Attachment Therapy | Anxious, Avoidant & Disorganised Attachment
You want closeness — and yet when someone gets too close, something in you pulls away. Or you cling, needing constant reassurance that they are still there, still interested, still not about to leave. Or both, depending on the day, the relationship, the moment.
If any of this sounds familiar, it is not a personality flaw or a sign that you are too difficult to love. It is an attachment pattern — something learned very early, in the relationships that first taught you whether the world was safe, whether people could be trusted, and whether you were worthy of love without conditions.
And because it was learned, it can change.
What Attachment Styles Are
Attachment theory — developed by John Bowlby and built on significantly by researchers since — describes the way our earliest relationships with caregivers shape a template for how we relate to others throughout our lives.
When those early relationships were safe, consistent, and attuned, we tend to develop what is called secure attachment — a fundamental sense that we are loveable, that others can be trusted, and that closeness is safe. We can depend on people without losing ourselves, and we can be alone without unravelling.
When those early relationships were not safe, consistent, or attuned — for whatever reason — we develop insecure attachment styles as a way of adapting and surviving. These styles are not disorders or defects. They are intelligent responses to the relational environment we grew up in. They just tend to cause difficulty later.
The three main insecure attachment styles are:
Anxious Attachment
Anxious attachment develops when early caregiving was inconsistent — warm and present sometimes, unavailable or unpredictable at others. The child learns that love is not guaranteed, and that the way to hold onto it is to stay hyper-alert to any sign that it might be withdrawn.
In adult life this can look like:
A deep fear of abandonment — reading into silences, tone of voice, small changes in behaviour
Needing frequent reassurance that the relationship is okay
Feeling anxious and unsettled in relationships even when nothing is technically wrong
Difficulty being alone — a sense of not quite existing fully without someone else's attention
Becoming very distressed when a partner or friend withdraws, even briefly
A tendency to put others first to the point of losing track of your own needs
Avoidant Attachment
Avoidant attachment develops when early caregiving was emotionally distant, rejecting of need, or simply not attuned to emotional experience. The child learns that needing others leads to disappointment or rejection — and that the safest strategy is to not need anyone.
In adult life this can look like:
Discomfort with emotional intimacy or vulnerability
A tendency to withdraw when relationships become intense or demanding
Prioritising independence and self-sufficiency to the point of isolation
Finding it hard to identify or express emotions — or feeling numb
Relationships that start well but hit a wall when depth is required
Feeling suffocated or overwhelmed when a partner wants more closeness
Disorganised Attachment
Disorganised attachment — sometimes called fearful-avoidant — tends to develop in environments where the caregiver was both a source of comfort and a source of fear. This might mean growing up with a parent who was frightening, abusive, or severely unpredictable. The child faces an impossible dilemma: the person they need for safety is the same person they need safety from.
In adult life this can look like:
A simultaneous longing for closeness and terror of it — the push-pull that never resolves
Relationships that feel intensely activating — swinging between idealisation and panic
Deep shame and confusion about your own emotional reactions
Difficulty trusting anyone, including yourself
A pervasive sense of being fundamentally different from other people
Often linked to childhood trauma, CPTSD, and complex relational patterns
Attachment Is a Spectrum, Not a Fixed Category
The three styles above are useful frameworks — but real human experience is rarely that tidy.
Most people do not fit cleanly into one category. You might identify strongly with anxious attachment in romantic relationships, but notice avoidant patterns at work, or with friends, or when someone gets too emotionally demanding. You might recognise the disorganised push-pull in one relationship and relative security in another.
This is normal — and it is important. Attachment is not a fixed personality type you are assigned and stuck with. It is a spectrum, and it is relational. The style you express often depends on who you are with, what that relationship triggers, and what early dynamic it resembles.
It also means something hopeful: if you can show anxious attachment patterns, you can also access avoidant ones — and crucially, you can access secure ones too. Secure attachment behaviour is not reserved only for people who had secure childhoods. Most of us have experienced it in at least some relationships — with a friend, a teacher, a partner who felt genuinely safe. That capacity exists. Therapy works partly by helping you access and expand it.
