Carla Marie Manly, PhD
Contact

Carla Marie Manly, PhD
Get In Touch

Attachment Style Reset: 9 Steps to Secure Love

Imperfect Love - Dr. Carla Manly | Creating Secure Attachment

 

You’ve likely heard a lot about attachment styles and how they impact your life and your relationships. Yet you might not have had a chance to dive into the details that will help you understand, heal, and even change your own attachment style, whether it’s anxious, avoidant, disorganized, or somewhere in between. As a clinical psychologist and attachment theory expert, I’m consistently stunned by the immense power a person’s attachment style plays in the health and quality of their relationships–and their overall wellness. Today, we’ll explore attachment theory and the nine key steps you can take to create secure attachment and boost the quality of your relationships and your life.

Topics discussed include attachment theory, secure attachment, insecure attachment, dismissive attachment, avoidant attachment, anxious attachment, ambivalent attachment, disorganized attachment, unresolved attachment, attunement, safety, security, romantic relationships, marriage, family, friendship, communication, feelings, emotions, I messages, reflective listening, mirroring, wounds, triggering, emotional wounds, repair, rupture, love, healing, psychotherapy, and self-love.

Resources:

Sensitive Episode:

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Details:

If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

As applicable, additional resources may be provided in the show notes.

Non-Emergency Online Mental Health Information: https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline/

https://odphp.health.gov/myhealthfinder/healthy-living/mental-health-and-relationships

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert is offering medical or psychological direction or advice; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter/X: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr_carlamanly_imperfect_love

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy

Amazon

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Attachment Style Reset: 9 Steps to Secure Love

9 Steps to Creating Secure Attachment and Healthy Love

You have likely heard a lot about attachment styles and how they impact your life and your relationships. Yet you might not have had a chance to dive into the details that will help you understand, heal, and even shift your attachment style. As a clinical psychologist and attachment theory expert, I am consistently stunned by the immense power a person’s attachment style plays in the health and quality of their relationships. Because our attachment style can surely affect our overall wellness picture, it is important to notice that by diving into attachment and working to understand and change those patterns that do not serve us.

We can actually shift our mental, physical, and emotional health for the better. We will focus on this audience’s real-life questions. “Am I stuck with my anxious attachment style? I have done some work on it in therapy, but it is not changing. My boyfriend has an avoidance style. He says he does not, but it seems to trigger me all the time, and I know I trigger him. Can this be fixed?” With that question as the focus of this episode.

—

Understanding Attachment Styles: Origins, Types, and Their Lasting Impact

Thanks for joining me to talk about the important area of attachment style and the theory that is underneath it. In this particular case, we are going to look at what makes attachment style, where it came from, how it affects us, and nine key steps to healing your attachment style. First, a little bit of research for you.

This is important to note because attachment style has been around for decades. The research on attachment style started in about 1969 and the woman behind it was Mary Ainsworth and she created this idea that if we had this strange situation where kiddos were put into a situation where a stranger came into a room, they were able to watch how that child interacted with the parent when the stranger was present, when the parent was leaving, and when the parent returned.

This gave rise to decades of incredibly well-researched material that shows us the power of attachment style, not just in childhood, but as we move forward in life, how it affects, and how we interact in our adult relationships, especially our intimate ones. Let us dive into this a little bit more fully. When we go deeper into attachment style, we can see that there are generally four styles. There are all sorts of names for them, some offshoots of the original terms. I will try to keep it very general. First, we have the secure attachment style.

Next, we have the insecure attachment style. Underneath that umbrella of insecure attachment, we have three styles. The first is often called avoidant or dismissing. The second is often called ambivalent or anxious. The next is often called unresolved or disorganized. We have those three styles of insecure attachment. Many people are not in one category or another. It is more like a pizza where there can be certain parts of a person that feel very secure.

 

Where Attachment Styles Show Up—and Why Intimate Relationships Trigger Them Most

They might be a large percentage of the dismissing style, the avoidance style. They may have an anxious piece, or they may have a really giant-sized piece that is of the anxious ambivalent style. We want to really understand that there are combinations in many cases. This next piece is very important. Where do these attachment styles show up? They generally show up in our intimate relationships because that is where they are formed. They are formed by your attachment style. If you have, let us say, an insecure attachment style, it is not your fault, and it is not your parents’ fault.

It is the fact that you grew up in a situation where you, as an individual, did not have your needs met in a way that worked for you. They may have worked for a sibling, but they may not have worked for you. There is no use blaming or shaming a parent for your attachment style. More really looking at how you can create, because now we have so much current research on this, and understand the power of who can create secure attachment within yourself.

