So,
Welcome everyone and thank you.
Thank you for listening.
So,
Let me ask you something.
Have you ever introduced yourself to yourself or to someone else using the words,
I am anxiously attached or I am an avoidant or I am the disorganized one in the relationship?
And if you have,
You are not alone.
Millions of people are doing it and I understand why.
For a lot of people,
Coming across the idea of attachment styles was the first time they had language for something that had confused them their entire adult lives.
Why they kept choosing the same kind of people,
Why intimacy felt both necessary and terrifying,
Why they could go completely cold in the middle of what was on paper,
A perfectly good relationship.
So,
I want to start by saying,
The attachment framework has genuinely helped a lot of people and Baalbee's original work was rigorous,
Compassionate ahead of its time as well.
And the research tradition it launched spans seven decades and thousands of studies and I have real respect for it.
But here's what I also notice.
In my own practice and also in the broader culture,
Somewhere between John Baalbee's careful nuanced research and today's social media landscape,
Something got lost.
Something important.
And what got lost is precisely the thing that makes the framework genuinely useful.
What we are left with in a lot of online spaces is a simplified,
Flattened version that has turned a dynamic,
Contextual,
Nervous system-rooted understanding into something closer to a personality quiz,
Into a label and into an identity.
And in my personal view,
This is where it starts to do more harm than good.
So let's explore this a little bit differently today.
The nuance that doesn't fit in an Instagram reel and then,
Because this is what we do here,
We are going to bring it into the body as well.
Because attachment,
When you understand it properly,
Is not a concept to think about.
Attachment is a felt experience.
It lives in your nervous system and that's exactly where the work needs to happen.
So let's begin at the beginning.
So,
John Bowlby was a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and he became interested in something that seemed obvious once you named it.
But the dominant psychological theories of that time had largely ignored this,
The devastating effect on children of being separated from their primary caregivers.
He observed children in hospitals,
Institutions,
Wartime evacuation and what he saw consistently was that separation from a primary caregiver,
Regardless of whether the child's physical needs were met,
Caused a particular kind of de-stress that went very deep and it left lasting marks.
His conclusion was that attachment,
The bond between a child and their primary caregiver,
Is not a secondary drive,
It's not about getting fed and it's not simply learned behavior.
It is a biological response.
In the deepest evolutionary sense,
It's a survival system.
A child who maintains proximity to a protective adult survives.
The need for closeness with a caregiver is wired into us,
All of us.
Now a colleague of John Bowlby,
Mary Ainsworth,
Also a psychologist,
She looked into this further and she developed what became one of the most replicated studies in the history of psychology called the strange situation.
She brought toddlers into a room,
Separated them briefly from their caregiver and then observed what happened when the caregiver returned.
What she noticed were three very distinct patterns of response.
Some children,
The ones whose caregivers had been consistently responsive,
Were distressed by separation but then settled relatively quickly when the parent returned.
And they used the parent as a secure base to return to.
And then they just went back.
And this is what was called secure attachment.
Now there was a second group.
The second group were intensely distressed during the separation.
And then on reunion also they were very difficult to settle.
They clung,
They cried,
They were angry and they couldn't quite return to the play.
Now these children had experienced caregiving that was inconsistent.
Sometimes warm and responsive,
Sometimes not.
So their nervous systems had learnt to turn up the volume on distressed signals.
Because turning up the volume was sometimes the only way to get a response.
This was named anxious or ambivalent attachment.
There was a third group.
Third group showed almost the opposite response.
They appeared relatively undisturbed by separation.
And when the caregiver returned they showed very little interest in reconnecting.
They looked independent and self-sufficient.
But this wasn't genuine security.
They'd simply learnt to suppress the outward expression of need.
Because expressing need had historically not been very productive for them.
This group was called the avoidant attachment.
Then later on there was a fourth pattern identified.
And this appeared in children whose primary caregiver was also at the time a source of fear.
So children who experienced frightening or frightened parents,
These children faced a paradox.
The person who is supposed to be your safe haven is also the person who is activating your threat response.
