Understanding Attachment Theory: How Childhood Relationships Can Shape Adult Relationships, Emotional Regulation, Anxiety, Self-esteem and How EMDR Therapy Can Help

Many of us can recognise patterns in our relationships that feel difficult to understand. Perhaps you find it hard to ask for what you need, fear rejection, struggle with anxiety, become highly self-critical, or feel emotionally overwhelmed in close relationships. Attachment theory offers a helpful way of understanding why this might happen and how attachment issues can present in adulthood. 

John Bowlby, British psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and researcher, developed attachment theory after combining clinical experience with research from developmental psychology, evolutionary biology and the study of animal behaviour. He recognised that, just like other young mammals, human babies are biologically wired to seek closeness to a caregiver because staying close increases their chances of survival. He explored how children's early relationships with caregivers shape emotional development, their sense of safety, later relationships, emotional regulation, and vulnerability to anxiety, as well as beliefs about themselves and others.

Bowlby believed that children are biologically driven to seek closeness to caregivers because attachment is essential for survival. At its most basic level, attachment helps ensure a child's physical survival by keeping them close to the people who provide food, warmth, hydration and protection.

In addition, in terms of our emotional needs, when relationships are safe, consistent and emotionally responsive, children learn that they can seek comfort when distressed, that emotions can be soothed, and that difficult feelings are manageable. Over time, these repeated experiences help children develop a secure sense of self, trust in others, and the ability to regulate their own emotions.

However, when relationships are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, critical, or frightening, children naturally adapt the way they think, feel and behave in order to maintain connection and increase their sense of physical and emotional safety. Over time, these adaptations can become attachment patterns that originally developed to help us maintain connection and increase our sense of safety in relationships, but which may no longer be helpful in adulthood.

Attachment Patterns Are Adaptive, Not Flaws

One of the most important aspects of attachment theory is that these responses are not signs of weakness or failure. They are understandable adaptations to early experiences, they helped us survive at the time.

Children depend entirely on caregivers for survival and emotional regulation. Because of this, the nervous system becomes highly attuned to maintaining connection and reducing threat. A child cannot simply leave a relationship that feels emotionally difficult or unsafe, so they adapt internally instead.

For example, a child may:

• Become highly sensitive to signs of rejection or disconnection

• Learn to suppress emotions or needs

• Focus on pleasing others

• Become overly independent

• Blame themselves when relationships feel painful or inconsistent

From an attachment perspective, these responses often make sense in the context in which they developed. As psychiatrist and psychotherapist Jeremy Holmes has written, attachment patterns are best understood as attempts to maintain emotional connection and safety rather than fixed personality flaws.

The Role of the Nervous System

Attachment difficulties are not simply ’in the mind’. Early experiences also shape the nervous system and the body’s response to perceived threat.

When relationships in childhood have felt inconsistent or emotionally unsafe, the nervous system can become more sensitive to signs of disconnection, criticism, unpredictability, or rejection. As a result, some people find they become more prone to anxiety because the nervous system learns to stay alert for possible signs of danger, rejection or uncertainty, even when no immediate threat is present.

This can mean that present day situations unconsciously activate earlier emotional learning. A disagreement, delayed reply, criticism, or perceived distance from another person may trigger a much stronger emotional response than the current situation alone would explain.

This does not mean someone is overreacting deliberately. Often the nervous system is responding as though the earlier emotional threat is happening again in the present.

Peter Fonagy, a Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science,  has written extensively about how early attachment experiences influence emotional regulation, reflective functioning, and our capacity to understand both our own minds and the minds of others. His work highlights how safe relationships can support the development of emotional stability and resilience over time.

How Attachment Difficulties Can Show Up in Adulthood

The difficulty is that patterns developed in childhood to keep us safe, can continue into adulthood long after they are no longer needed. In adulthood, they can get in our way of developing and maintaining healthy relationships and meeting our needs. 

You might notice:

• Difficulty expressing needs in relationships

• Fear of abandonment or rejection

• Feeling emotionally “too much”

• Strong emotional reactions that feel difficult to manage

• Overthinking interactions with others

• Staying in unhealthy relationships because they feel familiar

• Finding it difficult to feel close to other people

• Keeping people at a distance, even when you want close relationships

• Feeling responsible for other people’s emotions

• Struggling to trust care or support from others

• A persistent feeling of being “not good enough”

• Feeling disconnected even within close relationships

• Feeling you have to always please others to be accepted

• General feelings of anxiety or being constantly on edge

• Finding it difficult to relax, even when things are going well

These responses are often deeply rooted and can feel automatic. Many people notice that their emotional reactions seem bigger than the situation in front of them, leaving them feeling confused about why they respond in this way.

Common questions include: 

• Why am I reacting like this?

• I don't understand why I get so upset.

• I know I shouldn't feel this way, but I do.

• Why do I seem to react differently from other people?

