Attachment Styles

The Blueprint of Connection

Attachment styles are neural templates for how we relate to others, formed in early childhood. These templates are stored in implicit memory—meaning they operate automatically, below conscious awareness, driving who we pick and how we react in relationships.

The Three Main Architectures

1. Secure: The brain views intimacy as safe. The nervous system regulates easily after conflict.

2. Anxious (Preoccupied): The brain views distance as a threat. The amygdala is hyper-sensitive to signs of rejection, triggering “protest behavior” (texting, clinging) to re-establish contact.

3. Avoidant (Dismissive): The brain views intimacy as a loss of autonomy. When emotions get too high, the parasympathetic nervous system engages a “shutdown” response, causing the person to pull away to regulate.

Earned Security

Neuroplasticity allows us to rewrite these maps.

• Regulation Awareness: An anxious person must learn self-soothing (down-regulating the amygdala) without demanding it from a partner.

• Safety Signaling: An avoidant person must learn that vulnerability does not equal engulfment.

• The Goal: “Earned Security” is the process of building new neural pathways through safe, consistent relationships that overwrite the old, insecure templates.