Post by anne12 on Jun 8, 2018 15:45:54 GMT
Dismissive AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT STYLE
Situational insecure avoidant style or avoidant attatchmentstyle can stem from:
Emotionally Absent Caregivers
Caregivers and parents with their own Attachment injury may not have the emotional capacity to provide their children with the security necessary for healthy Attachment.
Because the parent or caregiver never had a consistently emotionally available connection with their own parents, they failed to learn the skills and nuances of comforting and being present.
As the cycle continues, it can contribute to intergenerational trauma.
Physically Absent Caregivers
When mom or dad had other responsibilities vying for their attention, children are often left to their own devices for survival and self-soothing. This can be because of work, large family responsibilities, caring for an ailing elder, or even more tragic cases, such as serious illness or incarceration.
Single parents often have to make the difficult choice of supporting their families by working long hours, leaving siblings or single children to care for themselves. Their absence can over-develop the, “I can take care of myself” mantra of the Avoidantly Adapted individual.
Limited Nurturing Contact
Nurturing contact can range from physical cuddling and hand-holding to comfort or by actively listening and providing eye contact and reassurance through a non-physical connection.
Some families are more forthcoming with affection and connection than others. While hugging may be common in one family, a business-like approach to problem-solving might be popular in another. The key here is that individuals with Avoidant Attachment injury did not feel heard or understood, prohibiting their needs from being met.
For some children nothing in perticular has happend, but theres been emotionel neclect. Not enough/ a lack of:
warmth
comfort
physical touch
presence
attention
interest
joy
People that are dealing with avoidant attachment shut down their attachment system due to neglect or active rejection if it's related to parenting styles. This can also occur if they've only been related to when learning a task so that they become overdeveloped in the left brain with less access to emotional availability or responsiveness.
They also dissociate into parallel attention or activities that don't involve other people as a defense against their stress related to connection. In this case, the therapist needs to help the client learn to identify their needs and reach out and find comfort and soothing in regulation with another person for co-regulation and to enjoy the emotional connection.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/3916/adolescent-brain-second-window-opportunity
Corrective Experiences
As DAs have an underactive or shut down attachment system (the signal cry is turned off), they have to practice to:
be more active and open to include and experience others more in an embodied, nourishing way
move out of chronic aloneness and isolation toward more connection
invite a person into interactive regulation versus auto-regulation (disconnected from others)
learn how to participate in joint attention versus parallel attention (not including others)
access the right-brain, body and emotional awareness to better balance with the task focus of the left brain.
More about avoidant attatchmentstyle: (other therapists)
The avoidant often tend to avoid emotional challenges by avoiding them – either checking out mentally or even walking away
Regulation:
. Auto-Regulation
· Can be Dissociative
· Attachment System shuts down / attatchment system is underactivated
Narrative style
· Few words (minimalist)
· Might lack emotional vividness
· Factual
· Positive
Brain dominance:
More oriented to LEFT hemisphere
Focused on Future (do not talk much about the past or the now)
Bodylanguage:
The energy in their body goes up from their body and up in the head. This can give Them tension around the head and can give them a headace.
They can seem a little stiff in their body
Some of them dont use a lot of facical expression
They do not express a lot with their arms and hands
They can have trouble feeling their body from their neck and down
You can confuse them with a secure person
They often do not use a lot of words
If you ask how they are feeling, they can get confused
They can have trouble keeping eyecontact
Because they can find it difficult feeling their body, sometimes they can ignore (serious) injuries from doing sports ect.
They cant always feel if they are hungry, so they can look at their watch, to find out if they are hungry
They can be more masculine leaning
Parasympathetic leanig
More about narrative and Avoidant Attachment:
The Avoidant client may stick to the factual experiences without emotion. It may feel you need to pull words out of the client while they emit much of the emotional description.
Avoidants can become overwhelmed by other people’s words, especially if they go on and on or repeat themselves.
When in conflict, Avoidants are looking for the point or the story without embellishment. Avoidant behavior may make it difficult to get to the heart of the narrative because the client has grown accustomed to not having their needs met.
There tend to be an over activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, that takes us to lower energy, sometimes depression ect. A therapist can help an avoidant to up-relgulate the nerveussystem to allow the attatchment system to come ON again.
The avoidant as a needy person - Stan Tatkin and other attatchment therapists say:
The aviodants are not as good as they look!
They have a lot of inter-personel stress. Thats why they often feel relief, when they create distance.
Remember dismissing is just a reaction to the wound and nothing personel.
If you ask them: "What are you going to do without me, when I am gone" they can begin to realise, that they actually are going to miss you!.
