An attachment style is not a fixed trait. It is a strategy you learned in order to stay safe, and a strategy can be replaced. That is the view of physician and psychotherapist Hans Watson, who joined me on High On Healthy to talk about attachment, safety, and couples work.
A survival strategy that outlived its setting
Watson pushes back on the belief that attachment styles are genetic and cannot change. If that were true, he says, his job in psychotherapy would be useless. He reads it differently. When people say “that’s my attachment style,” they are describing how they adapted to a particular environment. In his words, “this is how I had to learn how to interact with the world to remain safe or to remain productive.” The trouble starts when the environment changes and the strategy stays the same.
This is why Watson starts with safety. What feels safe depends on the home you grew up in. He has seen clients shocked to learn that parents who swear, throw things, and hit during a fight is not normal. Before anyone lowers their defenses, in therapy or anywhere else, the two people need to agree on what real safety looks like.
Why one good experience is not enough
Watson describes a window, not a fix. In his work, psychedelic-assisted therapy for couples can lower defenses enough for a person to consider new ways of being vulnerable. In a lab study, MDMA raised emotional empathy ratings in healthy volunteers. In a mouse study, ketamine restored synaptic connections lost under chronic stress. Watson reads findings like these as new room to try a different response. The room only helps if you use it.
That is where repetition comes in. Watson says the learning looks closer to twenty times than once. First, you become aware that another way of relating exists. Next, you analyze the experience and ask whether you still live in the place that taught you to protect yourself. Then you collect many examples that contrast the unsafe setting with the safe one. The unconscious can learn, he says, but “It’s just kind of a knucklehead that requires to hear it a lot of times.”
He also warns that a shortcut does not work. If two people use a substance to skip the hard work of naming what is wrong, the benefits stay temporary. The people who gain most are the ones who want to understand what is blocking their growth.
One thing to try
This week, write down one habit you use to feel safe around other people. It might be pulling away, pleasing, or staying guarded. Note where you first learned it. Then, once a day for the next few weeks, record one moment when your present setting differs from the original one. That is a small version of the contrast Watson describes. If you are considering psychedelic-assisted therapy, talk with a qualified clinician first.