That behaviour in this strange situation,
In that experiment,
Was fragmented,
Contradictory and sometimes frozen.
Now,
This is where the framework comes from.
These are the four patterns from the original study of the childhood response to specific caregiving environments,
Rigorously observed,
Carefully documented.
Notice what they are not here.
They are not personality types.
They are not fixed traits.
They are not diagnoses.
They are just strategies.
They were simply meant to be patterns of behaviour and regulation that the nervous system developed in response to the specific relational environment it was raised in.
And that distinction matters enormously.
And it's the first thing the popular version almost always loses.
Now,
I want to say something carefully here because I don't want to be unkind about this.
The popularization of attachment theory has done some genuine good.
There are people,
I've spoken to some of them,
They've read a book or watched a video about anxious attachment and for the very first time they've started to understand why they've been behaving that way in a relationship.
And that self-awareness really matters because it can be the beginning of a real change.
But there is a version of attachment conversation happening online right now that I think warrants a pause.
And it's this.
The tendency to use attachment labels not as a starting point for understanding but as a destination.
As an explanation that forecloses further inquiry rather than opening it.
Now I hear it in sessions sometimes.
Someone will describe a pattern of behaviour in a relationship and say but that's just my anxious attachment.
Full stop.
As though the label itself is the answer.
As though having named it is the same as having understood it,
Let alone change it.
And I also notice,
And again speaking from personal experience,
Speaking with care rather than judgement,
That the label can sometimes function as a form of permission giving for patterns that are actually worth examining.
Not because the person is bad or wrong but because the pattern might be causing them real suffering.
That's just how an attached can sometimes close the door on healing.
And then there's the other side of the coin.
People diagnosing their partners.
He's avoidant.
She's disorganised.
And delivered with the confidence of a clinical assessment based on,
I say this gently,
A 15 second reel and a relationship that started 6 weeks ago.
So the internet has a particular gift of taking something nuanced and distilling it into content that is shareable,
Sticky and just true enough to feel validating but not quite true enough to help anything or anybody.
Attachment theory is one of the clearest examples I've seen of this process in action.
Now there's also,
This is the thing I notice most,
A strange hierarchy that has emerged.
Secure attachment has become an aspirational brand now.
An anxious and avoidant have become slightly shameful diagnosis.
And disorganised has become in some corners almost a badge of profound woundedness.
Research doesn't support that hierarchy.
Every one of these patterns is an intelligent nervous system response.
Every single one was adaptive in context.
So the goal is not to shame the strategy,
The goal is to understand it.
And with all of that said,
Let's go a bit deeper.
Let's look at what the patterns are actually telling us.
And crucially let's look at what the research says about whether they are fixed.
Because this is where I think the popular version really loses the thread.
So I want to briefly talk about each pattern,
Not as a checklist to tick yourself into,
But as a nervous system story,
Body level logic.
Because each one of us has an internal compass.
And that only makes sense when you understand it in the environment it was developed in.
First one,
Secure attachment.
So secure attachment is not the absence of need.
It's the emotional self-sufficiency or perpetual calm.
Securely attached people still get anxious in relationships.
They still feel hurt and they still argue.
What's different in the underlying expectation?
The body's default assumption.
And this is the assumption.
When I reach for someone,
They will broadly,
Most of the time,
Be there.
When I express a need,
It will broadly,
Most of the time,
Be received.
And this expectation was built through thousands of small moments of rupture and repair.
Moments when the caregiver wasn't perfectly attuned,
Because no caregiver is,
But then came back,
Reconnected and repaired.
So the nervous system of a securely attached person has learned through repeated experience that relationship ruptures are survivable.
Absence is not abandonment and a closed door will eventually open.
And this is an extraordinarily useful thing to have in the body.
Then we have the anxious attachment.
Let's call it the anxiously attached nervous system.
And it learned that attunement was inconsistent.
That the caregiver was sometimes present,
Sometimes unavailable.
And that predicting which you would get was very difficult.
So in that environment,
The nervous system made a very,
Very logical adaptation.
Turn up the volume.
Amplify the de-stress signal.
