How to Move Toward Secure Attachment in Relationships

Authored by Viktoria Cicolli, Licensed Clinical Psychologist in California.
This article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health treatment.

If you’ve recognized yourself in patterns of anxious attachment or avoidant attachment, you may be wondering something important:

Can I actually change the way I relate?

The short answer is yes.

Attachment patterns are not personality traits set in stone. They are adaptive strategies your nervous system developed in response to early relational experiences. And because they are learned, they can also be reshaped through new, emotionally corrective experiences.

Research in attachment science calls this process “earned secure attachment” (Roisman et al., 2002). It refers to individuals who may not have grown up with consistent emotional security but later develop healthier attachment patterns through insight, supportive relationships, and therapeutic work.

Moving toward secure attachment does not mean becoming perfectly calm or never feeling relational fear. It means developing the capacity to stay emotionally present, communicate needs directly, and tolerate closeness without becoming overwhelmed.

Below are key ways this shift begins.

Increase Emotional Awareness

Secure attachment starts with awareness.

Many anxious or avoidant responses happen quickly and automatically. An anxious partner may feel a surge of panic when a text goes unanswered. An avoidant partner may feel the urge to withdraw when conflict intensifies.

Before change can occur, you must recognize the internal experience driving the reaction.

Research shows that labeling emotions — a process called affect labeling — reduces amygdala activation and lowers emotional reactivity (Lieberman et al., 2007). In simple terms, naming what you feel helps calm your nervous system.

Instead of reacting immediately, try asking yourself:

What am I feeling right now?
Is this fear, sadness, overwhelm, shame?
What need is underneath this emotion?

For someone with anxious attachment, the deeper emotion may be fear of abandonment.
For someone with avoidant attachment, it may be fear of engulfment or loss of independence.

Understanding the vulnerable emotion beneath the reaction is a powerful first step toward secure functioning.

Practice Expressing Needs Directly

Insecure attachment patterns often distort communication.

Anxious attachment may lead to protest behaviors — criticism, heightened emotion, repeated reassurance-seeking. Avoidant attachment may lead to shutdown, deflection, or minimizing needs altogether.

Secure attachment involves clear, vulnerable communication.

Attachment research shows that secure individuals are more comfortable expressing dependency needs in healthy ways (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Rather than escalating or withdrawing, they can say:

“I’m feeling disconnected and could use reassurance.”
“I need some space to think, but I care about this conversation.”

These statements require courage. They also require tolerating discomfort.

Many people fear that expressing needs will push others away. But paradoxically, indirect communication often creates more confusion and distance.

Secure attachment grows when needs are expressed calmly and directly.

Build Tolerance for Emotional Discomfort

One of the defining features of secure attachment is the ability to remain engaged during emotional stress.

For anxiously attached individuals, this may mean resisting the urge to escalate conflict in order to regain closeness.

For avoidantly attached individuals, it may mean resisting the urge to withdraw when emotions feel intense.

Emotion regulation research suggests that increasing distress tolerance improves relational functioning (Gross, 2015). The goal is not to eliminate discomfort but to remain present while experiencing it.

This might look like:

Pausing before sending an emotionally charged message.
Staying in a difficult conversation rather than shutting down.
Allowing space without assuming abandonment.

Over time, these small shifts strengthen emotional resilience.

Seek Corrective Emotional Experiences

Attachment patterns shift most effectively in the context of safe relationships.

Secure attachment develops when someone consistently responds to your vulnerability with steadiness and care. This can happen in romantic relationships, friendships, or therapy.

Research on therapeutic change suggests that the therapeutic relationship itself is one of the strongest predictors of positive outcomes (Norcross & Lambert, 2019). In attachment-focused therapy, clients experience emotional responsiveness in real time, which gradually reshapes internal expectations.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), developed by Sue Johnson, is one example of an attachment-based model shown to increase secure bonding in couples (Johnson, 2019).

When individuals repeatedly experience:

“I express vulnerability.”
“The other person responds safely.”

The nervous system learns a new pattern.

Develop a More Secure Internal Narrative

Attachment is not only relational — it is internal.

People with anxious attachment may carry beliefs such as:

“I’m too much.”
“I’ll be left.”

Those with avoidant attachment may hold beliefs like:

“I can’t depend on anyone.”
“Needing others is weakness.”

Cognitive and attachment research suggests that modifying these internal working models improves relational functioning (Bowlby, 1988; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007).

Through therapy and reflection, these beliefs can shift toward:

“I am worthy of consistent connection.”
“I can depend on others and still be independent.”

That internal shift is foundational to earned security.

Attachment Therapy in Los Angeles

If you are recognizing patterns of anxious attachment or avoidant attachment in your relationships, attachment therapy can help you explore and shift these dynamics in a structured, supportive way.

As a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, I provide individual and couples therapy in Los Angeles and online throughout California. My work is grounded in attachment theory and evidence-based approaches that help clients build emotional security, improve communication, and strengthen connection.

Attachment change does not happen overnight. But with awareness, repetition, and safe relational experiences, new patterns become possible.

You are not defined by how you learned to survive connection.
You are capable of learning how to feel secure within it.

References

Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. Basic Books.

Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26.

Johnson, S. M. (2019). Attachment Theory in Practice. Guilford Press.

Lieberman, M. D., et al. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in Adulthood. Guilford Press.

Norcross, J. C., & Lambert, M. J. (2019). Psychotherapy relationships that work. Psychotherapy, 56(4), 423–438.

Roisman, G. I., et al. (2002). Earned-secure attachment status in retrospect and prospect. Child Development, 73(4), 1204–1219.