Stuck in the Same Patterns and Struggling to Change? It's Your Attachment Style

Summary: Your brain isn’t wired for happiness—it’s wired for survival. If you’ve ever tried to change but found yourself pulled back into old habits, your attachment patterns might be running the show. Anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment can make stability feel threatening and dysfunction feel like home.

If you’ve got an anxious attachment style, congratulations! Your internal monologue is basically a high-speed chase between "Am I loved?" and "What if everyone I care about leaves me?" Your nervous system is as stable as a Jenga tower in a hurricane, and every relationship feels like an Olympic event where you have to prove your worth constantly.

Anxious attachment usually comes from inconsistent parenting—sometimes your caregivers were there, sometimes they weren’t, and sometimes they showed love but only if you performed well, were useful, or met their emotional needs. Basically, they played emotional whack-a-mole with you, so you learned that love is conditional and requires constant vigilance.

You might have had a parent who was affectionate but overwhelmed, or one who used you as their emotional support animal. Maybe one day they were warm and loving, and the next day they treated you like an inconvenience because their own nervous system was a goddamn disaster. Either way, you internalized the message: Love is unpredictable, and I need to work really hard to keep it.

Your version of safe isn’t actually safe—it’s hypervigilance. It’s that feeling of constantly scanning the emotional weather for any signs of rejection or abandonment. When things are calm, you don’t feel safe—you feel anxious. Because your nervous system has been trained to equate peace with "something bad is about to happen."

So, when change comes knocking? Your brain short-circuits. Stability feels foreign. Uncertainty triggers abandonment fears. You’d rather cling to a dumpster-fire relationship, job, or habit than risk the unknown, because at least you understand the dysfunction you’re in. And let’s be honest—who among us hasn’t trauma-bonded with chaos?

Avoidantly attached folks are the human equivalent of a cat who pretends not to care about you but is secretly watching from across the room. You like to think you don’t need connection. You are strong. Independent. You will die before you text first. But deep down? You want love. You just don’t trust it.

Avoidant attachment usually develops when caregivers were emotionally unavailable, dismissive, or just straight-up allergic to vulnerability. Maybe your parents were big on "tough love," or they made you feel weak for expressing emotions. Maybe you got the "I’ll give you something to cry about" special, or your caregivers were too consumed with their own survival to nurture you. Either way, you learned that emotions are useless, connection is dangerous, and needing people makes you weak.

Your version of safe is emotional distance. You think you’re fine as long as no one gets too close, no one expects too much from you, and you don’t have to rely on anyone. Vulnerability feels like walking into traffic wearing a blindfold, so you avoid it like the plague.

Change, for you, is hard because it requires trust—trusting people, trusting yourself, and trusting that not everything will end in disappointment. And that’s a big ask when your entire nervous system was wired to believe that closeness equals danger. So, you keep people at arm’s length, self-sabotage anything that gets too intimate, and pretend you don’t care. (We see you. We know you care.)

Ah, disorganized attachment—the chaotic neutral of attachment styles. If anxious attachment is a golden retriever and avoidant attachment is a lone wolf, disorganized attachment is a feral raccoon that just got hit with a flashlight. You crave connection, but you’re also terrified of it. You want love, but you don’t trust it. Relationships feel like a haunted house where you know the jump scare is coming, but you can’t tell from which direction.

Disorganized attachment develops when your primary caregivers were both a source of comfort and a source of fear. Maybe they were loving sometimes and terrifying at others. Maybe they were abusive but also the people you depended on. Maybe they were unpredictable, unstable, or their love came with an undercurrent of control, rage, or neglect.

When the person you run to for safety is the same person you have to run from, your nervous system never quite figures out what to do. It’s like your attachment style got stuck in a glitchy video game loop: Approach. Danger. Retreat. Wait, maybe it’s safe? Approach. NOPE. Abort mission.

Your version of safe is chaos. Uncertainty feels normal. High highs and low lows feel like home. You might not even recognize what true safety looks like, because your baseline has always been a mix of love and fear. So, when something stable, healthy, and secure shows up, your brain screams, "This is a TRAP! We are in MORTAL DANGER!" and you sabotage it like an old pro.

Change is hard because stability feels wrong. You crave it, but once you get it, you either distrust it, destroy it, or flee from it. Recognizing this pattern is the first step, but healing also requires actively seeking small, steady experiences of safety—with people, environments, and even within yourself. Learning to tolerate steadiness without spiraling is the work. And honestly? That’s exhausting, but it’s possible.

At this point, you might be wondering, "Great, so my attachment style is actively ruining my life. What should I do?" First, take a deep breath. You are not irredeemably broken.

Your attachment style is not a life sentence. It’s just a nervous system pattern, and patterns can be rewired.

The first step is recognizing that safe and familiar are not the same thing. Just because something feels comfortable doesn’t mean it’s good for you. (Like eating an entire pizza alone, dating emotionally unavailable people, and staying in soul-crushing jobs.)

And above all else, be kind to yourself. You’re undoing years of wiring, and that’s no small task. Change is hard—but staying stuck in a pattern that keeps you miserable is harder. So pick your hard. And maybe, just maybe, choose the one that leads to peace.