Yes, you can create secure attachment, and then you can pass that on if you have kids, if you have children in your life, whether you are an aunt or an uncle, you can also help in your romantic relationships and friendships to create more security. Secure attachment can be earned. Back to the piece about where these show up, they do show up in our intimate relationships, romantic relationships, often family relationships, and very close friendships.

They tend not to show up in social settings where you might feel empowered in some ways. They may not certainly show up in work settings. This is something I often hear from clients, where they will say, I am doing so great at work. I feel really strong and secure at work. “I am the boss, I am the CEO, I am the head of this department, I run my own little team over here,” whatever it might be, they may feel very secure in a work setting. Why is this? It’s because a work setting does not trigger our vulnerabilities.

It tends to, for many people, be that place in their lives where they do feel largely or somewhat in control, where their little inner wounds, and we all have them, are not getting triggered. Of course, if you are in a situation, work, social home, wherever it is, where you are getting triggered by attachment issues, that is just a sign that there is some work to do. Let us go into what each of these styles looks like.

The Four Attachment Styles: How They Form and Show Up in Relationships

First, secure. The secure attachment is the person who had a caregiver or caregivers who really attuned to them as well as they could, and that child felt attuned to, and this attachment style is generally formed within the first eighteen months of life and then tends to be really hardwired in there by seventeen or so. That child will feel grounded and rooted because they feel seen and attended to more often than not.

Does not mean that the parent was perfect. It means that the parent was what is often called good enough. That is the secure attachment style. In adult relationships, this will look like somebody who is really able to show up in relationships, communicate, be emotionally vulnerable, have appropriate boundaries, all of those pieces that give that sense of rootedness, like a really nice oak tree that has strong roots. It really can foster emotional intimacy across relationships.

It does not mean that the securely attached person will have a perfect life or a trouble-free life. It simply means that when it comes to intimacy, intimate relationships, they will be more grounded and have more tools at their disposal based upon having really had that secure attachment from childhood forward. This does not mean that a person who is securely attached cannot shift to another attachment style.

It doesn’t mean a securely attached person has a perfect or trouble-free life. It means that in intimate relationships, they’re more grounded and have better tools, built on secure attachment from childhood onward. Share on X

They are in an adult relationship, and they are deeply betrayed, maybe by a partner, by friends, by family, any assortment of things. They can really shift into one of the insecure attachment styles. It does not mean they are stuck there. They can do the work to get back, but there is work involved. Let us move to the next attachment style. We will look at the one that is called avoidant or dismissing.

This is the individual who, early in life, for whatever reason, decided that internally, unconsciously, that relationships were not safe and that they needed to have a nice wall in front of them to defend themselves against vulnerability. When somebody tries to come close to them in an adult relationship, they may do great with superficial friendships, with superficial romantic relationships, but when somebody is trying to get close to them. No, they do not want that.

They want to run the other way. This often gives rise to the sense that the person is present, and they are often present when they are dating. They can be present and even show some attunement, but as intimacy is called for, as there is this closeness happening, the person will become very dismissive, very avoidant of going into that warm, emotional, intimate place.

That is a little bit about the avoidant dismissing type. When we look at the anxious type, anxious or ambivalent, this is an individual who, in childhood, learned to be very wary of relationships. They became what some people call clingy. It is really about this person having a very deep fear of being abandoned, of being left alone. They compensate for that by really trying to hold on extra tight. They are not trying to be clingy or controlling. They are trying to have a connection.

They are trying to feel safe and secure. Just as the person who is avoided is trying to feel safe and secure by running, this is the individual who is trying to feel safe and secure by holding on, sometimes very tightly. This can really cause a lot of issues in relationships, particularly if you take someone who is of the avoidance style and you combine it with somebody who is of the anxious style. It might work for a little bit, especially early on, but very soon, that person who is of the avoidance style, the dismissing style will turn and start running. What does this do?

 

It triggers the individual who is anxious. It triggers them very deeply. While this person is feeling triggered because they are thinking, “I do not want to be vulnerable. This is not safe.” They are starting to go this way. The anxious person is going to be going, “Let me chase you. Please do not leave me.” This does not feel good to either person. The dismissing person can shut down, become cold, become aloof, or even become cruel and mean.

The anxious person can become very jealous, very worried, very fearful, doing exactly all those things that are going to consciously or unconsciously push the other person away. It is not their intention. It is not what they want to do. It is what they are trying to do to feel safe. It is just counter-protective. The last style, we go into the style of the unresolved or disorganized person. You can think of this as a bit like a combination of both styles. This person can get, if the person who has this style in relationships can really struggle. They want to be connected, and then they fear it.

