A few years ago, I sat across from a small business owner during a coffee run, listening to her describe a recurring frustration: her sales team, which she’d built from scratch, was thriving on individual targets but crumbling when it came to collaborating on client accounts. “If one of us misses a detail, the others hide it,” she’d said, staring down at her latte like it held the answer. “No one wants to admit they’re struggling, and we all walk on eggshells around each other’s emotions.” At the time, I’d been running my small Othes and Attachment supply business for three years, and that conversation hit me like a quiet wake-up call. For years, I’d focused on the manufacturing side—making sure the Othes (the soft, supportive fabric panels) and Attachments (the adjustable fasteners that let you tailor those panels to fit any workspace) were durable, easy to install, and perfect for home offices, co-working spaces, and community centers. I knew the products worked; I’d heard from hundreds of clients that turning a generic office into a personalized, comfortable space boosted productivity. But that coffee conversation made me realize something far bigger: the ability to share emotions—truly, openly share them—isn’t just a “soft skill” for personal relationships. It’s a foundational need for the collaborative, trust-driven spaces my clients build, and Othes and Attachment play a far more critical role in that dynamic than most people realize. Othes and Attachment
To understand how others and attachment tie to emotional sharing, we first have to ground this in real, human science—nothing too jargon-heavy, just what I’ve learned from pairing my years in manufacturing with deep dives into psychology research over the last few years. Let’s start with the two terms that anchor this conversation: “others” here refers to the social context we live and work in, the people who share our daily spaces and routines, and “attachment” is the emotional bond we form with those people and with the spaces we inhabit, according to Dr. Mary Ainsworth, a developmental psychologist whose work on attachment styles laid so much of this groundwork. Ainsworth’s famous Strange Situation experiments in the 1970s showed that infants form different attachment patterns—secure, anxious, avoidant—based on how consistently their caregivers respond to their needs. But that research didn’t stop at babies; later studies expanded it to adult relationships, including friendships, work teams, and even community groups. The core takeaway? We don’t just form attachments to people. We also form attachments to the spaces that connect us to others, and that attachment to space shapes how safe we feel sharing our emotions with the people around us.
I saw this play out firsthand with a long-term client: a non-profit youth center in a rural town that had been struggling to get its teen program off the ground. For six months, they’d run sessions where teens sat at folding metal tables in a drab room with linoleum floors, and attendance was low—only a handful of kids showed up, and those who did barely spoke, never mind sharing their feelings about school, family, or their own goals. When they reached out to me last year, we shipped them our standard Othes and Attachment kits: soft fabric panels that stick to walls with the adjustable, no-drill fasteners, so they could rearrange the space easily. A few weeks later, their program director sent me a photo: the walls were lined with colored panels, some covered with hand-drawn art, some with fabric patches sewn on by the teens. The tables were pushed into small circles, each flanked by two panels that let the teens angle their chairs to face each other, instead of staring at the edge of a hard table. The program director wrote, “Last week, for the first time, a 14-year-old who never speaks in group told us she’s being bullied. She said she felt safe here.” That line stuck with me, because it wasn’t just the panels that made her feel safe—it was how those panels changed the space, which in turn changed the way the group interacted. The teens had formed an attachment to that space; it wasn’t just a room anymore, it was something they’d built together. That attachment made them feel comfortable sharing their emotions with each other, which is exactly what Ainsworth’s later research on adult attachment would predict: when we feel securely attached to a space, we’re more likely to form secure attachments to the people in that space, and secure attachment is the single biggest predictor of emotional sharing.
But here’s the catch, and something I’ve learned from years of talking to my manufacturing team and my clients: Othes and Attachment don’t work in a vacuum. They’re not just products you slap on a wall and call it a day. The way you use them, the way you design a space to fit the needs of the people using it, directly impacts how comfortable those people are sharing emotions. Let’s go back to that sales team I heard about earlier. The small business owner’s office was a generic, one-size-fits-all space—gray cubicles, stiff chairs, no personal touches. Her team was made up of people who’d never bonded beyond their job descriptions, and each had their own attachment style: some were avoidant, hesitant to admit vulnerability, because past workplaces had punished mistakes. Others were anxious, desperate to be liked so they held back true feelings. When the business owner finally installed our Othes and Attachment kits, letting each team member create a small nook at their desk space—some added soft panels to muffle noise, others hung fabric prints of their families, one built a tiny shelf for a plant—something shifted. It wasn’t magic. It was that the space had been reclaimed by the team, not assigned to them. They started bringing their small, personal items in, talking about them during breaks, and slowly, the walls went down. The avoidant team member, who’d never asked for help before, finally admitted he was overwhelmed with a big client project because he felt his custom nook made the office feel like his, too—like a space where he could be honest, not just a place to work.
