Avoidant Attachment Is NOT a Defect

So if you've ever heard about, you know, avoidant detachment style, an avoidant detachment style is typically, you know, you think of somebody who enters into relationships, they're open to relationships, but once things start to get a little bit serious or they get a bit more intimate in the relationship, the person pulls away and they put up a boundary or they become quite avoidant, literally avoidant of intimacy. So, you know, a lot of people talk about this and it's like to see it as a kind of a personal defect or a flaw that has to be fixed. And in fact, all of these attachment styles we have people talked about, talk about them, apart from one attachment style, talk about them like, Oh, I really need to work on this or I'm broken or something wrong with me. And that's really the wrong way to think about this. Okay. If you don't know the, there's four different types of attachment that we have. And these kind of typically explain how, how we interact. What's the dynamic going to be like for us when we're in intimate relationships. So the first one is the secure attachment style, which is, they say about 50% of the population is secure, which I don't buy. I don't know about you. I think it's, I think it's much, much lower than that, but this is people who are typically pretty comfortable exploring intimate relationships. They have no problem trusting the other person. It's typically considered the, you know, the healthy one, the healthy attachment to have all of these attachments are linked back to how we experienced childhood. Okay. And our relationships with our primary caregivers. So there's this secure type that's typically, you know, the healthy one. Then we have the avoidant attachment style, which we're focusing on here a little bit. And the avoidant one is much more about it's that, it's that pull push. The person pulls in or wants the relationship, but then pushes away when it gets into intimacy. So it's an avoidance. The other one is the anxious attachment style. And that's much more about feeling, you know, deeply insecure in the relationship. This person isn't going to love me. There can be a lot of trust issues and a fear of abandonment with that one. Again, you can think back to where that comes from in childhood. And the final one is the disorganized style, which is much rarer, or that's to do with, well, typically in childhood, if there's a lot of fear in the child's experience, maybe fear of the parent or the parent themselves has a lot of fear, it can dysregulate the attachment for the child and it becomes disorganized. But so none of these should be seen as personal defects. The whole point of attachment theory really is to, I think the way I use it is to think about it in terms of, okay, if I can learn this about myself, what my attachment style is, it's not, it's not pointing out a defect that I have. It's pointing out what do I need now in my life? Okay. So the avoidant type, a lot of people kind of complain about it because it can lead to problems in relationships in terms of people would say things like, well, this person with the avoidant attachment style was very, very charming at the start of the relationship. And they, you know, they held a space for the other person to reveal a lot about themselves emotionally. But looking back, you know, the other, the avoidant type didn't really share anything emotionally. So it can also be very, very hurtful, especially say if the other person is an anxious attachment type to be with the avoidant, that's kind of like the combination that people kind of talk about the most has been the most difficult because the anxious type will come into that space. That's held by the avoidant. And when the avoidant pulls away, inevitably it's going to lead to a lot of insecurity and anxiety. So there can be a lot of issues around this. Does the avoidant need to fix their intimacy, fears, things like that. Do they need to sort of feel safer to experience intimacy in the relationship? The way I think about it is this, what was it that led to the avoidant attachment style in the first place for that person? Typically, it's going to be in the primary caregiver experience for that child who develops the avoidant attachment style. There will be a lack of interest in the internal life of that child. So they may have all their physical needs met, but a lack of looking into see what this person's perspectives are, what's their personality like. This can come about maybe by two ways. It can be just a kind of a lack of interest and indifference towards this aspect of the child, or the opposite can be true. If the parent can enmesh or superimpose their own preferences and will for what the child is, or so they're trying to kind of almost live vicariously maybe through the child. And that's sort of like bulldozes the child's personality out of the way. And the child has no opportunity to develop a sense of self or to develop boundaries or preferences for what it is that they want in life. So that experience shows up later in the avoidance attachment style in relationships. But think about it this way. What does the avoidant need? The avoidant attachment style needs to develop a sense of self. Okay. Cause that's what they were missing in childhood. So in other words, what I'm saying here is it's completely understandable for the person who has the avoidant attachment style to not want to go into intimacy because that's a blurring. It can be a blurring of, of boundaries. It's almost like another enmeshment experience where another person's point of view and perspective and feelings are considered. Okay. And then to put it that way, it sounds bad. But from the person, the perspective of the person with the avoidant attachment style is what they need is to develop a strong sense of self. And that's going to be done by looking at what their own emotional needs are, because that's the thing that was really ignored for a long, long time. So on a practical level, what the avoidant can do is to be very, very clear with other people about what their boundaries are, what they're looking for in relationships. Okay. So it can be very, very clear if they're, if they're starting to see someone in a relationship, they can say, look, I'm not really interested in anything serious at the moment until maybe a certain point when they do feel they have developed a strong enough sense of self or an intimacy with their own emotional needs that then they can start to explore intimate relationships more earnestly. That's probably one of the complaints that, that people have about the avoidant attachment style, dating a person or being in a relationship with them is that they, they're not clear about what they want. So there's nothing wrong with what they want. Some of the issues come about when they're not clear about what it is that they want. So no, it's not this issue of, yes, you have to, as an avoidant, you have to force yourself into a relationship and deal with it because that's how you're going to learn to be in intimate relationships. It's to respect, this is my attachment style and it developed for a very good reason. It developed because I didn't get a strong enough sense of self or an awareness of what my own emotional needs are. And that's really where I should be focused right now. To be honest, I've seen this so many times when we're in relationships, in intimate relationships, and we're not really aware of what our own emotional needs are. You know, this is this work over here. We go into relationships, not knowing what they are and it's going to lead to all sorts of conflict in the relationship. Am I saying that you have to be perfect at knowing what your emotional needs are to be in a relationship? No, because that would mean nobody's ever in a relationship. But what I am saying is we always have, we always have an obligation to be aware of and to be meeting what our own emotional needs are. This self parenting thing that I've talked about in the past, that is basically what it is to meet your own emotional needs. So there's nothing wrong with an avoidant attachment style. If there's anything wrong with it, it's about not clearly communicating what they want in an intimate relationship. Beyond that, it's absolutely fine. Same with the anxious or insecure attachment style. Again, it's completely understandable that a person with that attachment style needs reassurances. And again, it's about being clear about what they want from the other person and having the courage to be able to communicate that very, very clearly from the off in relationships, really. So the only takeaway from that is in general, what I would say is stop seeing your attachment style. It's not, it's this thing about there's only one good attachment style and the other ones are kind of bad. Okay. That's, that's really the entirely wrong way to think about this. Even like a disorganized one, that person is going to require a lot of emotional support from people in their life support systems and a lot of stability in their life. Is there a defect with the, the disorganized attachment style? It makes perfect sense given what that person lived through. So it's not a defect in the person themselves. It's basically just a call for what this person, given this person now what they didn't get when they were younger. That's it. So guys, I hope that concept is useful. Maybe it's a different way for you to think about attachment styles in general and hope it was helpful and I'll see you again soon. Bye for now.