What Dr. Sarah Hensley Gets Right About Attachment (And What Introverts Need to Know)

Dr. Sarah Hensley’s work on attachment style has helped many people recognize why they pull close and then push away in relationships, why certain dynamics feel magnetic yet exhausting, and why emotional intimacy can feel both desperately wanted and quietly terrifying. Her accessible approach to attachment theory, which draws on the foundational research of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, frames adult relationship patterns as echoes of early emotional experiences, patterns that can be understood, worked with, and over time, changed.

For introverts especially, attachment theory offers something rare: a framework that separates the need for solitude from emotional avoidance, and recognizes that wanting quiet time is not the same as being afraid of closeness. That distinction matters more than most people realize.

Much of what I write about on this site connects to a broader conversation about how introverts show up in relationships, what they need, and how they can build the kind of connection that actually fits who they are. Our Introvert Dating and Attraction hub is a good place to start if you’re looking at the full picture, from attraction and attachment to communication and conflict.

Who Is Dr. Sarah Hensley and Why Does Her Work Resonate?

Dr. Sarah Hensley is a relationship coach and educator who has built a significant following by making attachment theory understandable and practically useful. She is known for explaining the four main attachment styles, secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant, in ways that help people recognize themselves without shame. Her content tends to focus on why people behave the way they do in romantic relationships, what drives the push-pull dynamic, and how self-awareness can begin to shift deeply ingrained patterns.

What makes her approach land for so many people is that she doesn’t pathologize. She treats attachment patterns as adaptive responses, strategies the nervous system developed to manage connection and safety, rather than character flaws. That framing is generous and, more importantly, accurate. Attachment styles are not personality defects. They are learned responses that made sense at some point and can be updated with the right conditions and support.

I’ve watched a lot of people in my life encounter attachment theory and immediately over-identify with one style as though it’s a fixed label. That’s worth pushing back on gently. Attachment styles exist on a spectrum, and most people have a primary pattern with elements of others, especially under stress. Hensley’s work generally respects this complexity, which is part of why it connects with thoughtful audiences.

How Do the Four Attachment Styles Actually Show Up?

Before going further, it helps to be precise about what each style actually involves, because the popular versions circulating online often flatten the nuances in ways that lead to misidentification.

Secure attachment involves low anxiety and low avoidance. People with secure attachment are generally comfortable with intimacy and with independence. They can tolerate conflict without catastrophizing, ask for what they need, and give their partners space without reading it as rejection. Securely attached people still have relationship problems. They are not immune to difficulty. They simply tend to have better tools for working through tension without the interaction spiraling.

Anxious-preoccupied attachment involves high anxiety and low avoidance. People with this style deeply want closeness but carry a persistent fear that it won’t last or that they’re not enough to keep it. Their attachment system is hyperactivated, meaning it’s constantly scanning for signs of rejection or withdrawal. When those signs appear, even ambiguous ones, the response can feel urgent and overwhelming. This is not clinginess as a character trait. It’s a nervous system that learned early that connection was unpredictable and that vigilance was the only way to protect it.

Dismissive-avoidant attachment involves low anxiety and high avoidance. People with this style have learned, often through early experiences of emotional unavailability, to suppress their attachment needs. They tend to value independence highly, feel uncomfortable with emotional demands, and may appear unaffected by relationship stress. But the feelings are there. Physiological studies have shown that dismissive-avoidant individuals show internal arousal in emotionally charged situations even when they appear calm on the surface. The suppression is a defense strategy, not an absence of feeling.

Fearful-avoidant attachment, sometimes called disorganized attachment, involves both high anxiety and high avoidance. People with this style want closeness and fear it at the same time. They may oscillate between pursuing connection and withdrawing from it, which can create confusing and painful dynamics in relationships. It’s worth being clear that fearful-avoidant attachment is not the same as borderline personality disorder, even though there is some overlap in the research. They are distinct constructs, and conflating them causes real harm.

Why Introverts Often Misread Their Own Attachment Style

Here’s something I’ve thought about a lot, partly because I’ve lived it. As an INTJ who spent years running advertising agencies, I was regularly in environments that rewarded emotional distance and self-sufficiency. I was good at appearing fine. Good at processing things internally before they ever reached the surface. For a long time, I assumed that meant I was securely attached. It took some honest reflection to recognize that some of what I called “independence” was actually a pretty well-practiced form of emotional self-protection.