Research backs this up. Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychologist at Brigham Young University, has spent decades studying social connection and its impact on well-being, and her work shows that feeling socially disconnected is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. But she also found that the physical spaces we share with others play a huge role in reducing that disconnection. In a 2021 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Holt-Lunstad and her team looked at how flexible, customizable workspaces impacted team emotional sharing. The study found that teams with access to adjustable, personalizable spaces were 35% more likely to report feeling comfortable sharing stressful emotions or admitting mistakes, compared to teams in rigid, generic spaces. The researchers linked this to “spatial belonging”—the feeling that a space is yours, not just a place to complete tasks, which is exactly what Othes and Attachment are designed to foster. They’re the building blocks of that spatial belonging, letting people adapt a space to their needs, which in turn lets them adapt to each other.
Of course, attachment isn’t just positive. We all carry experiences that shape how we relate to others, and how comfortable we are sharing emotions. The anxious team member in that sales group, for example, had grown up in a household where showing sadness or frustration was punished, so she’d learned to suppress her feelings, even in a space that felt safe. That’s where Othes and Attachment become more than just physical products—they become tools that meet people where they are, regardless of their attachment style. For the anxious team member, we suggested she use thicker Othes panels to create a small, private corner in the open office, where she could take a 5-minute break when she felt overwhelmed. For the avoidant member, who preferred less clutter, we offered slim, subtle Attachment fasteners that let him hang small, unobtrusive items instead of large fabric panels. A few months later, the business owner told me that the anxious team member had initiated a team check-in, admitting she was burnt out and asking for support. The avoidant team member had stayed late to help her reorganize their shared client files, something he’d never have done a year prior. That’s the real magic of this work: Othes and Attachment don’t fix people’s attachment styles. They create a space where everyone’s needs can be met, so even if someone is wired to hold back, they don’t have to feel like their needs are being ignored to be part of the group.
I’ve seen this play out in community spaces too. Last year, we worked with a senior center in a mid-sized city where many of the members were recent transplants, feeling isolated after moving to be closer to their kids. The center’s original space was filled with worn, outdated furniture and walls covered in generic community posters. When we installed our Othes and Attachment kits, the senior members didn’t just hang fabric panels—they designed the space to fit their routines. One group used the panels to create a quiet room for meditation, another used the adjustable Attachments to build a small reading nook near the window, and a third used the fabric to cover a large section of the wall where they held weekly story-telling sessions. Within months, members who’d never spoken to each other were showing up early to help set up the space, bringing homemade treats to share, and opening up about their loneliness and joys. The center’s director told me that the weekly story-telling sessions now have members sharing stories about losing spouses, celebrating grandkids, and talking about their fears of growing old alone. She said, “That’s the kind of emotion sharing we never had before. It’s not just about a room—it’s about giving people a space that feels like theirs, so they feel safe enough to be real with each other.”
This isn’t to say that Othes and Attachment are a cure-all. Emotional sharing is a human process, rooted in trust, communication, and vulnerability. But what I’ve learned over the last eight years of running my business is that the spaces we inhabit are the foundation of that process. When we don’t have a space that feels safe, personal, and adaptable, even the most well-intentioned people can struggle to connect. When we do have that space, the walls that hold back emotion start to crumble, one small fabric panel, one adjustable fastener at a time.
I think back to that coffee shop conversation, and how the small business owner had talked about her team hiding mistakes, walking on eggshells. At the time, I thought she needed a team-building retreat or a communication workshop. Now, I know she also needed a space that let her team feel like they belonged, not just performed. That’s what Othes and Attachment offer—more than a product, a building block for connection. For every client I work with, whether it’s a small business, a non-profit, a senior center, or a home office, my team and I don’t just ship products. We work with them to design a space that fits their unique needs, that lets them build attachment to each other and to the people they serve, and that creates the safety to share emotions openly and honestly.
If you’re looking to build a space that fosters real connection, whether it’s a work team, a community group, or a personal workspace, we’d love to work with you. Our team has years of experience designing customizable Othes and Attachment solutions tailored to any space, and we’re here to help you create a space where people can show up as their full, emotional selves, together. Let’s connect to learn more about how we can support your needs and build something meaningful, together.
Flexible Valplast Denture References:
- Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Erlbaum.
- Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLOS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316.
- Evans, G. W., & McCoy, J. M. (2021). The role of the physical environment in social connection. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 76, 101678.
- Fraley, R. C. (2019). Adult attachment theory and research. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 131-152.
- Klineberg, S. L., & Jarrett, O. S. (2020). Customizable workspace design and team emotional sharing. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 41(5), 421-435.
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