Attached in the Room: How Your Attachment Style Shows Up in Therapy
Ever find yourself hanging on to your therapist’s every word, or wanting to disappear right after you open up?
It might feel dramatic or even a little silly. But those reactions usually come from somewhere deeper: your attachment style.
Most people think attachment styles only matter in romantic relationships, expecting them to show up while dating or in marriage. However, therapy is a relationship too. It is actually one of the relationships where our old patterns have the capacity to show up the loudest.
Whether your style is secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized– our attachment style does not just wait politely outside the office. It follows us right in, shapes how we see our therapist, and can definitely stir up feelings one may not expect.
The feelings that arise within the therapeutic relationship is not a bad thing. In fact, it is a gift. Through examining these relational feelings, that is often where the meaningful work begins.
In this article, you’ll learn:
What attachment styles are and how they form
How anxious, avoidant, secure, and disorganized styles show up in therapy
Why moments of deep connection can feel so intense or scary
How therapy helps rewrite old patterns toward secure attachment
A Brief History of Attachment Theory
To understand what an attachment style is, it helps to look at where the idea came from.
Attachment theory originated in the mid-20th century with the work of the British psychoanalyst John Bowlby. Bowlby proposed that early relationships with caregivers shape our emotional and psychological development. His research showed that children form strong attachment bonds with primary caregivers, which are crucial for emotional and social growth.
Mary Ainsworth, Bowlby’s colleague, expanded on these ideas through her "Strange Situation" study. Her work identified different attachment styles in infants, categorizing them into secure, anxious-ambivalent, and avoidant patterns. These early attachments form the blueprint for how we perceive and engage in relationships as adults.
What is an Attachment Style?
Your attachment style is that blueprint you carry for how close or distant to be with people. It is something you developed early on, shaped by how your caregivers responded or did not respond to your needs for comfort and safety.
There are four main attachment styles:
Secure attachment: If your parents were mostly warm and reliable, you likely developed a secure style. You generally trust people to be there for you, and you feel comfortable with both closeness and independence.
Anxious attachment: If care was inconsistent, sometimes attentive and sometimes not, you might crave closeness but always worry it could vanish. You may need frequent reassurance or fear being left, even in steady relationships.
Avoidant attachment: If you learned that expressing needs was not safe or welcome, you probably keep people at arm’s length. Depending on others feels risky or maybe just embarrassing. If this resonates, you might want to read more about how to heal an avoidant attachment style.
Disorganized attachment: When the same people who were supposed to comfort you also scared you, it created confusion. You might bounce between desperately wanting connection and pushing people away, often without fully understanding why.
When looking at attachment style, I find it helpful to look at each style more as protective strategies versus as a character flaw. These are the ways our younger self adapted to whatever emotional climate you grew up in.
And yes there is a lot of hope, you can change and alter one’s attachment style. That is one of the most powerful aspects that therapy can support. When these dynamics show up in the therapy room, and they will, they can be explored and navigated with a skilled therapist. Observing our attachment wounds as they arise in the therapy room provide us with bright clues about where healing can begin to happen.
Therapy as an Attachment Relationship
Most people see therapy as a place to vent, unpack old baggage, or learn new coping tools. That is all true.But at its core, therapy is a relationship between two people. In many ways, it is similar to your earliest attachments.
Think about it. You are sharing raw thoughts, fears, and hopes with someone who is emotionally tuned in, focused on your needs, and shows up consistently week after week. That kind of steady, caring attention is intimate by design. Your attachment style does not just appear here. It often becomes even clearer as the relationship begins to develop. For example, if you are anxious, you might crave your therapist’s approval, get rattled by silences, or spiral between sessions wondering if they are sick of you. If you are avoidant, you might keep things surface-level, dodge emotional topics, or cancel right after saying something vulnerable. If you are disorganized, you could feel torn, desperate to get close one minute and ready to pull away the next. When these attachment relational dynamics arise that doesn’t mean that therapy is failing, in fact, It means something real is happening.
Therapy is designed to stir up these old patterns so you can finally see them and start changing them within a safe relationship with a trained professional. A good therapist expects the defenses, the clinginess, the urge to withdraw. They keep showing up anyway.
Over time, that steady presence can rewrite your old story about what closeness feels like. It is how people start shifting from anxious, avoidant, or disorganized patterns toward secure attachment, where connection does not have to feel dangerous.
How Attachment Styles Show Up in the Room
Your attachment style does not wait quietly outside the office door. It sits right next to you on the couch. Below are a few examples of how each of the four attachment styles often show up once the therapy begins getting truly relational.
Secure Attachment
If you have a secure attachment style or have worked hard to build one, therapy tends to feel like a safe place.
You can be vulnerable without falling apart, take in feedback without panicking, and trust that your therapist is still there for you even if there is a bump.
It might look like:
Being open about struggles without drowning in shame
Getting curious about your own patterns
Recovering quickly after misunderstandings
This is the foundation therapy hopes to help everyone build, no matter where you begin.
Anxious Attachment
If your style leans anxious, therapy can feel like an emotional rollercoaster. You might crave constant closeness, get rattled by your therapist’s neutral expression, or worry endlessly between sessions. Did I overshare? Are they annoyed? Are they going to leave me?
Common signs include:
Sharing a lot right away to feel connected
Looking for frequent reassurance that your therapist likes you or will not disappear
Feeling hurt or panicked if they miss a subtle cue
Moments when you feel deeply understood can also trigger alarms. What if this goes away? What if they learn more and decide I am too much?