Don´t ask, but say: "I know you are going to miss me! - and I have all this evidence", even if they look like they wont miss you. (It helps them to upen then window of tolerance and speaking to their dependency.)
Remember to be gentle, with a soft tone of voice and kind eyes.
They were not expected to depend as children, but they are actually very needy, and have a lot of unmet infant dependency needs!
They are more developmentaly delayd than a person with ambivalent attatchment style.
They are driven by mortal fear.
Speaking to the Heart of the Avoidant Pattern:
Be compassionate
Understand the danger of overwhelm
Their go-to is shut-down because it is familiar
Be present when the door opens for communication
Remember they often place a positive spin on narrative (even when it was not positive)
Often feel shame around having needs
Help them find relational attunement with kind eye-gaze
Use repair messages (it’s ok to have needs…)
Practice timely responsiveness
Avoidant leans toward future-focus
They minimize their longing for connection
Avoidant often upsets others through their withdrawal, especially relationally with Ambivalent. Helping them to open the door toward Secure allows the Avoidant client to re-wire those behaviors and historical expectations.
There are two types of avoidant attatchment style:
1: From birth, before birth or from 0-2/3 years old - mother who dident wanted the child, who prefered other siblings, mother/father who rejected the child, too much stress in the parents ect.
2: Have resigned later in life. Secure from birth or ambivalent before, but something happend later in life, where they have tried to reach out many, many times, but they finally had given up or they have experiend the loss of a relationsship that was important to them.
Important critical periods in life:
0-2 years old, teenager, when you move from your parents, your first love/partner with whom you have lived with, loosing important relationships later in life (parents/grandparents who died, loss of job, loosing people/friends/partners who were important ect)
This form of aviodant attatchmentstyle is of course easier to work with.
"Caretaking" of their parents selfesteem:
Some adult avoidants were tasked as children with regulating their caregiver’s self-esteem. (Some ambivalents have a history of taking care of their caregiver’s emotional well-being, and often becoming early victims (before age 14) of parent-child role reversal.)
Signs of dismissive avoidant attatchmentstyle patterns:
(maybe not all of them, but only a few traits combined with secure or any of the other attatchmentsstyles)
You are single-family, thrive best alone, go your own ways, is private
You subdue (unconsciously) the meaning of relationships with others
You "drive your own race"
You are easy to get calm and "land" yourself. But you are having difficulty letting someone else help you with this
You give (unconsciously) others a cold shoulder and overfocus on yourself
You are "up in the head" and may have difficulty to feel the body
Headache is common due to a ring of tension around the eyes and ears
You are intelligent and good at using your head - but have difficulty handling emotions
You are having difficulty experiencing and expressing feelings and needs - suppress or expose them to the better!
You have (unconscious) fear of wishing or desiring as it feels overwhelmingly vulnerable
You can "disappear" and get out of touch without discovering it yourself
You can suppress your wish for contact. You can convince yourself that you are best alone - that you do not need others
You can give up people / humanity and instead relate to animals, nature, spirituality, etc.
You have low expectations for others
You may feel like a stranger, wrong in relation to others, as if you do not belong here on Earth
You may have many friends and be engaged, but it is on a shallow level. You first meet the problems when you enter into a significant relationship of love - where the deep needs lie
You may find it difficult to read facical expressions and social cues.
Challenges in a Relationship:
You may be inaccessible to some extent and withdraw. It can be mental, emotional or physical. Your partner will experience it as being a distance
You suppress your needs - so your partner does not get a clear message about what you want or do not want
You condemn (unconsciously) and distance your partner's needs
You do not necessarily have much empathy, it may be completely lacking
You may despise (unconsciously) your partner's emotional expression. For example, you pull away if your partner cries or is angry. You speak disappointingly about emotional reactions
You are not (completely) up and are (completely) present in the relationship
You may have problems with the contact, such as eye contact or physical touch
You may have difficulty talking about relationships and feelings. You tackle things intellectually / practically instead. You do not say "I love you", but change the headlight of your partner's car or wash her clothes
More deactivating strategies:
When the attatchment system is activated or because of external stress ect.
Levine and Heller have a useful list of distancing behaviors (also called deactivating strategies):
• Saying (or thinking) “I’m not ready to commit”—but staying together nonetheless, sometimes for years.
• Focusing on small imperfections in your partner: the way s/ he talks, dresses, eats, or (fill in the blank) and allowing it to get in the way of your romantic feelings.
• Pining after an ex-girlfriend/ boyfriend—( the “phantom ex”— more on this later).