Make the need louder.
Because sometimes that's the only strategy that produced any type of connection.
In adult relationship,
Anxiously attached nervous systems,
They look like hyper-vigilance,
Scanning for signs of withdrawal,
Seeking frequent reassurance,
And it's also difficulty tolerating even short periods of disconnection without anxiety.
A sensitivity to micro-expressions.
Now,
This is not neediness.
This is not weakness.
This is a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do to stay connected.
It just happens to be calibrated for an environment that no longer exists.
And the body's experience of this state,
Most of the time,
It comes with a tightness in the chest,
Hyper-arousal,
The way the mind races towards worst-case scenarios.
And that's not anxiety disorder.
That's an attachment system on high alert.
So your nervous system,
If this is resonating,
Is not being dramatic.
It's just being true to its training.
Then the third one,
For those of you that have done the quiz,
The avoidant attachment.
Now,
The avoidant nervous system learned something on the surface that looks the opposite,
That expressing a need is not useful.
It might be counterproductive.
The caregiver for them or their early experiences,
For whatever reason,
They left them with emotional unavailability,
Their own history,
Their own overwhelm,
Not reliably responsive to emotional needs.
So this nervous system did what it had to do.
It learned to root around the attachment system,
To deactivate the outward expression of need altogether and apparently become self-sufficient.
So people with avoidant patterns often present as calm,
Competent,
Somewhat emotionally contained.
They tend to value independence very highly and they may become uncomfortable when relationships deepen or when a partner begins to make emotional demands,
Not because they don't feel,
But because the body learned very early that feelings that reached outward did not get met,
So they stopped reaching outwards altogether.
What the popular version often misses is that avoidant attachment is not coldness.
It is not a character defect.
It is not evidence of an unfeeling person.
It is once again just a nervous system strategy.
Avoidantly attached people have a high internal activation.
They just don't show it.
Now,
Last one is the disorganized attachment.
Now this is the most complex of the four patterns and I think it also might be the most misunderstood.
It probably is used as a synonym for profound damage or dramatic relationship chaos.
Now research tells a more precise story,
Disorganized attachment develops in context where the caregiver is also a source of fear.
And it's not always deliberate harm.
Sometimes a parent who is themselves experiencing unresolved trauma,
Who becomes frightening or frightened in moments of heightened emotion,
Who activates the child's threat response.
What this looks like in adulthood is variable.
It can manifest as an intensity and chaos in relationship.
A deep,
Deep craving for closeness combined with the terror of having it.
Difficulty maintaining stable internal states.
And it overlaps with what clinicians call complex trauma.
But disorganized attachment is not an identity.
It is not your destiny.
And it is absolutely not something to be looked at as an explanation of behavior that is causing harm to others.
The nervous system strategy can be understood,
Worked with and changed.
And that's the whole point.
Now,
Here it is.
If any of this is resonating,
The thing I most want you to take from this talk.
Attachment styles are not fixed.
They are not traits.
They are not your personality.
And they are not who you are.
Now,
John Bowlby himself was clear about this.
The internal working model,
The body's learnt expectations about relationships,
Is updated by experience.
It is not immutable.
It is not written in stone at the age of two and then sealed for the rest of your life.
Research consistently shows that the attachment patterns can and do change in response to experiences that provide a different kind of relational reality than the ones you were raised in.
Researchers call it earned security.
It refers to people who had insecure early attachment but through later relationships,
Often it includes some sort of a therapeutic relationship,
They develop a secure attachment as adults.
And this is not a rare outcome.
It is the most common outcome for people who have done sustained relational work.
There is also an important point that tends to get completely lost that attachment is relational and contextual.
Most people do not have one attachment style that operates identically across all relationships.
So if you think you know that you are securely attached or something,
Remember this,
Most people do not have one attachment style that operates identically across relationships.
Research suggests that people can function with a different attachment orientation in a different relationship.
So you might be broadly secure with a close friend and more anxious in a romantic relationship.
You might be an avoidant with one partner and find yourself unexpectedly secure with another.
The pattern shifts with context.
The pattern shifts with context.
