by:
Creating a safe space to revisit and process early experiences
Helping you understand the logic behind your protective strategies
Separating the past from the present, so old patterns are less likely to hijack current relationships
Gradually building a more balanced self-narrative
Therapy modalities that address attachment directly
Several evidence-informed approaches are particularly well suited to attachment work:
Integrative psychotherapy: Draws on multiple frameworks, including attachment theory, and tailors the approach to the individual. The relational quality of the work is central.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT): Developed by Dr Sue Johnson, EFT explicitly uses an attachment frame to help clients access and process underlying emotional needs. It is one of the most validated approaches for relational difficulties.
Schema therapy: Addresses the deep-seated beliefs (schemas) formed in childhood, many of which map directly onto insecure attachment patterns.
Trauma-informed approaches: For those with fearful-avoidant or disorganised attachment, which is often linked to early trauma, trauma-focused work is frequently a necessary foundation before attachment patterns can shift.
An integrative approach to psychotherapy is often particularly effective for attachment work because it allows the therapist to respond to what each individual actually needs, rather than applying a single model to everyone.
What to Expect If You Pursue Attachment-Focused Therapy
Most people beginning therapy do not arrive thinking "I want to change my attachment style."
They arrive because a relationship ended badly, because they keep repeating the same patterns, because anxiety or depression has become unmanageable, or because they feel disconnected from the people they love most.
Attachment work tends to happen within that context, not as a separate project.
The early phase: building safety
Before any deep exploration can occur, therapy needs to establish something your nervous system may never have had: a genuinely containing relational environment. This takes time, and it should. If you have an anxious or avoidant style, you are likely to bring that pattern into the therapeutic relationship itself.
You might find yourself testing the therapist, or pulling back just as things start to feel meaningful, or becoming preoccupied with what the therapist thinks of you. This is not a problem. It is the work. These moments, when they are noticed and explored rather than avoided, are exactly where attachment change happens.
The middle phase: pattern recognition and repair
Once safety is established, therapy begins to focus on the patterns themselves: where they came from, what purpose they served, and how they are showing up now. This typically involves:
Exploring early caregiving experiences and what you learned from them
Noticing how those patterns activate in current relationships, including with the therapist
Experiencing moments of rupture and repair in the therapeutic relationship, which are among the most powerful change mechanisms available
Gradually building the capacity to tolerate emotional closeness or dependency without it feeling catastrophic
Rupture and repair deserves particular attention.
When a therapist misattunes, is late, or says something that lands badly, and then acknowledges it and works through it with you, your nervous system gets a new piece of data: relationships can recover.
That data, accumulated over time, begins to update the internal working model.
The longer arc: change in daily life
The changes that emerge in therapy tend to show up gradually in everyday life.
People often report:
Less reactivity to perceived rejection or abandonment
Greater ability to express needs without anticipating disaster
More comfort with intimacy without losing a sense of self
Reduced compulsive self-sufficiency, and more willingness to ask for support
A clearer, more compassionate understanding of their own relational history
These shifts tend to appear as a growing quietness where there was once noise: less urgency, less dread, more capacity to stay present in relationships rather than managing them from a distance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How long does it take to change an attachment style through therapy?
A: There is no single answer, but the research consistently shows that longer-term therapy produces more robust attachment change than short-term work. Most studies reporting meaningful shifts involved treatments lasting several months to over a year. This does not mean nothing changes in shorter work, but deeper attachment reorganisation typically requires the kind of sustained relational experience that brief interventions cannot provide.
Q: Can I change my attachment style without therapy?
A: Yes, to a degree. Sustained, secure relationships outside therapy, whether with a partner, close friends, or a mentor, can also provide corrective relational experiences. However, therapy offers something that most relationships cannot: a consistent, boundaried, professionally held space where your patterns can be examined directly without the risk of damaging a valued personal relationship. For many people, it is the most reliable route to change.
Q: Does my attachment style affect how I engage with therapy itself?
A: Significantly, yes. Research shows that people with anxious attachment tend to engage readily but may struggle with endings or perceived rejection from the therapist. People with avoidant attachment may find it harder to ask for help, may minimise distress, or may disengage just as the work deepens. Fearful-avoidant individuals often oscillate between the two. A skilled therapist will be attuned to these dynamics and will work with them rather than around them.
Q: Is it possible to have more than one attachment style?
A: Most people do not fit neatly into a single category. Attachment patterns can vary across different relationships and contexts. Someone may be relatively secure with a long-term partner but anxiously attached in new or high-stakes relationships. The four-style model is a useful framework, but human attachment is dimensional rather than categorical.
Q: What if I recognise my attachment style but my partner does not want to engage with this work?
A: Individual therapy can still be highly effective. You do not need your partner's participation to shift your own patterns. In fact, changes in one person's attachment behaviour often create new dynamics in the relationship as a whole, sometimes prompting the other person to reflect on their own patterns too. Couples therapy can be a valuable addition if both partners are willing, but it is not a prerequisite for individual change.
Q: Can childhood trauma be addressed in attachment-focused therapy?
A: Yes, and for those with fearful-avoidant or disorganised attachment patterns, addressing underlying trauma is often essential. Trauma and insecure attachment are closely linked: early experiences of neglect, abuse, or inconsistent caregiving frequently produce both. A trauma-informed therapist will be able to hold both strands of the work simultaneously, pacing the process carefully to avoid retraumatisation.
Taking the Next Step
Your attachment patterns were a reasonable response to the relational environment you grew up in. The evidence is clear that those patterns can change, and that therapy, particularly longer-term relational work, is one of the most effective ways to make that happen.
What changes is not your history. What changes is your relationship to it, and the internal working model you carry into every relationship you form from here.
If you recognise yourself in any of the patterns described here, whether you tend to pull away, hold on too tightly, or swing between the two, individual therapy can offer the kind of sustained, safe relational experience that makes that change possible.
Matthew Frener offers individual therapy in Fitzrovia, Central London, and online, working with relational difficulties, anxiety, trauma, and the patterns that keep showing up in your closest relationships. A free 15 to 30 minute introductory call is available to discuss whether therapy might be a good fit. |