• Flirting with others—a hurtful way to introduce insecurity into the relationship.
• Not saying “I love you”—while implying that you do have feelings toward the other person.
• Pulling away when things are going well (e.g., not calling for several days after an intimate date).
• Forming relationships with an impossible future, such as with someone who is married.
• “Checking out mentally” when your partner is talking to you.
• Keeping secrets and leaving things foggy—to maintain your feeling of independence.
• Avoiding physical closeness—e.g., not wanting to share the same bed, not wanting to have sex, walking several strides ahead of your partner.
More:
“I take care of me. You take care of you.”
They tend to do whatever is necessary to avoid judgment and rejection, which means a low tolerance for blame or responsibility (and decreased likelihood of apologizing or acknowledging our their faults).
They need transition time into shared settings. They need time to surface from what ever they are doing - like a scubadiver. Give them time to come back. They can be grumpy or lash out, if they do it to fast.
They are drawn toward the illusion of connection, often describing their ideal partner as one that “gets” them in such a way that they need not put any effort into explaining, that they need not become vulnerable. This level of attunement is both the missing experience of empathy they lacked in childhood and the mirage of their attachment journey.
As a defense, they often remain intent on naming the absence of empathy, even seeking confirmation that their partners are not providing such a basic human need. They might say:
“This doesn’t feel like love.” Or, “I want to be loved, not needed.” More likely, they will say nothing.
Those on the avoidant end of the spectrum often feel helplessness in response to external emotion:
“You’re supposed to contain your emotion. If you can’t contain your own, I can’t contain it for you.”, reacting instinctively in ways that inhibit intimacy.
The avoidant tends to view time, space, and other resources in terms of scarcity. And when resources are viewed as individual possessions rather than shared, conservation often dictates competition and resentment.
“My time is not our time. We can’t both get needs met at the same time. When I’m with you, my needs will not be met.”
They can be affraid of "attack", because that is what they have been used to in their childhood.
Rigid boundaries: Avoidants do often have too rigid boundaries. They can practise having more flexible=healthy boundaries.
Beyond more obvious avoidant strategies like not speaking, physically isolating, chasing alone time and saying “No” by default in order to maintain space and physical regulation, they may utilize a wide range of more subtle strategies to conceal their needs and perceived inadequacies and ensure they avoid attack/judgment/rejection:
Deflecting or distracting: They redirect attention away from what they consider their flaws. This often presents as “shifting blame” if they tend to put the spotlight on someone else when they feel blamed or judged.
Scapegoating or gaslighting: They dismiss or invalidate perceptions/emotions. Invalidating reality, they tell others, they should not feel a certain way. Others around them may notice a lack of congruence between their words and nonverbal expressions when they deny their emotions in order to avoid conflict. (“You’re wrong. I’m not feeling that. I’m fine.”) As a result, their loved ones may question themselves, feel pathologized, take on blame in an effort to preserve relationship, and/or cease their behavior.
Placating: They give them just enough to claim they satisfied their request and then shift the blame (deflect) to them for not accepting this as enough.
Fixing: They offer others pragmatic solutions instead of being with them in their emotions (for fear they will realize they do not know what to do and reject them), then blame them (deflect) for not accepting their solutions.
Disowning fear: They let partners carry the relational fears and pursue and initiate so they never risk rejection.
Avoiding commitment: They keep a foot out the door in any relationship. They may also reject preemptively to avoid being rejected. They may even hoard resources (emotional, financial, etc) in preparation for the rejection they believe to be inevitable.
Rationalizing: After pushing others away, they create narratives to explain why they cannot move closer to them. This often leaves them confusingly oblivious to their own strategies and the fact that they are making things up as they go along.
Passive aggression: Because a direct expression of emotions feels too vulnerable and leaves them wide open for attack/rejection, they attack in subtle, deniable ways (such as using silent treatment to get attention instead of saying they feel hurt).
Justification versus assertiveness: They justify their needs instead of stating them and asking for support. Rather than admitting they need time alone, they say they need time to work to avoid hurting a partner who feels easily abandoned.
Many of them practice any number of these avoidant strategies, but this doesn’t mean they are limited to them. They also carry anxious and secure strategies, right along with the avoidant ones. The challenge lies in recognizing the strategies they default to and working to develop their tool belt of alternatives.
When can the features of the avoidant show up in a relationsship:
Theese particular feature generally does not appear during the courtship phase of romantic relationships. However, as the relationship begins to appear more permanent and settled, approach issues become evident in areas concerning time (interaction), space (proximity), and sex (libido).