Introverts are particularly susceptible to this misread because the behavioral markers of introversion, preferring solitude, needing time to process emotions, feeling drained by prolonged social contact, can look a lot like avoidant attachment from the outside. And introverts themselves can mistake their genuine need for quiet with a dismissive-avoidant tendency to deactivate emotional needs.

The distinction is important. Introversion is about energy. Avoidant attachment is about emotional defense. An introvert can be completely securely attached, fully comfortable with intimacy and closeness, while still needing significant alone time to recharge. Wanting solitude is not the same as being afraid of connection. Conflating the two leads introverts to either over-pathologize themselves or, worse, miss genuine avoidant patterns that are actually limiting their relationships.

When I look back at how I showed up in relationships during my agency years, I can see that some of my “I just need space” moments were legitimate introvert recharging. Others were me avoiding conversations I didn’t want to have. Knowing the difference is part of what attachment awareness actually offers.

Understanding how introverts fall in love and form emotional bonds adds important context here. The patterns explored in how introverts fall in love and the relationship patterns that follow show that the introvert experience of intimacy is genuinely different, not deficient, but different in ways that attachment theory needs to account for.

What Does Hensley’s Framework Offer That Standard Attachment Theory Misses?

One of the things I appreciate about Dr. Hensley’s approach is her focus on the relational dynamic rather than just the individual’s attachment style in isolation. Standard attachment theory can sometimes feel like a personality quiz, you identify your style and then feel stuck with it. Hensley tends to emphasize how styles interact, how two people’s patterns amplify or soothe each other, and what that means for the relationship’s overall functioning.

This is genuinely useful. An anxious-preoccupied person paired with a dismissive-avoidant partner creates a specific dynamic where the anxious partner’s bids for reassurance trigger the avoidant partner’s withdrawal, which then intensifies the anxious partner’s fear, which triggers more withdrawal. It’s a loop that feels like a personality incompatibility but is actually a nervous system interaction. Recognizing it as a system rather than a character flaw on either side opens up different possibilities.

Anxious-avoidant pairings can and do work. Many couples with this dynamic develop what researchers call “earned secure” functioning over time, through mutual awareness, honest communication, and often professional support. The relationship is not doomed by the dynamic. What matters is whether both people are willing to see the pattern and work with it rather than simply enacting it.

I managed a creative director at one of my agencies who was in what I could only describe as a textbook anxious-avoidant relationship. She was anxiously attached, her partner was dismissive-avoidant. Every time she brought up something emotionally important, he’d go quiet and distant. She’d escalate. He’d withdraw further. She’d feel abandoned. He’d feel overwhelmed. They eventually worked through it with a couples therapist who specialized in emotionally focused therapy. The relationship didn’t end. It changed shape. That’s the possibility Hensley’s framework points toward.

For introverts who are also highly sensitive, the emotional intensity of these dynamics can be particularly draining. The resource on HSP relationships and dating covers this intersection thoughtfully, because sensitivity and attachment anxiety often overlap in ways that compound each other.

Can Attachment Styles Actually Change?

One of the most important things to understand about attachment theory, and one of the places where popular content sometimes gets it wrong, is that attachment styles are not fixed. They are not destiny. The concept of “earned secure attachment” is well-documented in the clinical literature. People who began life with insecure attachment patterns can develop secure functioning through therapy, through corrective relationship experiences with safe partners, and through sustained self-awareness work.

Approaches like emotionally focused therapy, schema therapy, and EMDR have shown meaningful results in shifting attachment patterns. This doesn’t mean the work is easy or quick. Patterns that formed early in life and were reinforced across decades don’t dissolve after a few sessions. But they do shift. The nervous system is more plastic than we sometimes give it credit for.

There’s also a subtler form of change that happens through relationships themselves. A consistently safe, responsive partner can gradually recalibrate an anxiously attached person’s expectations. A partner who respects an avoidant person’s need for space without abandoning them can slowly make closeness feel less threatening. These changes happen slowly and often without either person naming them explicitly. But they are real.

