Attachment styles—whether anxious, avoidant, or fearful-avoidant—aren’t who you are; they’re simply survival strategies your subconscious adopted during childhood to cope with unmet emotional needs. I learned this through my own journey of discovering how to change your attachment style and why I kept repeating painful patterns in relationships. These behaviors are rooted in wounds like feeling unseen, unsafe, or rejected. While tools like boundary-setting and self-soothing helped at the moment, I found they didn’t address the deeper cause.

The real change came when I explored subconscious healing and reparenting. These methods allowed me to access the younger version of myself, offering the love and safety I had previously not received. As I worked through those deep-seated beliefs, the fear-driven behaviors I once struggled with began to dissolve. The result? Confidence in my relationships and a sense of peace I never thought possible. Healing is deeper than quick fixes; it’s about transforming the foundation. You’re capable of that change, too.

Introduction: Understanding Attachment Styles and the Path to Healing

What if I told you your attachment style isn't who you are? It’s not a permanent label or a personality flaw. It’s something your subconscious mind created during childhood to protect you when your emotional needs weren’t fully met.

Back then, your mind adopted behaviors to cope—clinging for attention, withdrawing to feel safe, or fearing connection altogether. These strategies served you as a child but can hold you back in adult relationships. The good news? How to change your attachment style isn’t as impossible as it might seem. When you address the root causes, you can break free from the patterns that have shaped your relationships.

Let’s take a deeper look at what attachment styles are, where they come from, and how to transform them into something that supports secure, fulfilling relationships.

What Are Attachment Styles Really About?

Let’s clear up a common misconception: your attachment style isn’t your identity. It’s not a personality trait, nor is it something you’re stuck with for life. It’s a coping mechanism—a set of behaviors your subconscious mind uses to navigate relationships based on how you learned to survive in your early environment.

For example, if you lean anxious in relationships, your behaviors—like people-pleasing, over-giving, or seeking constant reassurance—are ways your mind learns to cope with the fear of abandonment. Similarly, if you lean avoidant, your tendency to withdraw or prioritize hobbies and work over emotional intimacy is your mind’s way of protecting you from rejection or vulnerability. Signs you have attachment issues might include patterns like difficulty trusting others, fear of intimacy, or overreacting to perceived rejection.

This perspective is especially important when addressing attachment issues in relationships. These issues often stem from the coping mechanisms we developed in response to our attachment wounds. They shape how we interact with our partners, leading to patterns that can create distance, conflict, or insecurity.

Understanding that your attachment style is a learned behavior, and not an unchangeable part of you, is liberating. It means you can change it by addressing the core wounds that drive it.

Reflect on the idea that your attachment style is a coping mechanism, not your identity. Try to write down how this shift in perspective makes you feel and what it could mean for your relationships.

How Childhood Shapes Attachment Styles

Let’s explore how these survival strategies take shape. For instance, an anxious attachment style often emerges from inconsistent caregiving, where love feels conditional. Meanwhile, avoidant attachment develops when emotional vulnerability is met with rejection or shame.

• Anxious attachment often develops in response to inconsistent caregiving. Maybe one day your parents were loving and attentive, but the next day, they were emotionally unavailable. This unpredictability taught you to cling, people-please, or over-extend yourself to earn love.

• Avoidant attachment usually forms when vulnerability or emotional expression is met with rejection, shame, or punishment. For instance, if you were told to “stop crying” or “be tough,” you learned to suppress your emotions and withdraw from others as a way to protect yourself.

Recognizing signs you have attachment issues is an essential first step in healing. These childhood patterns don’t magically disappear when you grow up—they follow you into your adult relationships, often shaping how you respond to intimacy, conflict, and vulnerability without you even realizing it.

How to change your attachment style starts with recognizing how these childhood patterns don’t go away when you grow up. Instead, they show up in your adult relationships, often without you even realizing it.

Think back to your childhood. What were the dynamics like with your caregivers? Were there moments when you felt rejected or invalidated? Recognizing these experiences is the first step toward creating healthier, more secure relationships in the present.

The Core Wounds Driving Your Attachment Style

At the heart of every attachment style is a set of deep emotional wounds. These wounds—rejection, abandonment, and invalidation—shape your subconscious beliefs about love and connection. They influence how you approach relationships and why certain situations trigger strong emotional reactions.

Let’s break these core wounds down:

1. Rejection: You felt unwanted or unimportant. This may have happened if a caregiver was emotionally distant or dismissive.

2. Abandonment: You experience inconsistency or physical absence, leading to a fear that people you love will leave you.

3. Invalidation: Your emotions were dismissed or shamed, teaching you that expressing your feelings is unsafe.

These wounds are the foundation of your attachment behaviors. For instance, an anxious attacher may cling to others out of a fear of abandonment, while an avoidant attacher may withdraw to avoid the pain of rejection. Understanding these behaviors is a key part of healing attachment styles, as it allows you to address the root causes rather than just the symptoms of your relationship struggles.

How to change your attachment style begins with identifying which of these core wounds resonate most with you. Reflect on how they show up in your relationships. Do you notice patterns of clinging, withdrawing, or shutting down emotionally?

