Attached Research · 2026 Edition
What 11,793 people working on their attachment reveal about whether it can change
An original look at 51,676 journaling-based measurements from a help-seeking community — where attachment anxiety tends to shift over time, while avoidance mostly holds.
By Gabriel Uribe, Luis Goicouria, and Sophie Cheung · June 24, 2026
The attachment map — the real aggregate distribution of all 11,793 members (binned cells of 5+ users, not individuals). Pressing the button slides every point by the measured average anxiety change among consistent journalers. Observational, not causal.
01 / Overview
Most attachment statistics come from small surveys answered once. We looked instead at how patterns show up across tens of thousands of real journaling sessions — and how they shift within the same person over months. Members journal about twice a week (for those who stick with it), and also take lessons, meditate, and work through a near-daily set of guided activities; this analysis scores the journaling.
One caveat shapes everything below: these are people who came to Attached because they're working on insecure attachment. This is a portrait of a help-seeking community, not the general public — so read it that way.
Key findings
- Anxiety dominates. Average anxiety is 0.74/1.0; ~9 in 10 score above the midpoint.
- Security is rare here — between 3% and 14% depending on the cutoff, the mirror image of the general population.
- Patterns soften with practice. Anxiety fell ~0.15 on average among consistent journalers; 38% showed a reliable drop. (Observational.)
- The two dimensions behave distinctly — anxiety tracks daily mood; avoidance doesn't — as theory predicts.
02 / The two dimensions
A community running high on anxiety
Attachment lives on two dimensions: anxiety (fear of abandonment) and avoidance (discomfort with closeness). Here, anxiety is near-universal while avoidance varies widely.
How we measure it: each journal entry is read by an AI rater (Google Gemini 3 Flash) prompted to score attachment on the established ECR-R scale (1–7), averaged over three passes and rescaled to 0–1 — so 0.5 is the scale's midpoint. Full method in the whitepaper.
Share of users above the 0.5 midpoint (n = 11,793).
03 / The four styles
The labels depend on where you draw the line
Cross the two dimensions and you get the familiar styles — but the cutoff matters enormously. Drag the slider and watch the picture change. That fragility is why we treat the continuous scores as the real measure and the labels as a rough map.
Current pattern at the chosen cutoff (n = 11,793). Values at 0.40 / 0.50 / 0.60 are measured; in-between points are interpolated.
“Attachment anxiety tends to shift over weeks of practice. Avoidance mostly holds.”
04 / Can it change?
Can attachment actually change?
Observational findingAveraging each person's first six vs. last six measurements (single entries are too noisy alone), attachment anxiety drops — and the more someone practices, the larger the drop.
Average decrease in anxiety by amount of practice. Effect sizes (Cohen's d) reach 0.82.
05 / Mood by pattern
How each pattern feels, day to day
Members also log how they feel on a simple mood grid (pleasant vs. unpleasant, high vs. low energy). People whose current pattern is secure report pleasant moods about 69% of the time — versus roughly 55% for anxious and fearful-avoidant patterns — and report high-arousal distress the least.
Self-reported mood check-ins, by current journaling-derived pattern; cross-sectional association (not causal). The avoidant group is small (~100 users).
06 / Methods & trust
How much should you trust this?
The detail behind every figure — expand what you want to dig into.
What people say vs. what shows up over time+–
At sign-up, people describe themselves as even more anxious-leaning than their behavior later suggests, and almost no one calls themselves secure. Self-image and lived pattern line up only moderately (r ≈ 0.36).
| Pattern | Self-described | Journaling-derived |
|---|---|---|
| Anxious | 64% | 51% |
| Fearful-avoidant | 12% | 39% |
| Secure | 2% | 6% |
| Avoidant | 5% | 4% |
Intake also included ~18% “not sure” (omitted above).
Attachment by relationship situation+–
People in a breakup show the highest anxiety; single users are the only group where fearful-avoidant outnumbers anxious. Cross-sectional associations, not causes.
| Situation | Anxious | Fearful-av. | Secure | Avoidant |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breakup | 55% | 35% | 7% | 3% |
| Long-term | 52% | 37% | 6% | 5% |
| Dating | 48% | 45% | 4% | 3% |
| Single | 38% | 48% | 7% | 7% |
How much should you trust these numbers?+–
Reliability. A single measurement is noisy (r ≈ 0.29), so we average: six entries reach ~0.71 reliability, ten reach ~0.80. Every change figure uses averaged measurements.
Validity. The anxiety signal tracks daily mood distress (r ≈ 0.22–0.25) while avoidance doesn't — the expected pattern. But mood isn't attachment; the definitive test (an ECR-RS questionnaire measured concurrently) is on our roadmap, and until then we don't claim this is a validated clinical instrument.
Who it represents. A help-seeking, mostly English-speaking, mostly adult community — not a random population sample. What we don't claim: no population prevalence rates, no diagnoses, no causal effect, no individual-level verdicts.
Methodology, in brief+–
Each journal entry is scored by an AI rater (Google Gemini 3 Flash) on the ECR-R attachment scale (1–7), run three times and averaged, then rescaled to 0–1 (so 0.5 is the ECR-R midpoint). A separate intake assessment provides each person's starting point. “Current pattern” is a 30-day half-life average of someone's journaling scores; categories apply a 0.5 midpoint reported with a 0.4–0.6 sensitivity analysis. Change analyses average first vs. last scores (primary six per side; sensitivity three and ten) and flag reliable change with a Reliable Change Index. Self-reported mood and wellbeing check-ins are used only to triangulate, not to compute the score. Scores are AI-generated, not human-rated, and aren't yet validated against a concurrent ECR-RS questionnaire. Confidence intervals are 95%; dose–response reports Cohen's d vs. the least-active group. Subgroup breakdowns require 500+ people, with cells under 30 suppressed. All outputs are aggregate and de-identified. Full methods in the whitepaper.
Want the full methodology? Download the whitepaper (PDF).
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For educational purposes; not medical advice. Figures are aggregate and de-identified. © 2026 SkyPorch LLC.