What doesn’t change attachment styles is simply trying harder to behave differently without addressing the underlying emotional logic. I’ve seen this in myself. There were periods in my career when I decided I was going to be more emotionally available, more present, more communicative, through sheer willpower. It worked for a while and then it didn’t, because I hadn’t addressed what was actually driving the patterns. Awareness without the emotional work underneath it is just performance.

Thinking about how introverts experience love more broadly, including the emotional processing that happens internally before it ever reaches expression, adds important texture to this. The piece on understanding and working through introvert love feelings gets at something real about how the internal experience of attachment can diverge significantly from what’s visible on the surface.

How Introverts Express Attachment Through Action Rather Than Words

One of the places where attachment theory and introversion intersect in particularly interesting ways is in how introverts signal security and care. Anxiously attached people often use verbal reassurance-seeking as their primary attachment behavior, asking directly whether they’re loved, whether things are okay, whether the relationship is solid. Securely attached people tend to express care through consistent, reliable behavior over time.

Many introverts, especially those who are securely attached, show love through action rather than declaration. They remember details. They show up when it matters. They create conditions for their partner to feel safe and seen, often without making a production of it. This can be misread by anxiously attached partners who are listening for explicit verbal reassurance and not registering the quieter signals.

I recognize this pattern in myself. During my agency years, I was not someone who said “I love you” easily or often. But I would drive across town in a rainstorm to help someone I cared about. I would remember, months later, something a person had mentioned once in passing and follow up on it. That was my attachment language. Not everyone could read it, and that mismatch caused real friction in some of my relationships.

The way introverts show affection is genuinely different, and understanding that difference matters for both partners in a relationship. The piece on how introverts show affection through their love language explores this in detail, including why introverts often express depth of feeling through presence and action rather than words.

When two introverts are in a relationship together, the dynamic shifts again. Both partners may be showing love through quiet presence, through acts of consideration, through giving each other space. The challenge is making sure that the silence between them reads as safety rather than distance. The resource on what happens when two introverts fall in love addresses this specific dynamic, including how to build closeness without either person feeling overwhelmed.

What Hensley Gets Right About Self-Awareness as the Starting Point

One of the consistent themes in Dr. Hensley’s work is that self-awareness is the precondition for change. You can’t work with a pattern you can’t see. And seeing your own attachment patterns clearly is genuinely difficult, because the defenses that maintain them are often invisible from the inside.

Dismissive-avoidant individuals, for example, may not recognize their own patterns because the suppression happens below conscious awareness. They genuinely believe they’re fine, that they don’t need much, that their partner is simply too demanding. The internal arousal that’s actually present doesn’t register as attachment distress because the system has learned to route around it. This is why self-report tools like online attachment quizzes have real limitations. They depend on accurate self-perception, and avoidant patterns specifically undermine that.

Formal assessment tools like the Adult Attachment Interview or the Experiences in Close Relationships scale are more reliable because they’re designed to capture patterns that self-report misses. If you’re genuinely trying to understand your attachment style, a conversation with a therapist trained in attachment-based approaches will give you more accurate information than any quiz.

That said, even imperfect self-awareness is a starting point. Asking yourself why a particular interaction triggered a strong reaction, why you pulled away when things got close, why you couldn’t stop seeking reassurance even when you knew it wasn’t helping, these questions build the kind of reflective capacity that makes change possible. As someone wired for internal processing, I’ve found this kind of reflection genuinely useful, even when it’s uncomfortable.

There’s also something worth noting about how attachment patterns interact with conflict. Avoidant individuals often shut down during disagreements, not because they don’t care but because emotional intensity triggers their deactivating strategies. Anxious individuals may escalate during conflict in ways that feel overwhelming to avoidant partners. The piece on handling conflict peacefully for highly sensitive people offers practical approaches that apply broadly to anyone whose nervous system is easily activated during relational tension.

Attachment Theory Is One Lens, Not the Whole Picture

Something I want to be honest about, because I think it gets lost in the enthusiasm around attachment theory, is that attachment is one framework among many. It’s a useful and well-supported one, but it doesn’t explain everything about why relationships succeed or struggle.