The way forward - how do you heal your avoidant attatchment style/attatchmnet traits:
Discover and experience that the world is (relative) safe and friendly
Discover that you belong
Join your life instead of observing it. Take the driver's seat!
Allow your vulnerability to have wishes and needs in relation to other people
Develop your empathy for your own and others' needs, wishes, desires, dreams, feelings, etc. Practice feeling your body and your passion
Practice talking about your inner thoughts, needs and feelings - to share with your loved ones
Develop your trust that there is support from other people. Practice reaching out and asking for this
Practice appreciating your relationships and other people
If you walk away, get back to your partner quickly and repair
Go into therapy to experience another human being supporting you and helping you with all the old scares and rejections
Practise joint attention activities - go for a walk side by side with a friend, your partner ect.
Practise approching other people
Work with a therapist to help you to be better, at reading facial expression in others and social cues.
When you have to leave, tell the person when you are coming back.
Your most important key to more love is that dare to reach out for it. Opposite the ambivalent and disorganized attatched, you are the master of coping with yourself. The ability (created as a defense against the lack of presence and attention) is your greatest strength, but also the greatest enemy of love and presence. The way to more love is to open your heart and dare to show vulnerability. Show that you like everyone else need to love and be loved.
You already have the ability to love. It should not be learned. The development and learning lies in restoring the contact to your heart. You can achieve that through different techniques Techniques as ex. visualization exercises, home assignments and sound exercises that calms the nervous systems and support your way back to love.
Practise beeing precent:
Indulge yourself by showing your body and heart care. You can do it with a spa day, relaxing massage, freshly squeezed juice, healthy diet, meditation, fun music, good night's sleep, breathing exercises, fun with friends and nature experiences. The purpose is to do everything with presence and attention. Then you canget more in touch with yourself, and your need for presence and love.
Focus on the good:
You already have good things in your life. Practice focusing on it. Maybe you have a good job, good friends, colleagues, partner, good health , a nice home. If you think 'No, there's nothing good in my life right now' then focus on 'something' you really care about. It may be nature, a hobby, your pet that you are / has been closely tied to. In short, your thoughts make your reality. For the simple reason, focus on the good and nutritious, rather than the negative and draining.
(An attatchment/SE/gestalt therapist)
Remember, when we are doing deep work, the most challeging thing is, that we are often expecting to wake up in the livingroom with mom and dad. We have to make a reality test to find out that there are other people in the world, who are friendly and caring.
(Diane Poole Heller)
Help to get from your head to your feelings and your body:
- yoga
- massage
- showers where you concetrate on feeling the water on your skin
- mindfulness
- self- and co-regulating exercises
- bodywork
- dance (with or without a partner)
- practise joint attention activities - go for a walk side by side with a friend, your partner ect.
(An attatchment/SE/love/gestalt therapist/teacher)
More work exercises:
Working with the mental fundament
Do visionwalks
Working with visions with a therapist/alone
Body awareness and feeling sensations in the body
Deciding that you want to bee in this world
Eye contact (remember looking away and then look again is natural)
Hugs (not as threatening as eyecontact)
Remember people who have been supportive. Use the coming into secure exercise. h
//jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/880/self-regulating-exercises?page=1&scrollTo=12850
Titratiion/pendulation (SE):
To help the avoidant to Get from their head to their body a se/attatchment therapist Can use titrating where the therapist talks to the cognotive part of the persons brain and Then helps the person to go down in the Body for a short While and Then Up in the head again. The technique is from SE .
Also pendulation Can Be a good tool. Also a SE technique. The therapist Can also use touch, But in the beginning the avoidant would think That IT is weird to Be tousched.
(SE/attatchment/gestalt/couple therapist)
Dan Siegel - how to work with the two hermophires:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=xPjhfUVgvOQ
Diane Poole Heller suggests:
- Kind Eyes – For Attachment Gaze - www.youtube.com/watch?v=leVxB1l5NiY
- Welcome to the World – to be met and celebrated
Specific Corrective Experiences that can help break the grip of a wounded past and bring other people back into the Avoidantly-attached person’s life in nourishing ways.
These Corrective Experiences include the Kind Eyes Exercise that involves a person looking out into the world into the kind, loving eyes of someone looking back at them.
In this exercise, you imagine someone lighting up when they open their door and see you. You take that image and feel “into” your eyes and allow your eyes to reach out to that joy you see in the other person’s eyes.
Sounds nice, right? But this exercise requires a tremendous amount of trust and the overcoming of intense fear as an Avoidantly- attached person takes the huge risk of “looking again” after years of blinding themselves to contact, especially in their eyes.
