Can You Change Your Attachment Style? What the Research Shows

What an Attachment Style Is, and What It Isn't

Attachment theory grew out of John Bowlby's work on how we bond with the people we depend on. A 2018 meta-analysis sums up the three patterns most people have read about: secure ("healthy interdependence with others"), anxious ("overdependence on others") and avoidant ("difficulty relying on others").

If you found this article after taking an online quiz, the label you got is a reasonable place to start. It is not a diagnosis, and it is not a verdict on your character. An attachment pattern is a strategy that once made sense. If care was unpredictable, watching closely for signs of leaving was sensible. If needing people led to disappointment, needing less was sensible. The trouble is that the strategy keeps running long after the conditions that created it have changed.

Many people also notice that they are not the same with everyone. You may be steady with friends and anxious with partners, or the reverse. That flexibility is itself a clue that the pattern is not fixed.

What the Research Says About Change

Two pieces of research are worth knowing. The first is a 2015 systematic review in Psychotherapy Research by Taylor and colleagues, which gathered studies that measured adult attachment before and after psychological therapy, using both interviews and questionnaires. Its conclusion: "attachment security increases following therapy, whereas attachment anxiety decreases following therapy." The improvements showed up across different patient groups, therapeutic approaches and settings.

The same review is honest about the limits. "Findings are unclear with regard to attachment avoidance," the authors write, and they close by saying that "further controlled trials are required to confirm this conclusion."

The second is a 2018 meta-analysis in the Journal of Clinical Psychology by Levy and colleagues, covering 36 studies and 3,158 patients. It found that "improvements in attachment security during therapy may coincide with better treatment outcome." It also reported a preliminary finding that people who start therapy with low attachment security "may find better treatment outcome in therapy that incorporates a focus on interpersonal interactions and close relationships."

Notice the word "may." Neither paper promises that therapy will change any particular person's attachment style, and I won't either. If you lean avoidant, the unclear findings do not mean you can't change. They mean the research has not settled the question yet.

What Change Looks Like in Everyday Relationships

Change here is rarely dramatic. Nobody wakes up securely attached. What people describe is smaller and more practical:

• You catch the spiral earlier. An unanswered message starts to look like an unanswered message, not proof that something is wrong.
• You ask for things directly. You say what you need instead of hinting, testing or going quiet and hoping someone notices.
• You stay in hard conversations a little longer before shutting down or leaving the room.
• You let people help without feeling like you now owe them.
• You recover faster. The old reaction still fires under stress, but it passes in an hour instead of a week.

For many people, the anxious end of this shows up as people pleasing: keeping everyone comfortable so that nobody has a reason to pull away. Working on one usually means working on the other.

Why Knowing Your Style Isn't the Same as Changing It

Plenty of people can explain their attachment history in detail and still feel their chest tighten when a partner seems distant. Understanding helps, but these patterns were learned inside relationships, and they tend to be relearned there too.

That is the logic of relational therapy. The relationship with your therapist is real, so the pattern shows up in it. You might want to please me, or hold back, or feel sure I'm getting tired of you. When that happens we can notice it together, say it out loud and repair it, and you get a different experience of what happens when you do.

This is also why I don't think a quiz, an app or a chatbot can do this part for you. They can give you the words. They can't be the steady person on the other side of the conversation who is still there next week, after you've said the hard thing.

Attachment-Based Therapy Online in New York and Massachusetts

I provide attachment-based therapy entirely over secure video, in weekly 50-minute sessions. I am licensed in New York (#087032) and Massachusetts (#1140891). What matters for licensure is where you are during the session, so I can work with you whether you are in Manhattan, upstate, Boston or western Massachusetts, as long as you are in one of those two states when we meet.

Honest expectations matter here. Patterns that took a childhood to form are usually reworked over months rather than weeks. When specific early experiences need more direct attention, I sometimes bring in EMDR alongside the attachment work.

A Realistic Place to Start

If you want to begin on your own, choose one pattern you recognise and simply notice it for a week, without trying to fix it. When does it show up, with whom, and what happens in your body just before it does?

If you'd like to work on it with someone, I offer a free 25-minute consultation. I can't tell you in advance how much your patterns will shift, and I'd be wary of anyone who says they can. What I can do is tell you honestly whether this approach fits what you're carrying. You can call (347) 450-0833 or get in touch here.

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Sources, verified September 16, 2026: Taylor P, Rietzschel J, Danquah A, Berry K. Changes in attachment representations during psychological therapy, Psychotherapy Research, 2015; Levy KN, Kivity Y, Johnson BN, Gooch CV. Adult attachment as a predictor and moderator of psychotherapy outcome: a meta-analysis, Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2018. This article is general information and not a substitute for individual clinical advice.