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By Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC — Dual-licensed therapist in Los Angeles, featured in TIME, HuffPost, and Verywell Mind, specializing in attachment repair and nervous system healing
Last updated September 2025 • Clinically reviewed by Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC
Ever wondered “are attachment styles fixed?” Or caught yourself spiraling in a situationship and thought, “wait… do attachment styles change?” (Spoiler: yes, they can — and that’s not a bad thing.) Let’s talk about why you’re not stuck with just one, and how different parts of you might actually be showing up in totally different ways.
Yes — attachment styles can shift. Different parts of you carry different strategies for connection, so you might feel steady in one relationship and panicked in another. That doesn’t mean you’re inconsistent; it means your system adapts in context.
You’ve probably taken an attachment style quiz at some point — maybe a few. You read the results, skim the descriptions, and try to pick which one fits. “Am I anxious? Am I avoidant? Both? Is that even allowed?”
It’s weirdly unsatisfying. And, actually, you’re not the only one who feels this way.
Because most of those online quizzes are… not wrong exactly, just too small for what’s actually happening in your nervous system. They flatten out your experience into one label. As if your attachment pattern is a single thing that shows up the same way every time, no matter who you’re with or what part of you is online.
And for most people I work with — especially high-functioning, emotionally-aware folks who’ve done some work already — those labels stop making sense. They’ll say things like:
Most articles frame attachment styles like astrology signs — like you have one, it’s fixed, and that’s your whole story. But most of the people I work with don’t cleanly fit into anxious or avoidant. They feel secure sometimes. Other times they spiral. Or they shut down. Or they do both — in the same conversation.
The Part That Clings and the Part That Bails Are Both Trying to Protect You
You might have a part that wants to stay close — hyper-aware of any shift in tone, any text that takes a little too long. That part learned it was safer to anticipate loss than be surprised by it. Its job is to prevent abandonment by staying one step ahead of it. Even if it means scanning for danger that isn’t there.
But you probably also have a part that hates that. One that pulls away when things feel too vulnerable or when someone sees too much. That part might’ve grown up having to take care of your own emotions, or getting punished for needing too much — so it learned that closeness isn’t safe either.
Neither is “stronger” or more dominant than the other. They’re both running playbooks your nervous system stored years ago. And the more intense your early attachment experiences were, the more polarized those parts tend to be. They fight each other. One clings. The other bails. And you’re stuck in the middle, wondering why your reactions feel so big when nothing “bad” is even happening.
Here’s the thing: your nervous system doesn’t track emotional safety based on logic. It tracks based on familiarity. If a part of you learned love meant being useful, hyper-attuned, or invisible — it’ll interpret actual closeness as confusing, or even unsafe.
You might feel pretty secure in your friendships. But in romantic relationships? It’s a whole different story. That’s not random — and it doesn’t mean your quiz results were wrong. Here’s why that happens:
Romantic Relationships Pull Up Your Oldest Survival Strategies
Friendships can be vulnerable, but romantic relationships often pull from deeper layers. They activate the part of your attachment system wired for the parent-child bond — the earliest one your body ever knew.
That means even if you’re confident and connected with friends, your nervous system might still feel panicked, hypervigilant, or totally shut down when it comes to romantic closeness.
It’s not about maturity or logic — it’s biology. The systems that got wired in earliest are the ones that show up the strongest in love.
Here’s where most attachment content totally misses the mark:
You don’t just have one attachment style. You have different parts of you that carry different relational strategies — depending on who you’re with, how close they get, and what part of you is leading in that moment.
There’s a part of you that knows how to be soft, steady, and secure.
There’s a part that gets scared you’re going to be left.
And another part that wants to bolt the minute someone starts texting back too fast.
They’re all real. And none of them are the full picture of you.
If your attachment style isn’t one-size-fits-all, your healing shouldn’t be either.
That’s why I don’t work from a top-down, “change your mindset” approach. I work holistically with the entire nervous system — the parts of you that carry those patterns in your body, not just your brain. I help you get to know which parts are still on high alert, and how to shift out of survival mode in relationships that don’t require it anymore.
From the outside, it might look like avoidant attachment. But it’s not that simple.
Let’s talk about that part of you that holds it all together. The one that doesn’t ask for much. The one that says “I’m fine” when you’re absolutely not. It keeps things light, agreeable, maybe even fun — while never actually letting anyone all the way in.