When successful, this exercise helps to restore healthy contact and reduces the defenses and/or disconnection in the eyes.
The disconnection or dissociation can become a pattern from meeting too much hostility or vacancy as a child. This exercise accesses the original attachment gaze and gives it support, and perhaps emotional limbic nourishment as well, and exposes the original wound. We work with the attachment gaze to give it time to heal, discharge emotion, overarousal and the original distress. Often the eyes have stopped “seeing” in terms of actual contact. Safety in contact has to be restored to resurrect the possibility of deeper connection and for the client to literally see a new in a way based on the reality of today.
"Imagine you are looking out into the world and seeing kind eyes looking back at you. Perhaps you remember a time you showed up unexpected at a friend’s door, and they opened the door truly delighted to see YOU!
What happens in and around your eyes, your body, your emotional state? This guy, the Dalai Lama, has been through tons of trauma! But he’s definitely hooked up to a social engagement. You can see the contact in his face and the kindness in his eyes.
You might think about the people you’ve talked about that reminded you of secure attachment. Take a moment to close your eyes. Keep tracking what happens in your body, and specifically your face and your actual eyeball.
Imagine and if it helps to look at the Dalai Lama, you can open your eyes and use that imagine looking out into the world as a baby or a young child, and seeing someone (could be an animal, too) looking back at you with loving, kind, caring eyes.
Let’s take a moment to see if any person, or pet, or situation comes up. Sometimes it’s nature, but see if you can bring in actual eye contact from some source.
Notice what happens in your body, your emotional sense, your thoughts, and let your eyes move out to their eyes. Let yourself register their kindness, their caring, their love.
Take a moment to see if you can see that, take it in, and bring it back into your body, back into your eye, while you are maintaining an awareness of how it’s affecting you. It might be one person, it might be more animals and people anything that helps you connect to that loving kindness and passionate, caring presence that you can see in the eyes.
Another example might be stopping by a friend’s house when they don’t know you’re coming. You ring the doorbell and they answer the door, and they open the door and say, “Oh my gosh, it’s you! How wonderful to see you!” And you feel, as they are saying that, that you surprised them, but you feel authenticity in the fact that they are really glad you are there; they are really happy and delighted that it’s you at the door. They look at you with that “you are special to me” gleam beam truly, deeply welcomed.
Just notice. This might bring up a wound, or it might bring up pleasure. There are all sorts of possibilities, and there’s no incorrect response. We are just looking for awareness of what was it like for you in eye gaze. What do you expect in eye gaze? What happens when you see positive caring, nurturing, “you are special to me,” “I love you,” being communicated through the eyes?
Take a moment to feel what’s arising. Whatever is there is fine. You can track your emotions or thoughts, the sensations, images, the body’s reaction, the nervous system. And when you find an okay place to land, give yourself a moment to transition into opening your eyes when you are ready!"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=leVxB1l5NiY
Stephen Porges - polyvagel theory
And the social.engagement system:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=lxS3bv32-UY
Interactive regulation exercise rocking the attatchmentsystem m.youtube.com/watch?v=EoAqXh8hOZ4
Welcome to the World Exercise
is another highly effective Corrective Experience exercise for repairing Avoidant attachment.
In this exercise, clients create their version of a perfect, well-celebrated welcome of themselves as a unique being with very special contributions to make to the world.
The fulfilling and “full-feeling” experience communicated by the therapist (or other) and received by the client (or person) is: “We are so glad you are here. We have been waiting for you. I celebrate you and your very existence. You have the birthright to exist. I want to be in real contact with you. I welcome you. You belong here. We want you here!”
This Welcome to the World Corrective Experience helps clients regain the sense of their existence being celebrated. Instead of having one foot on the planet and one foot off— as if they have never committed to arriving here in the first place—they can land on their feet in a more connected, embodied, grounded way. Now the life force and brilliancy predominantly residing in their heads, including their often extraordinary intelligence, can more fully inhabit their physicality and beingness.
PS: The kind eyes exersice can also be used by FA/disorganised attatchment style.
Because it is difficut for the avoidant to feel the body, they can "ground" throw their eyes.
