In this chapter Tracy Hitchcock explores how attachment styles have a significant impact on our relational patterns. Different attachment styles are described and the importance of these is highlighted, using case studies to illustrate these and to show how they might manifest themselves in social and personal development (PD) group situations.

Tracy identifies how you may be tripped up by your relational patterns if you are not consistently aware of your own processes and how you can gain greater awareness of these through engaging in personal therapy and by also taking risks through exploring aspects of yourself in the PD group.

Through exploration of a case study and the application of the triangle of conflict and the triangle of persons, she shows how we can trace our relational patterns back to their origin. The chapter stresses the importance of being aware of our anxieties and defences and the origins of these and how they may impact on our relational patterns.