Why Do I Struggle to Regulate My Emotions? The Link Between Attachment and Emotional Regulation

Attachment theory suggests that our early relationships play an important role in the development of emotional regulation. As babies and young children, we rely on caregivers to notice our distress, soothe us, and help us make sense of our emotions. Through repeated experiences of being comforted and understood, we gradually learn how to regulate our own feelings. 

If these experiences are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, or frightening, we may not have the opportunity to develop these skills fully. Instead, emotions can feel confusing, overwhelming or difficult to manage, all of which can contribute to anxiety. These responses are not a personal failing. After all, if we have not been taught something, how can we know how to do it?

The encouraging news is that emotional regulation is a skill that can continue to develop throughout life, particularly through supportive relationships and effective psychological therapy. New experiences of relationships in which we feel understood, emotionally supported, and responded to with empathy can gradually help us develop healthier ways of managing difficult emotions.

Within therapy, we can learn to notice our emotions with curiosity rather than judgement, understand how earlier experiences may continue to influence our reactions, develop the ability to tolerate distress, and respond in more helpful ways. Over time, we can also learn to soothe ourselves with greater compassion and confidence.

Why Attachment Wounds Can Lead Us to Stay in Unhealthy Relationships

From an attachment perspective, the attachment system is not primarily focused on happiness or fulfilment. Instead, it is focused on safety, predictability, and maintaining connection with the people we depend on.

As children, we depend on caregivers for survival. So even when relationships are painful, inconsistent, rejecting, or emotionally unavailable, we still need those relationships.

Over time, the nervous system learns that staying connected feels safer than losing the relationship. In addition, familiar patterns feel safer as they are more predictable than the unknown, even when they are distressing. 

This is why, in adulthood, a relationship that feels emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, or critical can sometimes feel strangely compelling or difficult to leave. Not because the person consciously wants pain, but because the nervous system recognises the familiar pattern and has learned that it feels more predictable, and therefore safer, than the unknown.

In contrast, healthier relationships can initially feel unfamiliar, uncertain, emotionally exposing, or even uncomfortable. This unfamiliarity can sometimes create anxiety, even when the relationship itself is healthier and more emotionally secure. These are understandable attachment patterns, not personal failings. And with awareness and support, they can begin to change.

Why Do I Feel Not Good Enough? Attachment Theory, Low Self Esteem and Shame

Our early relationships shape how we view ourselves and relate to others. When relationships feel critical, rejecting or emotionally unavailable it can feel safer to believe, 'something is wrong with me' than to believe the people we depend on are unable to keep us emotionally safe.

From a survival perspective, it isn't safe for a child to leave or blame the caregiver for not meeting their needs appropriately. Believing 'I'm the problem', is safer and can create a sense of control. That if I change or try harder, I might maintain connection and feel safer.

Over time, this can lead to deeply held negative core beliefs, thoughts like, I'm not good enough, I'm worthless or I'm a bad person. These thoughts create feelings of low self-worth, shame, anxiety and sadness and behaviours of self-criticism and constant striving for perfection and to please others. 

Living with these deeply held beliefs can also contribute to ongoing anxiety, particularly in situations involving relationships, performance, criticism or uncertainty. All of these responses are understandable adaptive patterns that once aimed to maintain  safety, but now hold us back. 

Why People Pleasing and Difficulty Expressing Your Needs Can Develop

You might be thoughtful, capable, and attuned to others needs, yet when it comes to your own needs, something holds you back and you struggle to express them.

From an attachment perspective, this can develop in earlier relationships where needs were not consistently met, or where it did not feel safe to express needs because of the response this generated.

Over time, you may have learned to adapt by focusing on others needs, staying quiet, suppressing your needs or managing on your own.That made sense then as it felt safer and helped maintain connection in relationships. But in adulthood, it can leave you feeling unseen, unsupported or quietly resentful.

You might give a lot, yet struggle to receive, or feel disconnected, even in close relationships. Nothing about this is a flaw. It is a pattern that developed for a reason, and with awareness, it can begin to shift. 

Can Attachment Patterns Change?

One concern people sometimes have when learning about attachment theory is the fear that these patterns are fixed or permanent.

The good news is that attachment patterns can change, they are not fixed personality types. They are ways of relating that developed through our early relationships with others. Bringing awareness and understanding to old patterns which are no longer helpful can help us start to notice how we are responding and give us an opportunity to practice to choose new ways of responding in situations.

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change and develop new neural pathways throughout life. Our brains are capable of changing. Our experiences shape it, and new experiences can reshape it. You might remember the phrase 'neurons that fire together wire together’. It is like learning anything new, the more we practice the new thing the easier and more familiar the new pattern becomes. 

Why Awareness Matters

Many people carry these patterns for years without fully recognising them. Instead, they may simply view themselves as “too sensitive”, “too needy”, “bad at relationships”, or “not good enough”.

Developing awareness is often the first step towards change. Understanding our reactions through the lens of attachment theory can help us become more curious about where they may have originated and what purpose they once served, rather than judging ourselves harshly.

Questions such as:

• What feels emotionally threatening to me here?