(Diane Poole Heller)
Film caracters with DA as main attatchmentstyle:
Miranda, Sex and the city
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJQLQA5mEg
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ntN7xwJpDQ
Fight between Miranda (da) and Carrie (AP Friend )
m.youtube.com/watch?v=O2GSZOodPis
Samantha, Sex and the City
Katja (business woman with dark hair), The bonus family (Netflix)
vimeo.com/288502043
Mr. Big, Sex and the City www.youtube.com/watch?v=m27vWqJU7zw
Schroeder, Peanuts
Samantha (Sam), Dear White People www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpZWHZC8g-Q
Books: Life will be the death of me
eu.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2019/04/09/chelsea-handler-life-death-me-book-memoir-brother-chet/3394394002/[
www.amazon.com/Answer-start-relationship-make-last/dp/9187441969
Selfregulating exercises (and co-regulation): (for breating, body, nerveussystem ect.) Learning co-regulation is important for the avoidant.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/880/self-regulating-exercises
How to be vulnerable:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1010/vulnerable
Trauma and shame:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1007/trauma-shame
There is a difference between self Worth and selfesteem
Because the dismissive have closed off from feeling their body and from feeling their feelings, they can't really know if they have low self-worth.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1051/love-tips?page=1&scrollTo=26381
How to help (regulate) your avoidant partner when you are in a breakdown:
Remember your partner is conflict avoidant, is trying to stay out of conflict/trouble, do not giving full answars but says "YES"/"NO", do not like to stay in physical/emotional contact under conflict for too long, that their need to be alone is about interpersonal stress and they therefore walks away/closes off, are afraid that you are going to trap them and force them to do something.
Do not give them a preview.
Do not take too long to get to your point.
Hit quickly, and repair and explain afterwards.
Catch and release quickly, say: "Come here, give me a kiss, tell me you love me, then go along" (do this before the avoidant feels that he/she needs to get away) (Stan Tatkin)
Scuba diving:
Communication: Like Slowly Coming Up for Air!
If you think of scuba diving, you just don’t dive in, like diving in a swimming pool – you go deep. You take time to adjust to the depth. You also can’t come up too fast because you get the bends.
So if you have an Avoidant in your life that you care about and they do love you, they just don’t know it—they are not very demonstrative. Having Avoidant Attachment does not mean someone doesn’t love you. They do love you, it’s just that the way they manage that, and, communication might be difficult for them. They do have a strong capacity for connection, it’s just that they have a lot of stuff around it.
Say you have an Avoidant partner, and they are on their computer and are deeply involved in it. You want to invite them to have an anniversary dinner or something so you say, “Honey, I want to take you to our favorite Italian restaurant.” Their first response would probably be gruff, and if you take it personally, you’ll feel repelled. You just say, “You know what? I know you are busy with your computer. I am wondering if in the next 10, 15, 20 minutes, or when you are ready to surface from that, you could meet me in the living room by the door so we can go have a good time at the restaurant.” If you let them transition, then they’ll buy in and talk to you. “Okay, I had my transition, now I am here, I am ready for the restaurant, let’s go,” and they can have a good time with you. If you don’t give them that time, then you get this kind of grumpy growl. They need that time, and they can’t do it fast. (Diane Poole Heller)
Exercise on needs:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1078/independence-dependence-inter-codependence
Exercise accepting what is - paradoxial change method:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1128/accepting-paradoxial-change-method
Walking patterns:
When you go for a walk, lets say when you are on vacation, and your partner almost all the time walks in front of you and your partner dosent notice that you could be out of sync: (maybe you have told you partner before, if he/she can wait for you to catch up, and your partner have said yes, but still forgets about it):
A solution could be : snap them out of it by suggesting that you go for coffee at a cafe nearby or that you want to bye something in a store. Then they maybe will wait for you or come back to you, and you can enjoy some time together. Avidants are often single focused and paralell focused instead of thinking of it as a joint adventure.
Often they do not notice, that they are out of sync with their partner, so if you take it personal, try not to.
The avoidant can also practise joint attention activities in their daily life - ex. go for a walk side by side with a friend, your partner ect.
(Recommended by Diane Poole Heller)
Being droped at the door step/how to keep a secure connection when you go out:
When you are at a big party and your partner leaves you without introducing you to people they know and they somehow "forgets" about you the hole evening:
Because DA´s are single focused, and in the left part of their brain, and they often do not think about it, a solution COULD BE:
Agree before you out to introduce each other to people you know at the party from your own "tribe" OR
make eye contact ONE OR MORE times throw the evening (an eyegaze) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grd9XLkn2hw OR
sit/stand together at a time through the evening OR
drop by and touch your partners shoulder and maybe ask if he/she are having fun.
(Stan Tatkin, Couple Bubble, Diane Poole Heller)
Do avoidants really want connection?