Communication skills matter independently of attachment style. Values compatibility matters. Life circumstances matter. Mental health conditions, neurodivergence, cultural background, financial stress, all of these shape how people show up in relationships in ways that attachment theory alone doesn’t capture. A securely attached person going through a major depressive episode may behave in ways that look anxiously attached. A dismissive-avoidant person who has done significant therapeutic work may show up with genuine emotional availability. Context always modifies the pattern.

I’ve seen this in the teams I managed at my agencies. Two people could have identical attachment styles and completely different working relationships based on communication habits, trust built over time, and whether they respected each other’s thinking styles. Attachment was a factor. It wasn’t the only factor.

Dr. Hensley’s work, at its best, holds this complexity. She doesn’t reduce people to their attachment labels or suggest that identifying your style is the end of the work. The identification is the beginning. What you do with that awareness, in therapy, in conversation with your partner, in the daily choices of how you respond rather than react, that’s where the real work lives.

For introverts building relationships that actually fit who they are, attachment awareness is one genuinely valuable tool. Paired with an understanding of introvert-specific needs around energy, communication, and emotional processing, it offers a richer map of what’s happening and what might help.

There’s much more to explore about how introverts approach dating, attraction, and long-term partnership. The full range of that conversation lives in our Introvert Dating and Attraction hub, which covers everything from first impressions to building lasting intimacy on introvert terms.

About the Author

Keith Lacy is an introvert who’s learned to embrace his true self later in life. After 20 years in advertising and marketing leadership, including running agencies and managing Fortune 500 accounts, Keith now channels his experience into helping fellow introverts understand their strengths and build fulfilling careers. As an INTJ, he brings analytical depth and authentic perspective to every article, drawing from both professional expertise and personal growth.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Dr. Sarah Hensley’s approach to attachment style?

Dr. Sarah Hensley approaches attachment theory as an educator and relationship coach, making the four main attachment styles, secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant, accessible and practically useful. Her work emphasizes that attachment patterns are adaptive responses developed by the nervous system, not character flaws, and focuses on how styles interact within relationships rather than treating attachment as a fixed individual label. She generally supports the view that attachment patterns can shift through self-awareness, therapy, and corrective relationship experiences.

Are introverts more likely to be avoidantly attached?

No. Introversion and avoidant attachment are independent of each other. Introversion is about energy preference, specifically that introverts recharge through solitude rather than social interaction. Avoidant attachment is an emotional defense strategy in which the attachment system is deactivated to manage the discomfort of closeness. An introvert can be completely securely attached, comfortable with both intimacy and alone time, without any avoidant patterning. Confusing the two leads introverts to either over-pathologize their need for solitude or miss genuine avoidant tendencies that are actually affecting their relationships.

Can attachment styles change over time?

Yes. Attachment styles are not fixed. The concept of “earned secure attachment” is well-supported in clinical literature, describing people who developed secure functioning despite insecure early attachment experiences. Change can happen through therapy approaches like emotionally focused therapy, schema therapy, and EMDR, through sustained self-reflection, and through corrective relationship experiences with safe, consistent partners. The process takes time and typically requires more than behavioral willpower alone. Addressing the underlying emotional logic of the pattern, not just the surface behavior, is what makes lasting change possible.

How accurate are online attachment style quizzes?

Online quizzes are rough indicators at best. They rely on self-report, which has significant limitations because some attachment patterns, particularly dismissive-avoidant ones, involve suppression that operates below conscious awareness. A person with dismissive-avoidant attachment may genuinely not recognize their own patterns and therefore answer quiz questions inaccurately. More reliable assessment uses tools like the Adult Attachment Interview or the Experiences in Close Relationships scale, ideally administered and interpreted by a therapist trained in attachment-based approaches. Quizzes can be a starting point for reflection, but they shouldn’t be treated as definitive.

Can an anxious-avoidant relationship actually work?

Yes, with mutual awareness, honest communication, and often professional support. The anxious-avoidant dynamic creates a specific loop where the anxious partner’s bids for reassurance trigger the avoidant partner’s withdrawal, which intensifies the anxious partner’s fear, which triggers more withdrawal. Recognizing this as a nervous system interaction rather than a fundamental incompatibility opens up different possibilities. Many couples with this dynamic develop secure functioning over time. What matters is whether both partners are willing to see the pattern clearly and work with it, rather than simply enacting it indefinitely.