The goal is not to move from one fixed category to another. It is to develop more flexibility — more choice in how you respond, more capacity for security even when it does not come naturally yet.
Where Attachment Patterns Come From
Attachment styles do not develop because of one single event. They develop over years of repeated relational experience — in the way a parent responded when you cried, reached out, needed something, or made a mistake. In whether love felt conditional or unconditional. In whether home felt safe or unpredictable.
Many people with insecure attachment styles grew up in homes that were not obviously difficult. There was no dramatic abuse, no clear neglect. Just a parent who was emotionally unavailable, or inconsistently present, or who struggled with their own unmet needs. Or a family environment where vulnerability was implicitly discouraged, or love was expressed through criticism rather than warmth.
You do not need a dramatic backstory to have an insecure attachment style. You just need to have been human in an imperfect relational environment — which is most of us.
Can Attachment Styles Change?
Yes. This is one of the most important and hopeful findings in attachment research.
Attachment styles are not fixed personality traits. They are relational patterns — and because they developed in relationship, they can also shift in relationship. What researchers call "earned security" — developing a genuinely secure way of relating, despite an insecure start — is real and achievable.
Therapy is one of the most reliable routes to this. Not because a therapist tells you what to do differently, but because the therapeutic relationship itself becomes a new relational experience — one that is safe, consistent, honest, and attuned in ways that perhaps early relationships were not. Over time, and through repeated experience of being genuinely held in that relationship, the old template begins to loosen.
This does not happen overnight. But it does happen.
How Attachment Therapy Works
Attachment therapy is not a single fixed technique. It is an orientation — a way of understanding what you bring to relationships and working with it at the relational level, not just the cognitive one.
In our work together, we might explore:
The attachment patterns you developed in childhood and how they show up now — in romantic relationships, friendships, work, and the way you relate to yourself
The early relational experiences that shaped those patterns — not to blame anyone, but to understand
How your nervous system responds to closeness, distance, conflict, and uncertainty — and how to work with those responses rather than against them
The patterns that emerge between us in the therapeutic relationship itself — which often mirror, in subtle ways, the patterns from the rest of your life
What a different way of relating might feel like — and how to begin to move toward it
I work integratively, drawing on person-centred, psychodynamic and attachment-based approaches. The relationship between us is at the centre of everything — because for most people with insecure attachment, it is in a safe and consistent relationship that the real shift happens.
Why Work With Me
Attachment and its roots in early relational experience are at the heart of almost everything I work with. My published peer-reviewed academic research on childhood maltreatment has given me a research-level understanding of how early experiences shape adult relational patterns — not just clinical knowledge, but genuine depth.
My years working in the NHS taught me that structured approaches are not enough for everyone — that some difficulties need to be worked with in relationship, over time, with depth and patience. That is what I offer in private practice.
I am a BACP registered integrative psychotherapist. I am warm and direct. I will not simply listen — I will follow the thread of what you bring, notice what it means, and work actively alongside you toward something that genuinely shifts.
Sessions are available online across the UK and in person in central Harrogate.
Ready to Take the First Step?
If you recognise yourself in any of this — even partially, even with uncertainty — reaching out is enough. You do not need to have the right label for what you are experiencing, or to be sure that therapy is what you need.
I offer a free, no-obligation 15-minute consultation call — a chance to make contact, ask anything you need to, and get a sense of whether working together feels right.
Mina Murat Baldwin MSc, MBACP, PGDip — BACP registered integrative psychotherapist. Therapy for anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, disorganised attachment and relational patterns rooted in early experience. Online across the UK and in person in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
This article is intended for general informational and reflective purposes only. It is not therapeutic advice, and reading it is not a substitute for working with a qualified mental health professional. If you are struggling with your relationships or emotional wellbeing, I offer a 15 minute free consultation to explore how we could work together. Please consider reaching out to get support that is tailored to your individual circumstances.