They are starting to get anxious, and then they become even more dysregulated. They move into a relationship, and they move out. They say how much they love someone, and then they disappear emotionally or physically, or both. When we see this style, the person is constantly feeling disorganized in an intimate relationship, maybe not 100%, but it is a fairly constant thing, fairly chronic.

It makes their life feel very hesitant, in turmoil. It makes their interior world feel very unsafe. Many people who are in that category feel as if they are constantly walking on eggshells. This eggshell piece, I am walking on eggshells. It can also be present, especially in the other two styles, but you see it in a pronounced way in that unresolved or disorganized style.

Exploring and Healing Your Attachment Style Through Awareness, Therapy, and Relationship Work

These are all degrees. Remember, please, that it is not that you have this style or you do not, or you are 100% this way or you are 100% another way. It is that you can have a style, and other elements can creep in. This is really key. You can have people in your life like a best friend, a parent, a family member, a grandparent, a mentor, where other people may be really triggering to you. This person makes you go, “I feel safe. I feel secure. Even when I am vulnerable. I feel really seen and heard.”

Even if that feeling does not stay for very long, then that person has a sense of what it feels like to be seen, be attuned to, to feel safe. That is an important place to pause because that is what we all generally want in relationships as human beings. On a very primitive level, we want to be safe. We want to be secure. We want to feel loved and seen. When we feel this way, particularly in our intimate relationships, then we can put our energy into other areas.

On a very basic level, we want to feel safe, secure, loved, and seen. When we feel this—especially in our intimate relationships—we can focus our energy on other areas. Share on X

We are able to channel all of that energy that we would be using to worry about what is happening on the home front. We are able to use that to be more alive, more productive at work, more joyful at home, and more interactive with the people that we love. That is an important piece to notice about when you get to a place where you are getting glimpses of a secure attachment style of feeling secure.

That is the gold standard. As I said earlier, people who are in the secure category do not mean that they are golden for the rest of their lives. It simply means that they know that sense of being securely attached more fully, more deeply, more consistently. Again, very important to understand that this is progress. It is something that you earn over time.

If you are one of the styles of insecure attachment, it does not mean you can take a pill or do a course, and you will automatically be fixed. No, it simply means that you have the responsibility and the privilege if you so choose to earn that secure attachment so you can build and enjoy your best internal world and your best life.

Let us move on to how you can get to know your attachment style. You can get to know your attachment style somewhat by taking an online quiz. There are various qualities. You may want to do that to really explore that. My fourth book, The Joy of Imperfect Love, really dives into attachment style and how to learn your attachment style, honor it, and heal it.

You can also engage in psychotherapy with someone who is an attachment specialist so that you can learn your attachment style, not judge it, just become aware of it, and begin to work on creating a more secure attachment. That is a really important piece because you can do that in therapy. I am a big believer in this, when we are working on this in psychotherapy or through doing a self-help book that has exercises in it, so you can do the work, and that is something the joy of imperfect love has.

It has these exercises so you can do the work, especially if you cannot afford therapy or you want to augment therapy. There are ways to work on your attachment style so that you can again create a secure attachment. Here is the beauty as well. If you are in a relationship, whether it is a romantic partnership, a family relationship, or a really dear friend, and you have noticed that you are having attachment issues within that relationship.

In many cases, the partner in a romantic partnership is also having attachment issues. Often their styles are very, very different, or even if you have two similar styles. The two dismissive people will tend to go their separate ways, or, like this, not really interact. As we said, the dismissive and the anxious, it is that chase. If you get two anxious people, then it can get very clingy and then combustible.

That is something important to note, but where you can do some of the really big work is actually within yourself, but also within the context of that romantic relationship or other deeply intimate relationship. Why is this so important? It’s because ruptures are what cause the opportunity for increased trauma, or the rupture in that relationship can be used to heal.

All too often in our relationships, we create these ruptures just by being human, and they divide us further from ourselves and from our partners. When we learn how to see the ruptures as an opportunity to heal, we then do that healing in the relationship. Ruptures indeed occur. They start as a normal part of every relationship. You disagree. You have a misunderstanding.

All too often in our relationships, we create these ruptures just by being human, and they divide us further from ourselves and from our partners. Share on X

Often, it creates anger, resentment, and shutting down. If you learn to pause and to use tools such as I messages, I feel hurt by this. The other person joins with you instead of getting into a combat with you and says, “I understand. I hear that you are hurt. How might we heal this?” You work together to do this more often than not, and you are automatically creating a more secure attachment. That is an important piece to really work on.

