Your Attachment Style Isn’t Fixed—Therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab Explains Why
Learn why emotional flexibility should be the real goal
You know that friend who calls you back after a missed call and immediately demands to know why you didn’t pick up, already convinced something is wrong? Or maybe you’re the one who dodges every offer of help, insisting you’ve got it handled, then end up feeling lonely about shouldering everything alone? These classic examples can tell you a lot about your attachment style.
If you recognize yourself in either scenario, licensed therapist and New York Times bestselling author Nedra Glover Tawwab has a message for you: Those patterns don’t have to be permanent. In a recent conversation on the podcast What Matters with Liz, hosted by Woman’s World editor-in-chief Liz Vaccriello, Tawwab shared a refreshing perspective on attachment styles. It turns out the power to change how you show up in relationships is already in your hands.
What are attachment styles?
Attachment theory comes from developmental psychology and describes how early bonds with caregivers shape the way we relate to others throughout our lives. Researchers have broadly identified several patterns, including secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganized attachment styles. The concept has become widely discussed in popular culture, on social media and in self-help spaces, with many people using their attachment style as a lens to understand their romantic partner, friendships and family dynamics.
Woman's World Answers
Our attachment style can change
“Our attachment style is not set in stone, okay? Because we have choice,” Tawwab said. “And since we have choice, we can notice ‘wow, I want more connection, but I’m avoidant, which makes me hyper-independent,’” for example. She continued, “Because I know that I want connection, I have to override this programming that I have.”
Many people learn about their attachment style and treat it as a fixed diagnosis, something that explains their behavior but can never truly change. Tawwab pushed back on that framing, emphasizing that you don’t have to be stuck repeating the same relational patterns forever.
When anxiety takes the wheel
Tawwab also described how an anxious-avoidant attachment style can play out in friendships, drawing from her own experience. She described a type of friend who, after a missed phone call, reacts with immediate suspicion and worry. “You missed their call, and you call them back, and it’s like, ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone? What were you doing?’” Tawwab recounted.
The underlying dynamic, as Tawwab explained it, is anxiety—anxiety that people will leave, anxiety that something has gone wrong in the relationship. For anyone who recognizes that tendency, Tawwab offered a deceptively simple piece of advice: The next time you call someone back, just say hello.
“Your natural inclination might be to question them to cure your anxiety,” Tawwab explained. “But that’s not healthy for relationships. So we have to keep the big goal of connection and wanting to be in healthy relationships top of mind.”
Attachment styles are good information, not a life sentence
Vaccriello pressed on this idea, asking whether it would be fair to say that attachment styles can essentially be ignored if they can change over time.
“I think it’s good information,” Tawwab explained. “I think it’s good information about yourself. It’s like taking a personality test and saying, ‘Okay, I understand this about myself. I need to be organized.’ But how do you behave in a disorganized situation? Sure, it’s a deep need to feel that, but you should still be able to regulate yourself if something isn’t organized. The awareness lets you grow.”
Knowing your tendencies is valuable. But that knowledge should empower you to respond differently when your default patterns aren’t serving you, not give you permission to stay stuck.
You might not be the same in every relationship
“There are scenarios where we might be avoidant and one with one relationship and not with others,” Tawwab said. “We might be anxious in some relationships and not others. Maybe we’re anxious with our partner, but not necessarily with our friends. We do have that flexibility.”
Tawwab was transparent about her own experience with avoidant tendencies. “I feel like, with certain people and at certain times in life I’ve been avoidant. I’ve had a tendency to count the amount of friends and be like, ‘No more. I can’t let anyone else in. That’s too many,’” she shared.
But she then illustrated how she works to move past that impulse. “Then you think about, well, I would love to have a birthday dinner where it’s like 20 people at a table. I have to release this idea that more than five is too much, because I have a bigger goal of wanting more people around me, wanting more community. So I have to change the way that I show up in my avoidance,” Tawwab said.
The real goal: emotional flexibility
That concept, emotional flexibility, is the thread running through everything Tawwab described. Building healthier relationships is not about achieving a perfect attachment style or erasing your history. It is about developing the capacity to recognize your patterns, understand where they come from and choose to act differently when those patterns are getting in the way of what you truly want. The reward, according to Tawwab, is the thing most of us are searching for in the first place: genuine connection, healthier relationships and a deeper sense of community.
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