By Lenni Ferren, LPCC
As previously discussed in the first article in my series, attachment theory focuses on the bond in long-term relationships, usually between parent and child and later in life among romantic partners. Understanding how your attachment style affects your intimate relationships can help you understand your own behavior, how you react and respond to intimacy, as well as your partner’s attachment style. Let’s explore avoidant attachment: how it is formed, how it shows up in your life, and how to heal.
Avoidant Attachment
In Childhood
Avoidant attachment develops in early childhood when caregivers don't adequately or appropriately respond to a baby's or toddler's cues that they need something. For example, when you were a baby, you cried when you were hungry or when you wanted to be held. To get your needs met, you might have started with squeals, and if those cues did not work, you would cry. If crying did not get the desired response you would cry louder and with more urgency. If your primary caregiver did not respond to any of these cues, you learned that you could not rely on your primary caregiver to meet your needs.
As you got older, maybe one or both of your primary caregivers rejected your big emotions. Perhaps they would get angry, punish you, or shame you by saying things like, “You’re being a baby,” “Stop crying,” or “What’s wrong with you?” Your caregivers may have ignored your cues of distress and expected you to handle your emotions like an adult, even when it was not developmentally appropriate for your age. Because they were not there to support you or validate your emotions in the way you needed, you learned again that you could not rely on them to get your needs met or that your emotions might lead to punishment. You began developing a coping strategy where you had to rely on yourself to meet your own needs and internalized the message that relying on others is dangerous, selfish, or wrong.
In Adulthood
As an adult with an avoidant attachment style, deep intimacy might feel unsafe. Because of the patterns you established as a child (distrusting those who should care for you, learning a need to take care of yourself to have needs met), reconnecting to an attachment system might be challenging and scary. Avoidant behavior in adulthood can manifest in a variety of ways. Here are some examples:
You have relationships, but as soon as they feel “too close,” you end them or sabotage them.
You are more comfortable with surface-level relationships and struggle to be vulnerable, even with people you care about.
You feel guilty or selfish for having needs in a relationship, especially if your needs conflict with others’ needs.
You feel overwhelmed or engulfed when a romantic partner asks you to share your emotions.
You feel the need to disconnect from others when times are difficult because this is how you learned to take care of yourself as a child.
When you are emotionally triggered, you isolate yourself, because reaching out to others with your needs and risking rejection or shame is too painful.
When we pull away from others or rely on defense mechanisms that isolate us from others–self-reliant to the point of detriment–we can't actually be in deep and meaningful relationships with others. Most importantly, we have a tendency to repeat patterns from our childhood (for example, we find partners like our parents who can't meet our needs).
But don’t lose hope! Developing an avoidant attachment style does not mean we can’t work toward secure attachment in our relationships.
Healing Wounds from the Avoidant Attachment Style
Feeling Your Emotions
The path to healing is to get back in touch with your emotions and to form a new relationship with them. Emotions are your cues to help you understand what you are feeling and what your needs are. In childhood, you learned that your emotional cues were fruitless, wrong, undeserving, or even punishable. Your emotions were ignored, and you learned to disconnect. You can unlearn that message! When you get in touch with your emotions, feel them in your body, and allow them to provide insight about your needs, you will begin to experience your emotions as friendly, not a threat. That shift will have a massive impact on your nervous system and your ability to regulate and self-soothe when difficult emotions arise. You will begin to feel more confident navigating emotional vulnerability in connection with others.
Understanding Your Needs
As a child, you learned that your needs would not be met, so you learned to cope by disconnecting from your needs, that only you can meet your needs, or even that you may not have wants or needs. The process to heal is to first recognize you get to have wants and needs and that they can be met. While this process might stir up shame and guilt, you can learn how to work through these feelings in order to fully come back into connection with yourself and deepen into relationships with others. Asking for support and bringing your needs into your relationships might feel risky, but it is essential to re-learn that it is safe to have needs and ask for support.
Moving Towards Intimacy
It will feel counterintuitive to move towards intimacy if you have an avoidant attachment style. Intimacy requires you to be vulnerable with the people that you care about, to share your emotions, and to bring your needs to the table. When you bring your needs into the relationship you are giving the other person the opportunity to meet those needs which deepens intimacy and benefits you both. Because you were denied this intimacy as a child, it might feel foreign and threaten the coping strategies you learned to feel a sense of safety. Avoidant coping strategies give you a false sense of security–a false belief that you are ‘safe,’ can’t be hurt, or can’t be abandoned–and you may notice all of the ways in which it is also causing you pain and affecting your relationships negatively. Moving towards intimacy is the path towards healing your attachment wounding, giving you the corrective emotional experience you did not get to have as a child.
Asking for help is the first step
We are not meant to do this healing work alone, especially if you already have an avoidant attachment style. Humans are wired for connection, we need each other!
Therapy is a safe container to heal painful childhood experiences, explore your emotions, learn about your needs and wants, move towards intimacy, and work relationally in real-time with another person based on your attachment style. You can also learn how to regulate your nervous system and self-soothe when emotional challenges arise. These areas of growth will foster more fulfilling relationships and a better quality of life. Here at Evolve in Nature we have trained therapists who specialize in attachment and childhood trauma and use somatic practices to help you get in touch with your emotions. We look forward to supporting you.