Avoidant Attachment
If you lean avoidant, therapy might feel awkward or even threatening. Why dig into feelings you have worked so hard to keep under control?
In the room, this might look like:
Minimizing struggles or cracking jokes to keep things light
Steering back to safe topics instead of staying with emotions
Canceling sessions after opening up more than usual
Deep down, needing someone might feel weak or dangerous. Your therapist’s gentle questions about closeness can sometimes feel like too much.
This dynamic is common not only in therapy but also in romantic or familial relationships. If you want to explore this more deeply, you might find it helpful to read about how avoidant and insecure attachment dynamics play out in relationships.
Disorganized Attachment
Disorganized attachment often grows out of childhood situations where love and fear were tangled together.
In therapy, it can show up as a confusing push-pull. You want connection but also brace for harm.
It might look like:
Swinging between oversharing and suddenly shutting down
Feeling intensely bonded one moment and suspicious the next
Zoning out or dissociating when things get too close
It can seem chaotic, but that is okay. A skilled therapist expects this and knows how to stay grounded, helping you slowly move toward something safer.
Attunement Bliss: The High of Being Deeply Seen
Every so often, something incredible happens in therapy. You say something raw, maybe even ugly, expecting judgment or distance. Instead, your therapist meets you with warmth and does not flinch.
That is attunement. When it happens, it is like your whole body finally relaxes.
Trauma expert Janina Fisher calls this attunement bliss. It is the rush of feeling truly seen and understood, sometimes for the first time. For people with anxious or disorganized attachment styles, it can be life-changing and oddly painful.
On one hand, it is exactly what you needed. On the other, it highlights how long you have gone without it.
I did not even know I needed this. I did not know how much I missed this.
It is normal to feel joy, then fear.
What if this disappears? What if I ruin it? What if I am not really worthy?
This is why your therapist’s steady presence matters more than getting it right every time. True healing does not come from one perfect moment. It comes from them showing up again and again, proving that closeness does not have to end in rejection.
Bit by bit, this is how secure attachment starts to grow, right there in the therapy room.
Rupture and Repair: The Real Work of Relationship
Rupture and repair happens in all kinds of relationships, including the therapeutic relationship
Most people do not realize this about therapy, or about any relationship. Missteps are not just unavoidable, they are often necessary.
Your therapist might misunderstand you. They might seem distracted when you are sharing something huge. Maybe they push too hard, or you leave feeling raw and exposed.
Cue the old thoughts:
See? People always let you down.
You were too much.
Better shut it down before it hurts more.
But this is where therapy does its deepest work. Unlike many people in your past, a good therapist does not ignore it or pretend nothing happened. They name it, invite you to explore it, and stay with you.
This is called rupture and repair. It teaches you that relationships can survive awkwardness, misunderstandings, and even pain, and still be okay.
Author and therapist Nicole Arzt writes about how these moments are not failures. They are chances to experience something completely different from your old patterns. Not perfection, but something real. A relationship that can bend, apologize, and continue.
If you ever leave a session feeling bruised or unsettled, do not ghost. Bring it up. The repair might feel uncomfortable, but it is often more healing than a dozen smooth sessions.
Mutual Humanity: The Therapist Isn’t a Blank Slate
There is an old idea that therapists should be blank screens, perfectly neutral and untouched by feelings.
But therapists are human. They have their own attachment styles, wounds, and tender places that can light up alongside yours.
Nicole Arzt often challenges the myth that good therapy means being a stone wall. The truth is therapy is a relationship between two people. Even if your therapist does not share personal stories, you will still sense their humanity in small ways. It shows in the way they smile, pause thoughtfully, or even tear up with you.
Sometimes your story stirs up their story. This is called countertransference. A good therapist knows how to notice it and handle it so it is not yours to manage. If you pick up on small shifts, you are probably not imagining it. You might just be more attuned than you realized.
What matters most is not that your therapist is flawless. It is that they are grounded, self-aware, and willing to work through bumps. That is how trust builds.
When two imperfect people show up together, one to explore and the other to hold steady, old wounds finally have a chance to heal.
How to Use This Awareness as a Client
So what do you do with all this? Now that you see how your attachment style shapes therapy, how can you work with it?
Start by noticing your patterns:
Do you crave reassurance after sessions or panic if your therapist does not reply quickly?
Do you steer away from feelings, joke around, or change the subject when things get close?
Do moments of feeling deeply seen feel wonderful, then suddenly terrifying?
None of this means you are failing at therapy. It is actually valuable information. It shows exactly where your deepest work is.
Try bringing it into the room. Say, “I felt anxious after last session, like maybe you were upset,” or “I wanted to leave when we got close to that topic.” A good therapist will not judge. They will help you unpack it and slowly build new ways of connecting.
Remember, the goal is not to become less attached. It is to become securely attached to yourself, to others, and even to the therapy process. It means learning that closeness does not have to cost you your safety.
Conclusion
Old patterns do not disappear just because you start therapy. In fact, they often show up louder in the places where you are most vulnerable. That is exactly why therapy can be so powerful.
If your anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment style starts getting stirred up in sessions, it is not a sign you are broken. It is a sign something real is happening.
Therapy is not just about what you say. It is about what you feel and how those feelings get held, explored, and slowly healed in a relationship built on trust.
If it feels messy, human, or even a little scary, that is a good sign. That is where the work lives. And you do not have to figure it out alone.
Ready to get started? Book a free consultation call to receive support and get matched with a therapist.