• What am I afraid might happen?

• Does this response feel familiar from earlier relationships?

• What do I need in this moment?

These reflections can begin to create space between the emotional reaction and the response that follows. This space can give us a chance to respond differently. 

How Therapy Can Help

Many people seek therapy because of attachment issues that affect their relationships, emotional wellbeing or self-esteem, often without realising these difficulties may have developed as understandable adaptations to earlier experiences.

Therapy can provide a safe, supportive and consistent space to explore these patterns with curiosity and compassion and identify what experiences may have influenced them.

I take an attachment-informed approach to therapy, integrating EMDR, CBT and Compassion Focused Therapy to help people understand how earlier relationships may continue to influence anxiety, emotional regulation, self-esteem and relationships today.

In therapy I use CBT to help people notice unhelpful patterns in thoughts, emotions and behaviour and develop coping strategies to adapt these.

Compassion Focused Therapy can support the development of greater self-kindness and reduce shame and self-criticism.

EMDR trauma processing can be particularly helpful for processing earlier traumatic or distressing experiences from relationships in childhood that continue to feel emotionally present and easily triggered in adulthood. These experiences might include childhood emotional abuse and childhood emotional neglect which have led to attachment wounds. 

By helping the brain reprocess distressing experiences, emotional responses can begin to feel less overwhelming and more manageable and we can identify new ways of thinking about ourselves and others. 

When we make changes in how we think about things and how we respond, the brain has an opportunity to develop and strengthen new neural pathways that become stronger and easier to access. This means we can improve our self-esteem, confidence, mood and get on with our lives in the way we want to. This can also help us develop healthier relationships.

It is worth recognising, that in therapy, sometimes, people feel guilty or disloyal talking about the people who cared for them. Therapy is not about judging or blaming anyone. It is about understanding how your experiences have shaped you, so that you can make sense of your reactions, develop self-compassion, and move forward in a way that feels right for you.

 If you are struggling with old patterns, know that your brain can adapt with the right help. 

Attachment Styles Explained: Why Most People Don't Fit Neatly into One Style

You may have read about the four attachment styles and wondered which one describes you. Many people recognise aspects of more than one style, which can leave them feeling confused.

Building on John Bowlby's attachment theory, developmental psychologist and researcher Mary Ainsworth developed the Strange Situation, a research procedure designed to observe how young children responded to separation from and reunion with their caregiver. Her work identified three broad patterns of attachment: secure, anxious (also referred to as ambivalent), and avoidant. Later, researcher and developmental psychologist Mary Main identified a fourth pattern, disorganised attachment.

These patterns provide a helpful framework for understanding how children adapt to their early relationships, but they are not fixed personality types, so they can lead to confusion as it is unlikely we will neatly fit into one ‘style’. Most of us experience a range of important relationships during childhood, each of which can influence how we think about ourselves and others. Our attachment responses may also vary depending on the relationship, the situation, and how safe we feel. 

The four attachment patterns identified through the work of Ainsworth and Main can be broadly described as follows:

Secure attachment

People with a predominantly secure attachment pattern generally find it easier to trust others, express their needs, seek support when needed, and maintain close relationships whilst also feeling comfortable with independence.

Anxious (previously known as Ambivalent) attachment

People with a predominantly anxious attachment pattern may worry about rejection or abandonment, seek reassurance from others, and become particularly sensitive to changes in closeness or connection within relationships.

Avoidant attachment

People with a predominantly avoidant attachment pattern may value independence, find it difficult to rely on others or express vulnerability, and cope with distress by creating emotional distance or relying on themselves.

Disorganised attachment

People with a predominantly disorganised attachment pattern may experience conflicting desires for closeness and distance, often finding relationships confusing because they can simultaneously long for connection whilst fearing it.

It is important to remember that these are descriptive patterns rather than diagnoses or fixed personality types. They are intended to help us understand how people adapt to relationships, not place people into rigid categories.

Contemporary attachment theorists, including Peter Fonagy and Jeremy Holmes, have emphasised that attachment is dynamic and relational, rather than something that can always be neatly placed into a single category. The aim is not to find the perfect label, but to understand the individual patterns that have developed and recognise that they can change over time.

As children, we usually have more than one important relationship. Our experiences with parents, carers, siblings and other significant people can all influence how we relate to ourselves and others. We also respond differently depending on the relationship we are in and how safe we feel. This is one of the reasons why many people recognise aspects of more than one attachment style, rather than fitting neatly into a single category.

In my therapy work, I don't tend to focus on attachment style labels. Instead, I work collaboratively with people to understand their individual patterns of responding, the experiences that shaped them, and how they can begin to make changes that help them move towards the life and relationships they want.

If you are looking for attachment informed therapy, EMDR therapy, CBT or Compassion Focused Therapy to help you understand long standing relationship patterns, anxiety, low self esteem or childhood trauma, I would be happy to discuss whether therapy could help.

The best way to contact me is by email. Contact Me.