All These Feelings
(2016-2019)
All These Feelings maps the vulnerability of human attachment through data and design. Compiled from anonymous responses from 153 participants across the globe, Ana Vallejo transforms intimate reflections on romantic relationships into a nonlinear, poetic exploration of relational anxiety and avoidance. The book’s design translates data into visual form; each entry selected for this book begins where the participant’s attachment score falls between the four attachment-style quadrants developed by Kim Bartholomew in the 1990s: secure, anxious, ambivalent, or avoidant. The cover evokes the data through an array of emotion words in shifting colors, a visual interpretation of feelings as constantly evolving states.
Co-designed with NYU graduate and data scientist Andrew Hill, the anonymous survey used to gather the data includes demographic questions, a brief attachment-style assessment, self-analytical prompts, and inquiries about emotions in the participants’ current or most recent relationship(s)
Book Launch at Center for Book Arts on Sept 11
2026 Society of Topographic Arts Award
Shortlisted Communications Arts 2026 Design Award
Interview with Counter Collective
buy the book here
All These Feelings is an invitation to consider how we engage with the fears, biases, and vulnerabilities shared in the entries and meditate on what our reactions to them reveal as the boundaries between the self and other blur through anonymity.
In 1970, Mary Ainsworth and Silvia Bell observed in their “Strange Situation” study that infants display intricate patterns of approach, protest, and avoidance when they perceive a threat to their connection to a primary caregiver, long before they develop the ability to speak. Whether marked by security or unpredictability, our early relational experiences and coping mechanisms set the stage for how we handle closeness and conflict as adults.
“Internal Working Models,” as termed by attachment theory pioneer John Bowlby, refers to the mental frameworks that guide our expectations and beliefs about ourselves, others, and relationships. They involve our sense of worth and lovability, how we perceive others’ intentions or emotional availability, and how we assign meaning to events and relational cues that trigger our insecurities. These unconscious structures form the foundation for how we navigate intimacy and the potential for rupture or reconciliation in our relationships.
My
work
involves
a
fair
amount
of
risk
and
violence,
and
it
can
be
hard
to
find
partners
who
understand
this
and
know
how
to
support
the
strange
effects
it
can
have.
I
can
be
overbearing.