This part didn’t wake up one day and decide closeness wasn’t for you. It learned that depending on others didn’t feel safe. Maybe you got called dramatic when you had a need. Maybe you were the emotional support system in your family before you even hit puberty. Maybe no one noticed when you were struggling, so you stopped showing struggle at all.
It’s not the “confident, self-sufficient adult” part. It’s the “don’t let anyone see the real you because that never worked out well” part. And it runs the show in so many high-functioning people I work with.
It’s the part that:
It’s you protecting yourself with the tools your system had access to at the time. And when we really dive into this part, we can see that it’s actually really anxious. And scared.
So if your therapist ever labeled you “avoidant” and it didn’t sit right — this might be why. You’re not pushing people away because you don’t care. You’re pulling away because a part of you still believes that closeness isn’t safe.
You know that feeling when you don’t text back right away — not because you’re too busy, but because something inside you freezes? Or when you go to share something vulnerable and then… don’t? That’s this part in real time.
It’s not just fear of rejection — it’s fear of dependence. The logic goes something like: If I need you, I can lose you. And if I lose you, I won’t know how to hold that. So I’ll just stay here — emotionally self-sufficient, semi-detached, in control.
It’s not wrong. It worked. But now it’s limiting.
When I say “parts,” I’m not talking about split personalities or anything like that. I mean the everyday emotional systems inside of you — the part that spirals, the part that shuts down, the part that performs, the part that tries to disappear before things get messy. We all have them.
Each of those parts developed its own way of protecting you in relationships. Not randomly — but based on real moments, real relationships, real needs that didn’t get met the way they should’ve. So now, when you’re close to someone? Different parts take the lead depending on who you’re with, how much is at stake, and what kind of connection your body expects to happen next.
Parts don’t all agree — they learned different survival strategies
Let’s say you’re texting someone you like. One part feels excited. Another’s already anxious because they took a little too long to reply. Another one’s like, “Don’t be needy — play it cool.”
That anxious-feeling part? It might’ve learned early on that you had to chase connection.
That detached-feeling part? It learned closeness meant engulfment, so space felt safer.
And that “calm and collected” part? It might actually be suppressing all the other parts so you don’t get hurt again.
None of those parts are bad. They’re adaptive. They just don’t always trust each other. Which is why dating (or being vulnerable at all) can feel like internal whiplash.
This is where Internal Family Systems (IFS) comes in — it’s a way of understanding your attachment responses through the lens of parts. Instead of labeling yourself as “avoidant” or “anxious,” we start to ask:
Because the truth is, most of your “attachment style” isn’t a style. It’s a set of nervous system strategies that got stored in different parts of you — and they each show up depending on context, vulnerability, and how close someone is getting to your real, tender places.
If you’re trying to “stop being avoidant” or “be less anxious,” you’re probably fighting with the very part of you that learned how to protect you.
The goal isn’t to get rid of that part. It’s to understand why it shows up when it does.
It might sound simple, but the shift begins when you notice: Oh — this isn’t all of me. This is a part of me who still thinks connection is dangerous. Once you know that, you don’t have to believe everything that part says. You can get curious instead of reactive. You can slow down instead of spiraling. You can pause instead of disappearing.
That’s how the work actually starts to rewire your brain. Not from forcing yourself to change, but from building a new relationship with the protectors who’ve been running the show.
You can read every book and understand every dynamic, but if your nervous system still feels like closeness = danger, those old patterns will win every time. This is why a somatic approach is so important.
You need to feel something different in real time — not just think it. Like having a hard conversation and realizing your body stayed present instead of shutting down. Or asking for reassurance and noticing you didn’t spiral afterward. That’s the kind of moment your nervous system remembers. That’s the moment the rewiring starts.
And when you do this work with a therapist who helps you track which parts are coming up, and how your body’s holding the memory — that’s when it clicks. That’s when you stop trying to force a new style, and instead become someone who experiences connection in a safer way.
If you want to understand how the body plays a role, here’s how I work somatically.
There’s a reason why some of your most anxious reactions show up in the quiet moments. Not when things are falling apart — but when everything seems fine.
That’s when the anxious protector part starts scanning. Noticing the microshifts in someone’s tone. Replaying the last text. Wondering if you were too much or not enough. That part of you isn’t trying to sabotage anything — it just doesn’t believe safety can last. Because historically, it didn’t.
And even though you might totally understand this and “know better” now? That part doesn’t.
Your brain doesn’t store emotional memory like a photo album — it stores it like a nervous system imprint. So even if you’re 35 and dating someone who is totally kind and consistent, your nervous system might step in and react like you’re 7 years old again and waiting to be picked up from school by a parent who forgot again.
