The ultimate guide to healing your insecure attachment
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The ultimate guide to healing your insecure attachment<br>A step-by-step guide on what works, what doesn't and what you can expect when trying to become securely attached
MiriamB<br>Aug 11, 2026
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When working with my clients, this is the first question that pops up.<br>So how will we go about this?<br>How long will it take?<br>Why certain types of therapy work and others do not?<br>Do I need to focus on somatic modalities instead?<br>In this guide I’ll cover what does it actually mean to have a secure vs an insecure attachment style, how they are formed, how are the patterns maintained, what are the blindspots of each attachment style, the opportunities for growth and what types of therapeutical modalities work and why.<br>Let’s begin.<br>What does it actually mean to be insecurely or securely attached
Many people end up repeating the same relational patterns. However, the problem is not at a behavioral level, although it’s expressed this way, your attachment style is an encoded way of feeling safe, strategies for finding safety, strategies to regulate emotions, strategies to find someone to attach to.<br>Your brain, learns from an early age about itself by the way your parents mirror back your emotions. In essence, when you smiled as a baby, your your parent smiled back and acknowledged what you did as a smile, you’ve learned over repeated actions, the skill of understanding your own emotions.<br>If the parent isn’t attuned to your emotional expression, or simply ignores your emotional expression, your own emotions become hard to understand, tangled, or sometimes even repressed, because nobody was there to mirror them back.<br>Another thing your brains learn early on, is how to get safe. Safety is primordial as an infant and is entirely dependent on the caregivers. As a consequence, over time the baby learns how he or she can act in the world so it has an impact on it.<br>If the baby is hungry and crying and the parent comes right away, the baby learns to expect care and love when they express needs, leading to the development of the secure attachment.<br>If the baby is hungry and crying and the parent comes but only after there’s a lot of crying, and insistence, the baby learns that in order to get their needs met, they have upregulate their emotions and “suffer a lot” in order to get their needs met, leading to the development of the anxious attachment.<br>If the baby is hungry and crying but the parent ignores the baby or simply feeds the baby on a schedule that is entirely made up by them without keeping track of the baby’s needs, the baby learns that there is no use to expect that others will come and attend to their needs, so is best for survival to cut off the need for others to reduce suffering, leading to the development of the avoidant attachment.<br>If the baby is hungry and crying but the parent acts in frightening , dissociative or inconsistent ways around the baby, the baby never learns what to expect, so he or she ends up wanting connecting but fearing it, leading to the development of the disorganized attachment.<br>Attachment styles are strategies infants develop to survive in their families of origin. Because these early relational experiences also shape the brain, how a person sees themselves, others, how they activate or repress emotions, the patterns stay unless changed by intervention with a different experience. A different relational experience that they are mindful of and able to digest so the brain re-organizes itself keeping in mind a new relational experience.<br>In some ways, becoming securely attached is a learning experience that makes sense of neuroplasticity to change emotional regulation, self image, predictions about other people’s intentions and predictions about the world.<br>It’s a whole revamp that can lead to a significantly higher quality of life, lower levels of stress, better self image, access to both positive and negative emotions, improved ability to focus and take better decisions and of course, better relational experiences.<br>As you already suspected, this can’t be done with a 30-day guided course, by yourself. Mostly because the brain was shaped in a relational context, and you will need a new relational experience to mirror you back, tag those emotions, fully express needs while this time having a new relational experience and experiement with new ways of being in the world.<br>The road to becoming securely attached: awareness stage
When we don’t know ourselves, we call our fate destiny.<br>Janet can’t make sense of her relationship and she wants more than anything, clarity. Her partner, Stephen, often likes models on Instagram, and lately she’s even discovered some images in his phone of his ex. When confronted, Stephen simply mentioned that the photos of his ex are some old selfies that he forgot to delete, and liking models on Instagram is what every man does, and doesn’t carry any malicious intentions, as proof he...