Understanding Your Attachment Style: How Early Wiring Shapes Your Relationship — And How Couples Therapy in Orinda Can Help You Change It

A Gottman-trained, relationally focused guide to healing old patterns, reducing reactivity, and building lasting connection in your partnership.

By Keith York, LMFT Couples Therapist in Orinda, CA

Your Attachment Style & Your Relationship: How Early Wiring Shapes Your Reactions — And How to Change It for Lasting Love

If you’re like most couples I see in my Orinda couples therapy practice, you’ve probably had moments that felt overwhelming — moments when you “lost it,” shut down, or spiraled even though part of you knew better.

In the world of attachment, trauma, and relational work, we call this an amygdala hijack: when your nervous system takes over faster than your wise, grounded adult self can catch up.

It’s not a character flaw.

It’s not proof your relationship is broken.

It’s early wiring — your attachment style — running the show.

In my Orinda couples therapy practice, I see this pattern weekly—especially among high-functioning East Bay couples.

And the good news? You can change it.

This post will help you understand:

• How your attachment style formed

• Why certain triggers — especially rejection or abandonment — hit so hard

• Why top-down tools aren’t always enough

• What kind of therapy actually rewires the deeper roots

• How couples therapy in Orinda can help you create lasting change, not just temporary insight

  
  

👉🏼 Have questions or ready to get started now?

Schedule your free 15-minute consultation now

Attachment Isn’t Just About Childhood — It’s About Your Nervous System Today

Your attachment style is essentially your nervous system’s best attempt to keep you safe.

If you grew up with:

• Inconsistency

• Emotional withdrawal

• Anger or unpredictability

• Shame around your own needs

  
  

…your system learned to adapt.

Maybe you got loud. Maybe you shut down. Maybe you overexplained, people-pleased, or tried to become “easy.”

These patterns become what Terry Real calls the Adaptive Child — the part of you that learned early how to survive but has no idea how to build healthy adult intimacy.

When your partner pulls away, criticizes you, or even just looks disappointed…your Adaptive Child reacts as if you’re six years old and alone in the kitchen begging your mother to look at you while she washes the dishes in silence.

This is what creates:

• Intense reactivity

• Overwhelm

• Rage

• Panic

• Numbness

• Shutdown

• The same fight, again and again

  
  

If you’ve ever thought, “Why am I reacting this strongly?” — this is why.

When couples learn how to slow reactivity and translate criticism into clear, relational requests, everything about communication begins to change.

Once couples understand their attachment triggers, the next step is learning how to communicate those needs without criticism.

👉🏼I explore this in depth in From Complaint to Request, a practical Gottman- and RLT-informed guide to changing how conflict unfolds.

Why You Can’t “Think” Your Way Out of Attachment Triggers

Top-down skills — like mindfulness, communication tools, Gottman repair techniques, or positive self-talk — are essential. They strengthen what Terry calls the Wise Adult, the part of your brain capable of connection, accountability, and repair.

But for many people, especially those who grew up with:

• Abandonment

• Rejection

• Emotional neglect

• Shaming or controlling parents

• Multi-generational trauma

  
  

…top-down tools aren’t enough.

When the emotional intensity is too high, the body says, “Not today.” You need bottom-up work too.

Bottom-up work gets into the deeper layers — the nervous system, trauma memories, protective parts, and carried shame that didn’t originate with you. This is where modalities like:

• Somatic trauma therapy

• EMDR

• DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy)

• IFS (Internal Family Systems)

• Attachment repair therapy

• Relational Life Therapy (RLT)

  
  

…begin to change the reactivity itself, not just your ability to cope with it.

For many couples, working with both top-down and bottom-up approaches is what finally shifts the pattern.

Reactivity to Rejection: Why It Feels So Big

One of the strongest attachment triggers is rejection or abandonment — real or perceived.

This is where many couples get stuck.

A partner raises their voice. Turns away. Takes a breath. Goes silent for 10 seconds…

…and suddenly your nervous system is convinced you’re in danger.

If you’re:

• Boundaryless & one-down, the reaction is often desperation:

  “Don’t leave me. Love me. Tell me we’re okay.”

  
  

• Boundaryless & one-up, the reaction often becomes anger, criticism, or control:

  “Get over here and love me right now.”

  
  

Both are driven by the same fear: Without you, I’m not safe. Without you, I’m not enough.

Many partners come into couples therapy believing they’re dealing with narcissism, when what they’re actually seeing is attachment trauma, shame, or nervous system dysregulation.

👉🏼 If you're not sure can you find out more about narcissism here: Is It Narcissism or Something Else?

This is attachment at work — and it’s profoundly human.

Why Understanding Your Attachment Style Matters in Couples Therapy

In my practice providing couples therapy in Orinda, CA, I help partners map out where they fall on what Terry Real calls the Relational Grid:

• Boundaryless & one-down (pleasing, shame-based, anxious attachment)

• Boundaryless & one-up (controlling, reactive, angry attachment)

• Walled-off & one-down (shutdown, depressed, hopeless)

• Walled-off & one-up (withholding, passive-aggressive, distant)

  
  

Your attachment style isn’t who you are. It’s what you learned. And what you learned can be unlearned.

Through relational, Gottman-informed, and trauma-aware couples work, partners learn to:

✔ Recognize triggers faster

✔ Reduce reactivity

✔ Create safer communication

✔ Repair after conflict

✔ Build healthier boundaries

✔ Connect from the Wise Adult instead of the

Adaptive Child

✔ Break multi-generational patterns

You don’t need years and years of therapy to shift this.

With focused relational work, many couples see meaningful change within 3–6 months.

Healing Your Attachment Style Is Not About Blaming Your Parents — It’s About Freeing Yourself

Your wounds make sense. Your adaptations make sense. But they don’t have to run your relationship anymore.

Attachment work invites you to:

• Stop carrying the shame or trauma that doesn’t belong to you

• Stop abandoning yourself to protect others

• Stop repeating the patterns you learned as a child

• Start building a new relational identity based in truth, worth, boundaries, and connection

  
  

This work gives you the ability to choose your reactions rather than be run by them.

It gives you the freedom to build the kind of relationship you never got to see growing up.

Ready to Change How You Relate? Start With a Free Consultation

If you’re looking for couples therapy in Orinda, marriage counseling in the East Bay, or a Gottman-trained therapist who integrates relational, attachment, and trauma work, I’d be honored to help.

I offer a free 15-minute consultation via Zoom, phone, or in person at my Orinda office.

This is a chance to:

• Ask questions

• Share what’s happening in your relationship

• See whether this approach feels right

• Get clear next steps toward real change

  
  

You don’t have to keep repeating the same painful pattern.

Your attachment style can change.

And your relationship can, too.

Reach out today to schedule your consultation.

Click here to schedule a free 15-minute consultation

Written by Keith York, LMFT, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Orinda, California, serving Orinda, Lafayette, Moraga, and the greater east bay area of San Francisco. Keith specializes in couples therapy with a focus in Gottman Method Therapy and Relational Life Therapy.

For more information about Keith please click here:

About Keith York, LMFT