Often Avoidants don’t recognize they need their partners until the partner actually leaves, through divorce, death, separation, illness, or something else. Then, when they realize nobody is in the house, that’s when the crisis hits. It’s then that a very deep depression can happen, because they actually want connection like anybody else. It’s their adaptation, which seems like they don’t want connection. A lot of attachment writers sometimes they describe Avoidants as not wanting connection and that’s not true. If you unpack it, there is a very deep longing for connection; they want it like everybody else, and there are certain things that are in the way.
In the house but not in the same room:
It’s not that avoidants don’t want anybody around. For some avoidants the ideal situation is: somebody is in the house but not in the same room, so they have the experience of “somebody is around,” which is what their history usually was: they had a parent that was around, in the house somewhere, but not in contact with them, so they are comfortable with that.
Operating within a one‐person psychological system - an example: (Stan Tatkin)
Mandy and Mike are upstairs getting ready for bed. Knowing that Mandy is interested in business ideas, Mike reads her something he read in a magazine. A light bulb goes off in her head. Without saying a word, Mandy goes downstairs while Mike is still reading to her. She grabs a pen and paper to write the idea down. She comes back upstairs to find Mike who is now angry. She is surprised by his reaction and unaware of having done anything wrong. Mike complains: she was rude for walking out of him while he was telling her something. He’s angry because she seems to do this a lot in other instances.
Mandy, operating within a one‐person psychological system, "forgot" that she was with another person. Never occurring to her to share her thoughts about the idea with her partner, she instead ran downstairs to protect the idea herself. Had she been oriented to a two‐person psychological system, she would have used Mike as her pen and paper by sharing her thoughts with him thereby recording them within his brain. Mandy is alone all the time whether or not physically present with someone. This default position is ego‐syntonic without awareness of its downside. She is not oriented toward to utilizing her partner as a brain into which her own brain can expand.
When Mandy realized what she had done, she was shocked by her own behavior. She didn't understand why she would do such a thing even though it was quite natural to her. Though physically with Mike while getting ready for bed, she was in a dissociative state, autoregulating and unaware that she was with another person at that moment. Mike on the other hand was completely aware that he was with Mandy and so, for him, her walking away caused a momentary breach in the attachment system. The severity of the breach was moderated by her surprise at her own behavior.
There’s not enough limbic-to-limbic connection:
In Avoidant there’s a lot of isolation and a feeling of existing in an emotional desert, in a way. There’s not enough limbic-to-limbic connection in the caregiving dyad.
They’ve even made studies now, suggesting that memory of a personally felt sense of being somewhere in your past depends on having had enough limbic connection to make an emotionally-rich – versus just fact-based – memory. So if you’re born into a family where that’s not really available, it’s harder to develop an emotional sense of the world, an emotional sense of yourself, and also having a self-sense in your own narrative of your history of actually being there. You might remember going to school in the red brick building on Sheridan Street, but you don’t remember what it felt like to sit in that wooden chair. You don’t realize emotionally what happened with you and your first grade teacher or friends on the playground. So we’re looking to help people come out of that isolation.
Co-regulation vs. auto-regulation (and selfregulation) and positive dependency:
Another challenge in Avoidant Attachment is that from the get-go, if that was the original pattern, the child doesn’t learn how to interactively regulate – their body and nervous system actually don’t really know how to do it. And that’s something that needs to be brought back later, and because the isolation is so strong, often people don’t even recognize this lack of connection is particularly a problem.
There tends to be a lot of dissociative reaction, or dissociative style of Auto-Regulation that occurs without the presence of another person. For people that have an Avoidant style, one of the things we’re trying to teach them in therapy – or within the context of their partner relationship, if we’re lucky enough to have them in couples therapy – is how to co-regulate each other, and also how to experience Secure Attachment nourishment that was missing in childhood inside the present day relationship.
An exercise with Avoidantly-attached folks is helping them recognize the relational field, just to notice what’s even happening between the therapist and them, or someone that they have in their mind, or if their partner is there that’s really helpful, because they tend to feel stress when they are aware of the relational field.
They’re more comfortable, it’s more familiar to not be aware of the relational field, to be in their own sort of virtual reality. They might be resourcing about going through something where the therapist working mostly with the nervous system regulation, but they’ll keep referencing their own legs, or their own capacity, or their own something. And then I might say, “Well, I know your legs are there for you all the time, but I wonder if you’ve ever had that experience with a person.” And that’s a much bigger challenge.
What you need to understand is that we don’t want to just selfregulate, we need to interactively regulate, and we learn to self-regulate in the right sequence which naturally arises out of interactive regulation.
And you cannot develop the true autonomy, that a lot of Avoidantly-attached people feel they have, from neglect. Our necessitated sense of independence based on neglect is what I call a “Reactive Autonomy” that reflects a no-choice adaptation to a deficient caregiver, and is largely based on wound, not development. Capacities may be there, of course those can be great capacities, but they can be fear-driven or based on lack.