Take time to write about how these behaviors might have developed in your childhood. What were the dynamics like with your caregivers? Did you feel rejected, abandoned, or invalidated in subtle or overt ways? Awareness is the first step toward healing these wounds and creating healthier, more fulfilling connections.

Sign me up for the Rejection and Abandonment Workshop

Why Coping Mechanisms Aren’t the Solution

I used to believe I could fix my relationship struggles with coping tools. I set boundaries, practiced self-soothing, and tried to communicate better. While these tools helped at the moment, the same patterns kept coming back—fear of being abandoned, shutting down when things felt too vulnerable, or overreacting to perceived rejection.

Here’s what I learned: coping mechanisms are like painkillers for a broken bone. They ease the discomfort but don’t fix the fracture. The real solution is to address the root cause—the unhealed wounds driving your attachment behaviors and attachment issues in relationships.

When you heal those core wounds, everything changes. You stop repeating old patterns and start building connections rooted in security and authenticity. Coping tools have their place, but true transformation comes from addressing the deeper layers beneath the surface.

A Metaphor That Changed Everything

Imagine you have a broken leg. Sure, you could take painkillers to ease the discomfort, but that wouldn’t fix the fracture. You’d still struggle to walk, and the pain would come roaring back the moment the medication wore off. The real solution? Go to the doctor, set the bone, and give it the time and care it needs to heal properly.

Attachment wounds are no different. They’re fractures in your emotional foundation, caused by unmet needs, rejection, or trauma in your early life. Coping mechanisms are the painkillers—helpful, but temporary. The only way to truly heal is to set that “emotional bone” by working through the root cause of your wounds.

How to change your attachment style starts with identifying these fractures, understanding their origins, and giving yourself the time, care, and tools needed to heal fully. Healing isn’t quick, but it’s transformative. By working through these deep-rooted patterns, you’ll rebuild a stronger, more secure emotional foundation.

Why Deeper Healing is Essential

Deeper healing focuses on reprogramming the subconscious and addressing the inner child. When you dig into this work, you’re no longer just numbing the pain or managing your behaviors—you’re transforming the beliefs and patterns that created those behaviors in the first place.

Let’s stop settling for temporary fixes and start building a foundation that lasts. Trust me, the journey is worth it.

Healing Through Subconscious Work and Reparenting

Healing your attachment style involves working with your subconscious mind, where your core wounds and coping mechanisms are stored. Two powerful approaches are:

1. Subconscious Healing: This involves accessing the subconscious mind through techniques like guided meditations, visualizations, or working with a skilled practitioner. These methods help you rewrite the limiting beliefs you formed as a child—beliefs like “I’m not enough” or “Love isn’t safe.”

2. Reparenting Your Inner Child: Your inner child is the part of you that still carries the pain of your early experiences. Reparenting involves connecting with this part of yourself and providing the love, safety, and validation you didn’t receive. For instance, you can visualize comforting your younger self during a moment of rejection or shame.

How These Techniques Transform Attachment Styles

When you work with the subconscious and inner child, you address the root causes of your attachment behaviors rather than simply managing symptoms. For instance:

• Anxious Attachment: You might heal the fear of abandonment by reinforcing your worth and creating a sense of inner security.

• Avoidant Attachment: Reparenting can help you connect with your emotions and build trust in relationships.

• Disorganized Attachment: Subconscious healing can unravel conflicting beliefs about love and safety, fostering self-compassion and trust.

These techniques don’t just manage your attachment behaviors, they also address unhealthy attachment by resolving the root causes, allowing you to show up in relationships as your secure, authentic self.

Attachment Issues In A Relationship and What Happens When You Heal

When you’re dealing with attachment issues in a relationship, your interactions often revolve around survival rather than genuine connection. These issues can manifest as clinging to your partner out of fear, withdrawing to avoid vulnerability, or overreacting to perceived rejection.

These behaviors are rooted in unhealed wounds—such as abandonment, rejection, or invalidation—that influence how you show up in your relationships.

But here’s the good news: when you heal your core wounds, everything changes.

Your relationships become less about survival and more about genuine connection. You no longer feel the need to cling to someone out of fear or withdraw to protect yourself. Instead, you feel secure, confident, and capable of giving and receiving love.

Here’s what healing can look like:

• Emotional security: You feel safe expressing your feelings and needs without fear of rejection.

• Healthier relationships: You attract and maintain connections based on trust and mutual respect, rather than fear or control.

• Inner peace: You no longer carry the subconscious fear of abandonment, rejection, or invalidation.

Healing isn’t just about relationships—it’s about transforming your entire experience of life. How to change your attachment style isn’t just a process of fixing broken patterns; it’s a journey toward freedom, authenticity, and deeper fulfillment in every area of your life.

Conclusion: Take the First Step Toward Healing

Your attachment style isn’t a life sentence. It’s a set of behaviors you learned to protect yourself, and with the right tools, you can unlearn them. How to change your attachment style starts with recognizing that healing is possible. It takes time and effort, but it’s one of the most transformative journeys you’ll ever embark on.

Start by reflecting on your core wounds, practicing reparenting, and exploring subconscious healing. These aren’t quick fixes—they’re the foundation for lasting change.

The result? A life filled with love, connection, and inner peace.

You’re capable of this change, and you deserve it. Let today be the first step toward a more secure and fulfilling way of living.

The FREE Masterclass is Waiting For You