Attachment Healing Workbook

What this is

About the workbook

Attachment patterns formed early tend to keep running long after the situation that shaped them. This workbook helps you name yours and see where it shows up in present-day relationships.

Useful if you find yourself drawn to people who are slightly out of reach, or if steady affection is harder to sit in than it should be.

What is in the twenty pages

Twenty pages, printable as a whole pack or page by page. It opens with a How to Use page, then two education pages: "Where Attachment Patterns Come From", and "The Four Attachment Styles", which runs across two pages — secure and anxious first, then avoidant and disorganized. Next comes "Which Patterns Sound Like You?", an 18-item self-check arranged in three blocks of six statements.

Three pages then take each insecure pattern on its own — "Anxious Patterns Up Close", "Avoidant Patterns Up Close" and "Disorganized Patterns Up Close" — each ending in written reflection prompts. The worksheets follow: "My Relationship Patterns Timeline", "My Attachment Map", "Trigger and Response Log", "Asking Directly for What You Need", "Regulating Attachment Pain", "A Letter to My Younger Self", "Building Earned Security", "Weekly Reflection" and "Pocket Reminder Cards". The pack closes with "A Note as You Go" and an information page.

The order the workbook sets out

The How to Use page lays out six steps. Print what you need. Read the two education pages first, since they make the worksheets afterwards easier. Take the self-check without judging yourself — the page frames it as noticing rather than labelling, and the highest block count is used only to suggest which Up Close page to read first. Build your map, then track real moments. Practise the skills pages in low-stakes moments before the hard one arrives. Check in weekly.

There is a deliberate split between the two tracking pages. "My Attachment Map" is filled in from memory while you are calm: core fear, reliable triggers, automatic moves, the honest need underneath them, and what the pattern costs. The "Trigger and Response Log" catches the same loop live, a row at a time, over one or two weeks, with a short look-back section at the end of the week.

The skills pages

"Asking Directly for What You Need" gives one formula — when X happens, I feel Y, what I need is Z — with three worked examples and guidance on keeping X observable, Y a feeling word, and Z small. Below it sits a two-column table for translating a protest or withdrawal you actually ran into the direct ask hiding underneath it.

"Regulating Attachment Pain" splits into two lists, one for the urge to chase and one for the urge to run: setting a 20-minute timer before sending anything, five long exhales, drafting the message in a notes app instead, staying five more minutes, asking for a pause with a return time rather than an exit. Space follows to write your own chase-moment and run-moment plan. The page carries a caution about the slow-breathing exercises, including checking with your healthcare provider if you have a condition that affects your breathing or heart.

"Building Earned Security" is three checklists — in hard moments, in daily life, and in choosing relationships — with a line at the end for the two habits you will practise this week.

What to reprint, and what to read once

The education pages and the three Up Close pages are read-once. The rest is built to be reprinted. "Weekly Reflection" says to print a fresh copy each time: it carries a 0-to-10 rating of how loud your alarm was that week, a checklist of skills practised, and prompts for a moment you responded differently and a moment the old pattern won. The "Trigger and Response Log" and the timeline are added to a row at a time. "Pocket Reminder Cards" is a single page of six cards to cut along the dashed lines and keep where your hard moments happen.

What the workbook says about its own limits

The cover describes the pack as a printable self-help workbook based on attachment research and cognitive behavioural (CBT) skills. Its final page states that it is an educational resource — not psychotherapy, counselling, or medical care — and that using it creates no professional relationship with its creator. It also says attachment-style language here describes common relationship patterns rather than acting as a diagnostic label, and that no checklist in it can diagnose anything.

Two scope notes are worth reading before you start. The workbook says it is not designed for relationships involving abuse, control, or fear of a partner, and points to domestic violence support for that situation instead. And on several pages it suggests working alongside a therapist, ideally a trauma-informed one, where early caregiving was frightening or chaotic, or where the disorganized pages feel familiar.

Who this is for, and who should wait

The workbook is for someone who keeps arriving at the same painful place in relationships — chasing, running, or both — and wants to see the pattern clearly enough to change one step of it. It suits a reader who can take an 18-item self-check without turning it into a label, and who is willing to rehearse a direct ask on a low-stakes friend before trying it on a partner.

The workbook is candid about who should not work it alone. If early caregiving was frightening or chaotic, or if the disorganized pages feel very familiar, it says working with a therapist — ideally a trauma-informed one — is a genuinely good idea, and that the workbook should sit alongside that support rather than replace it. It is not designed for a relationship involving abuse, control or fear of a partner; that is a safety question, not an attachment style. Bring it to a clinician first if the letter to your younger self opens more than you expected, if you go numb or far away on the Up Close pages, or if you are in a crisis or a fresh loss. It is educational material: the self-check is a noticing tool, not an assessment, and attachment-style language here describes patterns, not diagnoses.

How it fits with therapy at TEO

The workbook is built on attachment research and cognitive behavioural (CBT) skills, which is also how attachment work runs at TEO: naming the pattern, tracking the trigger and the automatic move, and rehearsing the direct ask. Mohamad Shabib and Alison Shaji (British Columbia) both work in CBT; the attachment-based therapy and CBT for attachment styles pages describe the approach, and there are pages for anxious, avoidant and disorganized patterns specifically. Where the pattern was shaped by frightening early experience, both clinicians are EMDR-trained, Mohamad brings Internal Family Systems (IFS) to the young parts carrying it, and Alison works psychodynamically with inner-child material in British Columbia.

Therapy adds a relationship in which the pattern shows up live and can be repaired in real time — the thing a workbook cannot supply. Sessions are by video across British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador, evenings and weekends included, with a free 15-minute consultation first and individual sessions at $150 per 60-minute session.

Related pages: Attachment-based therapy · CBT for attachment styles · Childhood trauma therapy.

Common questions

About using this workbook

This workbook is educational. It is not therapy, not an assessment, and nothing in it is a diagnosis. If you are in crisis, call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7); 911 in an emergency. Kids Help Phone (for young people): 1-800-668-6868, or text CONNECT to 686868.

Download the PDF

If you want to go further

Working on this with someone

A workbook can take you a surprising distance on its own. If you would rather not do it alone, TEO offers virtual therapy in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador — evenings and weekends, with a free 15-minute consultation first and no obligation afterward.

Related: Childhood trauma therapy.

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