Remember, when we go back to childhood, because childhood affects us in adulthood, like it or not, these attachment issues were formed in relationships with parents, caregivers, and siblings. Therefore, they are best healed in relationships. That is the beauty. They can really be deeply healed when both people are mindfully on board to do the healing.

Both people, not just one. If one person is really into it and the other person is saying, “I do not really care, I am not interested, I do not want to do the work,” that triggering is going to keep happening, and the wounding can get deeper. Of course, this is going to impact mental health, emotional health, and physical health because it creates internal stress. As we know on a neurobiological level, internal stress is not helpful for us on so many levels because we are not meant to live with high levels of adrenaline and cortisol coursing through our systems.

 

Nine Practical Steps to Understand, Heal, and Transform Your Attachment Style

If you are in a relationship with someone like that who does not want to do the work, it is really important for you to assess that situation and see if you want to slowly move away from that relationship, put it on the side, whatever you might need to do to tend to yourself. Let us get to the nine steps that can really help you as an individual heal and get to know yourself. First, we have to know it to heal it, to heal, to get to know, to shift an attachment style. First, as I already mentioned, get to know your attachment style. No blame, no shame.

Just get to know it so that you can understand it and know how it makes you feel in your body when it is really coming up, whether it is the aloofness of the dismissive or avoidant person, whether it is the achy, scary, clingy sense of the anxious person, or the often mixed feelings of the unresolved person. You want attachment, but you deeply do not want it, and it makes you freak out on some levels. That is the first thing. Get to know your attachment style.

Second, discover your partner’s attachment style. If you do not have a partner, you can either stay with really exploring your attachment style or talk to your dearest friend about their style, or a sibling, or a parent, because it is really fun to do this work with another person. It can have a different meaning, but it does not mean you cannot do the work yourself. Third, journal. Whether you journal in a binder, which is my favorite way, or on a computer or your phone, whatever you do.

Journal, do not judge yourself, do not judge your punctuation. Just journal about what comes to mind. Journal about how safe you feel with this person, how unsafe you might feel with that person, and how angry you might feel in this situation. Just journal because as you journal, once you are done with it and you close that journal or click out of it, your brain, sometimes when you are sleeping, sometimes when you are walking or exercising, it can do some work on its own just to figure it out.

The brain is really smart. The mind is really smart, working behind the scenes, trying to figure things out, sometimes for our benefit, sometimes not. When you are doing your journaling, do not judge yourself. Do not be unkind to yourself. Just do free association journaling just to get it out of your system and give it some freedom so it is not stuck inside of you.

Next, notice your triggers. This is so important. We do not want to judge our triggers. We just want to notice what they are. Do you get triggered when somebody is trying to get close to you? Do you get triggered when you feel like your emotions might be coming to the surface? Do you get triggered when somebody is not making eye contact? Do you get triggered when somebody is not paying attention to you, or they are interrupting you? Do you get really triggered, maybe when you are out with a partner, and they are constantly looking at other people, then you feel threatened by that?

Do you get triggered when your partner is spending more than you think they should? Just notice all of these triggers. You can create some categories about where you think they might fall. There is no right or wrong. This is, again, feeding that self-awareness. When you notice your triggers, you can also notice how the triggers make you feel.

You might feel sad, scared, angry, disappointed, frustrated, or no right or wrong. It is about getting to know your feelings, knowing how they are attached to the triggers, so that you can be more self-aware because the more self-aware we are, the more we are growing those roots of that strong oak tree, because we are no longer ruled by our emotions.

It’s about understanding your feelings and the triggers behind them. The more self-aware you become, the less you’re ruled by emotions—and the more you can channel them in healthy, grounded ways. Share on X

We are actually noticing them, and then we are able to channel them and use them in healthy ways. Next, as you know your triggers, you will be able to work on what I call working your wounds. Once we know our triggers and our feelings, we can start doing our work. We can then say, “My partner yelled at me. This made me feel scared.

It really triggered me because I remember my dad really yelling at me a lot. Now I know what I feel. I know what is triggering it. My partner yells. I get triggered. I feel unsafe. I feel scared. I know where the root is. The root is coming from my dad being big and scary.” We are working on that wound. We are noticing it. We are feeling it. Next. Know your needs.

This is so important. We are going to use the same example. If your partner yelled at you, it made you feel that the interaction made you feel unsafe. What do you need? Do you need your partner to talk more softly? Would it feel better if your partner took a little time out before letting you know what was happening? Would it feel better if you took a little time out so that you could get your thoughts and feelings together before talking to your partner?

This is that really important part about knowing your needs, because if you do not know your needs, you cannot express them to your partner or family member or anybody else in your life, for that matter. If we use a different example and say somebody is more of the avoidance style, that dismissing style, you may have a partner who is really dismissing you because they are feeling threatened and scared, because maybe you are getting to a deeper level of the relationship or maybe you are in a really deep relationship and they have decided it is too much for them.

Being able to let them know, “I feel really sad when I am trying to connect with you, and you will not make eye contact, or you emotionally disappear on me.” “I feel sad when you will not have these conversations with me, and you run away to go exercise or go to your man cave or your woman cave, whatever it might be.”

 

Imperfect Love - Dr. Carla Manly | Creating Secure Attachment

 

Again, starting to have conversations, not making either person bad or good, but knowing your needs, letting your partner know how you feel. Once you know your needs, now we are in number seven of practicing the needs, practice stating them, and letting your partner know. Remember this is, we have already done a lot of work before we get to this step.

You can somewhat eloquently say to your partner, “I feel sad when this happens, or I feel hurt, or frustrated, or angry. This is what would make me feel better. Do you think you could do this moving forward?” Ideally, the partner comes back and says, “I am sorry, I did not mean to make you sad. I could see how that could trigger you. In the future, I am going to try very hard not to do that. If I make a misstep, would you please remind me?”

Of course, this works both ways, then the partner can come to you when they are feeling triggered and say, “I am not used to being very close. When you are coming at me asking for so much connection, it feels scary to me, and then I run away. In the future, I am going to try hard to verbalize when this is happening and ask for space. If you could give me fifteen minutes alone or a half hour alone, it would feel really good for me because then I would not feel backed into a corner.”

These kinds of conversations, when both people play ping pong with them, rather than weaponizing issues, can really heal and begin to shift those attachment issues. Remember, not everybody is going to be up for this. It is work. It is beautiful work. It is a privilege when you are in a relationship where you are both doing it because you are both being healed. You are being healed, your partner or friend or family members are being healed, and the relationship, that third thing that is in between them, is also being healed. I find it one of life’s greatest pleasures and privileges.

I am not minimizing how much work it takes. It does take a lot of effort. It takes less effort by far when both people are truly and deeply on board. Next one. Number eight, know your boundaries. This is especially important if somebody is not really on board yet and is not doing their work. There may be times where somebody goes back to their old behavior of yelling or becoming really overly dysregulated and maybe throwing something or shutting down, or things that just are not helpful for a relationship in any way.

It is important for you to have some self-care to know your boundaries and for you to be able to say, “I am going to take a timeout. I am going to go for a walk around the block. I am going to drive to the store. I am going to go and take a bike ride because this does not feel healthy for me.” That is an example of boundary setting where you let the other person know what you need if they cannot meet that need, or you may not even want them to meet that need because you just need to have some alone time.

It’s important to practice self-care, know your boundaries, and be able to say, 'I need a timeout—I’m going for a walk, a drive, or a bike ride, because this doesn’t feel healthy for me.' Share on X

Whatever your boundaries are, being able to state them clearly so that you are not going back into your old patterns of closing down, or becoming really dysregulated, overly emotional. By having those boundaries, again, you are really growing those tree roots inside of you that root in that security. You know your boundaries, state your boundaries, hold your boundaries. It is all part of the process.

Last, when we discuss this process with our partners, discussing what went well, what did not go well, what is working, and what is not working in a non-blaming way. It is really helpful and creates more of that depth and that connection in the relationship. For example, if things go really well and a partner can see you and hear you and reflect to you what you said, and you are feeling safer, then you may say to the partner, “Thank you so much for that. Thank you for going through that piece with me. It felt really affirming and so much better.”

Sometimes, if it does not go so well, discuss that in a really conscious, mindful way. You might say to your partner, “I’ll let you know my triggers. I let you know how I was feeling, what I needed, and you walked out the door anyway. I want you to know that that felt really hurtful. It is important to me that we not continue this because neither of us wants to live in these old and wounded patterns.”

When we do this work and stay really conscious of it, and again, are joined by a partner or friend or family member in the process, it creates an internal sense of safety, of security, of trust, of vulnerability that allows that relationship to keep growing. Again, it is not just the relationship with that partner. When you are doing this work, it helps that the relationship within you grows. Primarily, it is within you to a level that allows you to shine and be your best self.

That is the Cliff Notes version of attachment theory, of how attachment style affects you, how it shows up in your life and relationships, and those nine simple but really important steps because they take time, energy, patience, and perseverance. You can, by doing this work, really shift how you show up for yourself, for those in your life, and how you show up daily. I thank you as always for sharing your time and your energy with me. It is always a joy and a privilege. This is Imperfect Love.

 

Important Links