Can Your Attachment Style Change?

If you've read about anxious, avoidant, and secure attachment, you may have wondered: Am I stuck with this?

The patterns feel so deep, so automatic. They show up before you even realize what's happening—the urge to pull closer, the impulse to withdraw, the anxiety that floods you when a text goes unanswered. These reactions don't feel like choices. They feel like who you are.

The question of whether attachment can change isn't just academic. It's personal. It's about whether the way you learned to love as an infant has to be the way you love for the rest of your life.

The answer, supported by both attachment research and neuroscience, is no. You are not stuck.

Attachment is learned—which means it can be relearned

Attachment patterns form in the first eighteen months of life, before we have words, before we have conscious memory. They're encoded in implicit memory—the kind that operates outside awareness. You don't remember learning to attach. You just are anxious or avoidant or secure. It feels like personality. It feels like fate.

But what was learned through relationship can be relearned through relationship.

This is where neuroplasticity comes in. As Dixie Meyer explains, the brain is capable of reorganizing itself throughout the lifespan. New neuronal connections can form in response to new experiences—including new relational experiences. The brain that learned insecure attachment in infancy is the same brain that can learn secure attachment in adulthood, given the right conditions.

What are those conditions? They mirror how attachment originally formed: consistent attunement, help with regulating emotions, and a relationship that feels safe enough to depend on.

The brain is built by relationships

Allan Schore's research has shown that the infant's brain literally develops in response to interactions with the caregiver. The right hemisphere—which governs emotion, attachment, and our felt sense of connection—is shaped by those early relational experiences. Affect regulation isn't something we're born knowing how to do. We learn it through being regulated by someone else first.

This means attachment isn't just psychological. It's neurobiological. The patterns are encoded in the structure of the brain itself.

But here's what's hopeful: if the brain was built by relationship, it can also be rebuilt by relationship. Schore's work points to the same mechanism Meyer describes—neuroplasticity allows the brain to form new pathways when we have new relational experiences that differ from the old ones.

The therapeutic relationship as a new attachment

John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, proposed that therapists function as attachment figures for their clients. When someone comes to therapy with insecure attachment, the therapeutic relationship offers an opportunity to experience something different.

Meyer puts it directly: the counselor can become a "substitute attachment figure," providing the secure base the client may never have had. This isn't about the therapist replacing early caregivers—it's about offering a new relational experience that the brain can learn from.

When a therapist attunes to a client's emotional state—really tracks it, reflects it accurately, stays present through distress without withdrawing or becoming overwhelmed—the client's brain isn't just experiencing comfort. It's learning. New implicit memories are forming. The old template that says "when I'm in distress, I'm alone" or "when I reach out, people disappear" gets challenged by lived experience that says otherwise.

This takes time. Attachment didn't form in a single interaction, and it doesn't change in one either. Meyer emphasizes that the regularity of therapy sessions matters—repeated experiences strengthen new neural pathways. What you practice, your brain becomes.

What actually changes

Becoming more securely attached doesn't mean you'll never feel anxious or never want space. It means more flexibility. You'll have greater capacity to tolerate distress without being overwhelmed by it. More ability to reflect on your own patterns without being hijacked by them. A felt sense—not just an intellectual understanding—that connection is possible, even when it's temporarily disrupted.

These aren't abstract improvements. They show up in the moment when you notice old anxiety rising and find you can stay present anyway. They show up when rupture in a relationship no longer feels like the end of the world.

Change happens in relationship

You don't change your attachment style by reading about it or by understanding where it came from—though understanding helps. You change it by experiencing something different, again and again, until the new pattern becomes implicit, automatic, yours.

If you recognize yourself in anxious or avoidant attachment, that recognition is valuable. But recognition is the beginning, not the end. The real work is relational.

And the research confirms: your brain is ready for it.

If you're interested in exploring this work, I offer consultations for clients in NJ, FL, TX, PA, and NY.