This doesn’t happen because you’re stuck in the past. It happens because your body recognizes the same feeling, and steps in almost reflexly because it thinks, “I’ve been here better, I know what to do.”
And when protection means anticipating loss, bracing for rejection, or preemptively shutting down before you get hurt? Anxiety becomes the body’s way of preparing for emotional threat.
You’re on a work call. You’re fine — grounded, articulate, maybe even a little confident. But then you get an email from your boss and suddenly your chest tightens. That confident energy disappears. Now you’re second-guessing everything you said to them this entire week. Wondering if your work call actually didn’t go as well as you thought. A totally different part of you is front and center now.
And that part doesn’t just react to what someone says. It reacts to how their nervous system is showing up. If their energy feels distant, critical, rushed, or too intense, your body doesn’t wait to analyze it. It sends in the part that knows how to protect you.
So even if your “default” style feels anxious or avoidant or secure, that’s only ever part of the story. Different relationships — and even different moments in the same relationship — can activate different protectors. You’re not inconsistent. You’re responding in real time.
That part of you who goes numb at a partner’s frustration? It might not be about them. It might be reacting to a parent who used tone and silence to keep you off balance.
That part that panics when a friend cancels? It might not be about the friend. It might be carrying an old fear that if you’re not useful or fun, you’ll be left.
When your system goes into protect mode, it’s not just reading the present. It’s pattern-matching the past.
This is why attachment shifts can feel so sudden and confusing. You can feel totally “normal” in one moment — and flooded in the next. Your nervous system system is scanning for micro-signals that your conscious mind isn’t even aware of. And the part that steps in might have a very different attachment strategy than the one you think of as “you.”
Yes. Most people are. You might feel secure at work, anxious with dating, and avoidant when family asks too much. It’s not random — different parts of you show up in different contexts. Therapy helps you track which part is leading, and shift the patterns that don’t fit anymore.
No style is “unhealthy” in itself — they all come from survival. But disorganized attachment can feel the hardest day-to-day because it pulls you in opposite directions at once: craving closeness and fearing it. That push-pull leaves people exhausted and confused. Support can help bring steadiness back to your system.
Research suggests disorganized (fearful-avoidant) is the least common, but “rare” doesn’t mean there’s anything “wrong” with it. It often shows up in people with relational trauma histories. If you recognize yourself in that back-and-forth dynamic, therapy can help you work through it. Learn more about my approach to attachment therapy in LA.
If closeness feels shaky (like you either cling too tight, pull away fast, or go back and forth) that’s a clue. You might notice panic when texts don’t come, or relief mixed with fear when someone backs off. Insecure attachment is your nervous system trying to prepare and prevent a loss. It isn’t a diagnosis.
If this blog resonated with you — that feeling of, “Okay wait… I think I have multiple parts, and they don’t all want the same thing,” — you’re totally not alone. And you’re not doing anything wrong. That’s actually how our systems were built to survive.
In IFS therapy, we work with those parts directly. Not to shut them down, but to understand what each of them is protecting — and why. Especially the ones who feel stuck in old attachment patterns.
Some parts are trying to keep you from getting hurt again. Others are desperate to finally feel chosen. Therapy helps you understand their logic without letting them run your life on autopilot anymore.
If you’re in Los Angeles and want a therapist who doesn’t just label you as anxiously attached — but actually helps you track what’s happening in real time, in your nervous system and relationships — I’d love to work together.
I’m a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LMFT, LPCC) who specializes in what most people don’t realize is underneath their anxiety — nervous system patterns, attachment wounds, and old protective parts that are still working overtime.
In my work, we use tools from somatic therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and attachment theory — not just to talk about what’s happening, but to notice the exact moment it takes over. That moment when your brain says “you’re fine,” but your chest tightens, your stomach drops, or a part of you goes quiet to avoid conflict. We work with that.
I’m not a “one-size-fits-all” therapist.
If we work together, we’ll get specific. About your parts. Your patterns. And the relationships that are bringing it all up again.
I see clients both virtually and in person from my office in Los Angeles — right near Westwood, West Hollywood, and Culver City.
Whether you’re local or driving across town, IFS therapy can help you get to the root of what’s happening, not just manage symptoms. We’ll slow it down, track what your nervous system’s doing, and work with your internal parts — the ones with attachment wounds, the ones trying to hold it all together, and the ones that just want some relief.
