How Your Attachment Style Creates Workplace Conflict (And What to Do About It)

By Dr. Laura Greve, Founder and Licensed Psychologist, Health Psychology Associates

Michael*, a talented software engineer at a Boston tech company, sat in my Back Bay office describing a problem that was making him miserable. Every time his manager gave feedback, even minor suggestions, he felt personally attacked. He'd spend days ruminating, checking, and rechecking his code, and avoiding his manager. His performance reviews were good, but he was convinced he was about to be fired.

Meanwhile, Jennifer*, a marketing director at a biotech firm, came to therapy frustrated with a brilliant but impossible-to-manage employee. Any feedback made him defensive and dismissive. He'd argue about every suggestion and seemed to take professional disagreement as personal criticism. Jennifer was exhausted and questioning her management skills.

What neither understood was that they were caught in patterns shaped by their attachment styles, patterns creating unnecessary conflict in their professional lives.

What Are Attachment Styles and Why Do They Matter at Work?

Most people think attachment theory only applies to romantic relationships. But the relational patterns you developed early in life show up everywhere, including in workplace interactions. Understanding your attachment style and your colleagues' styles can transform how you navigate professional relationships and conflict.

Attachment theory describes how early experiences with caregivers shape our expectations about relationships and strategies for getting needs met. These patterns activate automatically in situations that feel important or threatening, which absolutely includes Boston's high-stakes professional environment.

The four main attachment styles are secure, anxious, avoidant, and fearful-avoidant. Each creates predictable patterns in how people approach relationships, handle conflict, and respond to work-related stress.

Anxious Attachment: The Overthinker

Anxiously attached employees are highly attuned to relationship dynamics and worried about rejection. At work, this shows up as overthinking feedback and personalizing professional criticism, needing more reassurance than colleagues, people-pleasing, and struggling to set boundaries, and catastrophizing about small mistakes.

Michael is a classic example: his anxious attachment made him interpret routine feedback as disapproval. His pattern of avoiding his manager meant he never got reassurance, making his anxiety worse.

For managers: Provide consistent, clear feedback. Don't wait for performance reviews to acknowledge good work. Regular check-ins help anxiously attached employees feel secure.

If this is you: Practice tolerating uncertainty rather than seeking constant reassurance. Recognize that not every piece of feedback is a referendum on your worth.

Avoidant Attachment: The Independent

Avoidantly attached people value independence and self-reliance above all. At work, this translates to resisting collaboration and feedback, dismissing oversight as interference, taking suggestions as attacks on competence, and having difficulty with authority.

Jennifer's direct report likely has avoidant attachment. His defensiveness and insistence on doing things his way aren't about being difficult. He's protecting himself from what feels like intrusion.

For managers: Frame feedback as support for their success, not correction of failures. Give autonomy while maintaining clear expectations. Respect independence while requiring collaboration.

If this is you: Practice accepting help and feedback as support rather than criticism. Recognize that collaboration isn't a threat to your competence. It's a skill in itself.

Fearful-Avoidant Attachment: The Unpredictable

Fearful-avoidant employees want connection but fear it at the same time. This creates confusing behavior: warm and collaborative one day, withdrawn and hostile the next. They might desperately seek approval while resisting authority.

For managers: Maintain consistent boundaries while being patient with inconsistency. Don't get drawn into drama or react to reactivity. Provide stable, predictable responses even when their behavior isn't.

How Attachment Styles Collide at Work

Workplace conflict often results from incompatible attachment strategies colliding. Jennifer (anxious attachment, seeking connection), working with her avoidant employee, is a perfect example. Her attempts to connect feel intrusive to him. His withdrawal triggers her anxiety about being a good manager.

Or consider: an avoidant manager who gives minimal feedback meets an anxious employee who needs reassurance. The manager assumes people will ask for help; the employee is too worried about seeming incompetent to ask. Both behave in ways that make sense for their attachment styles, but the result is miscommunication and stress.

Practical Strategies for Managing Your Patterns

The first step is recognizing your pattern. Which attachment style resonates? How do you respond when stressed? Do you seek reassurance? Become controlling? Withdraw?

Once identified, work on flexibility. If you have an anxious attachment style, practice tolerating uncertainty. Not every feedback moment needs reassurance. Learn to self-soothe your anxiety. If you have an avoidant attachment style, practice staying engaged in difficult conversations rather than shutting down. Accept that feedback supports your success. The goal for all styles isn't to eliminate your attachment pattern; it's to develop range so you can choose responses that fit the situation rather than default to habitual patterns.

Quick Guide for Managers

Anxious employees: Provide consistent, clear feedback regularly. Don't wait for reviews. Be explicit about expectations.

Avoidant employees: Frame feedback as collaborative problem-solving. Give space for solutions while maintaining accountability.

All employees: Clarity is crucial. Vague feedback or unclear expectations activate everyone's anxiety and trigger attachment patterns.

When Workplace Conflict Requires Professional Help

Consider therapy or coaching when conflict affects your physical or mental health, when you've tried addressing issues directly without improvement, when relationship problems affect your performance or career, when you're managing someone whose behavior creates team-wide problems, or when you recognize your patterns but can't change them on your own.

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About the Author

Dr. Laura is a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Health Psychology Associates, a psychology practice in Boston specializing in anxiety, perfectionism, relationship issues, and career stress. She has worked with hundreds of professionals navigating workplace challenges and understands how attachment patterns create both conflict and opportunity in professional settings.

*Client names and identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality.