Understanding Attachment Styles as Survival Strategies: How We Adapt, Relate, and Heal

Have you ever wondered why some people seem effortlessly secure in relationships while others struggle with closeness, fear abandonment, or pull away when things get too intimate? These patterns often stem from our attachment styles—deep-rooted strategies we developed early in life to navigate our need for safety, connection, and belonging.

Attachment theory offers a lens through which we can better understand ourselves and our relationships, not as fixed labels but as adaptive responses to our environment. In this blog post, we’ll explore the four main attachment styles—secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized—and how these are actually brilliant, though sometimes painful, survival strategies. We'll also dive into the dynamic-maturational model of attachment, the evolving nature of our attachment patterns, and the role of the body in helping us understand and reshape how we connect.

The Four Major Attachment Styles

1. Secure Attachment
People with a secure attachment style generally feel comfortable with intimacy and autonomy. They’re able to trust others, set healthy boundaries, and communicate needs effectively. This style typically forms when a child’s caregivers are consistently responsive and attuned, offering a safe base from which the child can explore the world.

2. Anxious Attachment
Anxiously attached individuals often crave closeness and worry about being abandoned or not being good enough. Their early experiences may have involved inconsistent caregiving—sometimes warm, sometimes distant. As a result, they learned to amplify their emotional signals in hopes of securing love and attention.

3. Avoidant Attachment
Avoidantly attached people tend to minimize emotional expression and prioritize independence, often appearing self-sufficient or detached. This style can emerge when caregivers are emotionally unavailable or dismissive. The child learns to suppress their needs to avoid rejection or disappointment.

4. Disorganized Attachment
Disorganized attachment is characterized by a push-pull dynamic—wanting closeness but fearing it at the same time. This style often develops in environments that are both unsafe and unpredictable, such as those involving trauma, neglect, or abuse. The caregiver is both a source of comfort and fear, creating internal confusion and fragmentation.

These Styles Are Adaptations, Not Flaws

What’s important to understand is that these attachment styles aren’t flaws—they’re survival strategies. Children are wired to adapt to their environment in whatever way gives them the best shot at staying close to caregivers. In this way, attachment behaviors are actually brilliant adaptations to our early relational environment.

And these styles exist on a spectrum. You may feel securely attached in friendships but anxious in romantic relationships, or avoidant with coworkers but open and warm with family. Context matters. Our attachment styles aren't fixed identities—they’re flexible patterns that can evolve.

The Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment

While traditional attachment theory focused mainly on early childhood, the Dynamic-Maturational Model (DMM), developed by Dr. Patricia Crittenden, expands our understanding by considering how attachment strategies evolve in response to danger and developmental needs throughout life. The DMM emphasizes that behaviors we associate with "insecure" attachment can be strategic and even protective, especially in unsafe environments.

The model also recognizes that people can change. As we encounter new relationships, experiences, and environments—especially those that are safe and emotionally nourishing—our brains and bodies can learn new ways of relating. In other words, it’s never too late to become more secure.

Healing Through Relationships and the Body

Healing attachment wounds doesn’t happen just by thinking differently—it also involves the body. Our attachment styles show up somatically in ways we often don’t recognize:

• Anxious types might feel tightness in the chest, shallow breathing, or an ever-present sense of urgency.

• Avoidant types may feel numbness, dissociation, or a tendency to “check out” under stress.

• Disorganized types often experience internal conflict, sudden shifts between hyperarousal and shutdown.

By learning to notice our somatic cues—the physical sensations and signals of our nervous system—we can begin to recognize our attachment patterns in real time. This awareness allows us to slow down, self-soothe, and choose new ways of responding.

Practices like mindfulness, breathwork, somatic therapy, and co-regulation with trusted others can all help us reconnect to our bodies and rewire our relational templates.

The Hope of Secure Attachment

One of the most beautiful truths of attachment theory is this: healing is possible through relationships. When we experience consistent, compassionate connection—whether with a partner, therapist, friend, or even a pet—we begin to internalize a sense of safety. Over time, this allows our nervous systems to settle and our attachment strategies to soften. Essentially secure functioning in relationships can lead to secure attachment.

You don’t have to be perfectly secure to have healthy, meaningful relationships. Understanding your style, learning to attune to your body, and surrounding yourself with safe, responsive people is enough to begin transforming how you love and are loved.

In the end, our attachment styles are not our destiny. They’re simply the starting point on a lifelong journey of connection, growth, and healing. And with care, curiosity, and compassion, we can all move closer to the security and belonging we deserve.

How The Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy and EMDR Can Help

If you are part of a couple and it feels like old attachments wounds are getting in the way of your and your partner connecting, building intimacy, or communicating explore PACT Couples Therapy and learn how it can help you to create secure functioning even if you don’t have a secure attachment style. If you are an individual and your attachment style is getting in the way of you connecting deeply with others and creating meaningful and lasting friendships or romantic relationships then EMDR could be a powerful option for helping you to heal.