So this doesn't mean the framework is useless.
It means it's more dynamic than the quiz would suggest.
So what the framework is pointing to is not a fixed type but a set of learned expectations and nervous system tendencies that can be understood,
Worked with and revised.
So what does the nervous system need here?
What is it asking for?
So this is where I want to bring us away from the conceptual and into something more immediate.
Because if we just stay in the framework,
Naming the types,
Tracing the origins,
We are still in the head and the work ultimately is in the body.
So when I sit with someone who identifies as anxiously attached and I slow things down and ask them what does it actually feel like in your body right now?
Not this thought,
Not your quiz result,
Not your story but the felt sense.
And what we usually find is something like a contracted quality in the chest or a quality of reaching or a forward leaning urgency.
Sometimes a kind of a grasping sensation around the stomach.
So the body is not describing a personality type.
The body is describing an unmet need.
A need for proximity,
A need for reassurance and a need for a felt sense of being held in someone's regard.
And when I do the same with someone with an avoidant pattern,
What we find is something different.
A kind of retreat,
Quality of drawing in.
Sometimes a subtle bracing also.
Chest will be closed,
Shoulders will be forward.
It's like the body is in some sort of a protection strategy.
A wall that was built because openness wasn't safe and now operates automatically even when the person on the other side is trustworthy.
Here's the thing I find most useful.
That clinically beneath the strategy is always a need.
The anxious person needs proximity and reassurance.
Nor is a weakness but as a fundamental human requirement.
The avoidant person needs safety to be open,
Needs the experience of reaching outward and being met with disappointment and not being met with disappointment or overwhelm.
The disorganized person,
Perhaps most fundamentally,
Needs the experience of closeness and safety,
Of love not coming with a threat.
So these are not impossible needs.
They are human needs.
And the nervous system can learn to receive them.
Not through thinking but through experience.
Repeated,
Embodied relational experience of something different than what it was trained to expect.
So this is what healing attachment looks like.
Not becoming a different personality type.
Not achieving permanent security as a final destination.
Gradually building the body's capacity to receive and tolerate closeness.
Reading about attachment styles does not change attachment patterns.
Identifying with a label does not change the underlying nervous system expectation.
Understanding intellectually that you are anxiously attached does not by itself reduce the activation that happens when your partner doesn't text back for 3 hours.
This is not criticism.
It's just the nature of how nervous system works.
It doesn't update through information.
It updates through experience.
So this kind of change tends to happen in good therapy,
Good healing,
Particularly body-informed work where the therapeutic relationship itself is part of the healing mechanism.
It happens in consistently safe,
Attuned friendships and relationships.
It happens in partnerships where both people are willing to be present to each other's nervous systems,
Not just their thoughts.
So what this content can do for you,
What I hope it does for you,
Is that it shifts the frame from self-judgment to curiosity,
From this is what I am to this is what I learnt and here is what I'm beginning to understand about it now.
So the shift is not nothing.
It's actually the beginning of everything.
So you are not your attachment style.
You are a person whose nervous system learned something about love in a particular context a long time ago.
And nervous systems,
Given the right conditions,
Can also learn something new.
Now,
Let's do a very,
Very small practice.
Guided practice.
Let the talk settle now.
There's no need to hold it or review it.
Whatever you heard today,
It will land whenever it needs to,
If it needs to for you.
For now,
Just find a position that allows your body to be more supported.
Maybe sitting with your feet on the floor or lying down.
Whatever allows your muscles to let go.
Now,
Letting your eyes close if that feels comfortable.
Or maybe just soften your gaze downward to a point on the floor.
Now begin with a conscious breath.
Just inhaling through the nose and then extending the exhale.
Just a little longer.
Just allowing the out-breath to be unhurried.
And take a few more breaths like this.
Each time letting the exhale do a bit more work than usual.
Just releasing,
Just releasing.
Bring your attention to the physical contact between your body and whatever is supporting it right now.
Maybe the chair,
The car seat,
The floor or the surface beneath you.
Feel the actual sensation of being held there.
Not just the idea of it,
The felt reality of it.
The weight of your body and the ground meeting that weight.
If it feels accessible to you,
Press your feet gently gently on the floor and feel the floor push back.
That feedback,
That resistance,
Contact,
Solidity,
That's grounding information.
And the nervous system receives it and it adjusts.
Now let your jaw unclench if it has been holding.
And now let your shoulders drop just a fraction.
Not because tension is bad but because in this moment nothing needs defending.
Now,
Very gently without needing to do anything with what you find.
Just bring to mind the way you tend to move in a relationship.
The direction your nervous system pulls when things feel uncertain.
When someone you love goes quiet and when the closeness deepens unexpectedly,
What do you do?
Don't think about it with your mind,
Analytically.
Just notice now.
Is there a movement?
Is there a sensation somewhere in my body?
Some people will notice a reaching quality,
Forward pull,
Tightening in the chest or the stomach,
A quality of wanting to close the distance.
For others,
A drawing back,
A closing inward,
The body moving away rather than towards.
And sometimes it's something that moves simultaneously different areas of the body.
So we are not labeling anything.
Whatever you notice right now in your body,
Whatever,
Just meet it with curiosity rather than judgment.
Please remember,
This sensation is not a diagnosis,
It's not a verdict.
Let's just call it information.
It's your nervous system's account of what it learnt.
Now,
If it feels right and if it feels safe,
Bring one hand to where that sensation is present right now.
Chest,
Belly,
Throat,
Wherever it called you.
No pressure.
If it feels safe,
Feels right,
Just put one hand there.
Now as you make contact,
See if you can offer this part of you something it rarely gets and let's call it acknowledgement without an agenda.
We are not saying I need to fix this,
We are not saying this shouldn't be there.
Just receive these words now.
I see you.
I know why you are here.
You made sense.
I see you.
I know why you are here.
And you made sense.
Because it did make sense.
Whatever strategy is running your body right now,
Reaching,
Withdrawing,
The frozen quality,
It was a response to a real environment.
It's real relational reality and it was the best available option at the time.
You don't have to be grateful for it,
You don't have to love it,
But for today just begin to understand it.
And now,
Stay with me here.
I want you to notice right now that in this moment,
Regardless of what you might be sensing or feeling,
You are also safe.
Your body is supported,
You are also breathing,
And there is no threat present.
So let that register in the body,
Not forcing it to feel anything,
But just allowing the nervous system to receive information that is actually true right now.
In this moment right now,
I am safe and my body is simply showing me the wound,
The wound that led to that attachment pattern,
That attachment wound.
I am safe,
I am supported,
I am breathing and I am also aware of that at the same time.
Let that register now.
In this space I am going to offer you some statements.
You don't have to repeat anything,
You can if you want to.
You don't have to believe any of them or all of them,
You just have to let them arrive and see what happens.
The way I learned to love was not wrong,
It was the best I could do with what I had.
I am not my pattern,
I am the one who is beginning to notice it.
I am allowed to want closeness,
I am allowed to want space,
I am allowed to want both at the same time.
My nervous system learned something and my nervous system can learn something new.
The way I learned to love was not wrong,
It is the best I could do with what I had.
I am not my pattern,
I am the one who is beginning to notice it.
You might want to deepen your breath a little,
Slightly more.
Wiggle your fingers if that feels natural and slowly,
Gently let yourself fully come back now.
Let yourself fully land back.
If your eyes were closed,
You can open them.
Now,
Thank yourself for being here,
For sitting with this material and letting it move through you.
That willingness to slow down,
To feel into it,
To bring curiosity to your patterns,
That's not a small thing.
So be gentle with yourself today,
Move slowly if that's what your body is asking for.
You were not born with an attachment style,
You were born with a need for love.
The style came later and later still,
The possibility of something new.
So,
Thank you for letting me guide you.
Thank you for giving yourself this time and attention.
Now,
This is a topic I care deeply about,
Both because the research is so rich and because I see over and over what happens when people begin to understand their patterns with compassion rather than criticism.
Thank you very much for joining me today and until next time,
Namaste.