There also needs to be a positive dependency, and a true interactive regulation, in contrast to a reaction to the painful absence of a primary other – a caregiver or your relationship partner.
What happens when the avoidant opens up to relationsship:
Avoidants are not aware, how much energy it takes to try to stop their attatchment system. When they do open up to relationsship, and you are able to connect with them, there is a deep risktaking ect. They feel it more deeply than the ambivalent feeling their abandomend fear, because when the avoidant have to give up this numming out, that was helping them to deal with so much emotional pain, they do not have the tools to seek help from others (co-regulation).
When you do not really get interactive regulation from a nerveus system perspective, you do not build the physiologial capacity, to co-regulate and seek support. Selfregulation comes later in life than co-regulation.
Affect regulation is also difficult as their brain do not have the capacity for emotional regulation.
How to work with your avoidant partner once comitted to you and they see you as their "deep FAMILY":
Once committed, avoidants folks tend to distance more. Remember that in courtship our brains are on all kinds of love chemicals that make us act like the most perfect version of ourselves. Those things that later will drive us crazy, like how our partner snorts when they laugh, which seemed so cute when we are dating but is now repulsive. Avoidants can tolerate a lot more closeness during courtship thanks to the cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones we are on.
However once those hormones and neurotransmitters settle down as a real relationship develops, avoidants start to have more trouble with the stress of being close. They find close relationships more stressful than ambivalent or secure people so they are more prone to this problem.
Once committed they also tend to be more secretive. They may feel the need to 'protect' themselves as we become more important to them. Closeness can provoke a sense of danger to an avoidant so they will "beef-up" on their boundaries as the relationship progresses. Remember that this is NOT specific to you (they would do it with any partner) and also they are NOT conscious of it or doing it "on purpose".
Reassure them that you accept all of them and that they don't need to keep secrets from you for fear that you will judge them. This should help them feel more comfortable with the closeness and intimacy.
Once committed they are likely to be more protective of their alone-time.
Try to let them know that you respect their need to be alone some of the time and that you are committed to letting them have some of that. Don't let them be alone all of the time (which they may think would be good for them). In fact, if left alone too long they tend to neglect themselves! So they truly do "need" us, but they also need to feel separate and autonomous.
Once committed their preference for "auto-regulation" can become more pronounced. Auto-regulation strategies are things we can do alone to help ourselves feel more calm and happy, like listening to music, reading, watching movies, exercising, etc. Everyone needs some auto-regulation skills but don't let your partner over-rely on that strategy.
Help them use you for safety and security when they are under stress. They may protest against this at first, saying that they want to "be alone". But remember if under stress an avoidant would to better to seek solace in their partner, they just don't do that instinctively. The brain literally needs more resources to get regulated alone-- it takes more oxygen and glucose (the power sources for the brain) to calm down when alone. They are not aware of this, they feel "normal" being alone, even when upset. They don't realize that if they could "plug in" to their partner and use their partner to get calm that they would literally have more oxygen and glucose available in their brain for other things. Partner's help us save resources so that we can get more done, but avoidants do not come from homes where there was a lot of "plugging in" to other people for comfort. So they don't intuitively do that and they need to be shown the value of that.
Once committed they may start reacting poorly to being approached. This is especially likely if you come unannounced or they do not know you are approaching until you are there. They tend to feel that their independence is being threatened when their partner walks up to them. They tend to expect that you need something from them and this makes them uneasy.
Reassure them that you don't "need" anything from them but you just want to be around them because you love them. Let them know you are not using them for anything but rather that you choose them because you love and appreciate them. And try not to call them, especially by name, from another room. That tends to set off their alarm systems and they will likely react with anger or irritation. Instead go to them if you need them.
Once committed avoidants fear of engulfment from childhood tends to return. This makes them behave in all of the ways mentioned above.
Reassure them that you want them to have their independence and that you also know that even though they want their alone time you also know that they love you. They tend to be afraid that if they ask for what they need for in terms of alone time their partner is going to feel hurt. Let them know this is not the case. They also often have some shame about the feeling that their partner is overwhelming to them. They may not want to admit that they prefer being alone at times because they find relationships stressful. Let them know that you know this about them and you don't judge them for it. That can be VERY healing to an avidant.
Once committed avoidants can be peckish about feeling they are being used, as noted above, so make sure to tell your partner that you love them just for who they are. And don't always come at them with the "honey-do" list. Try to sometimes approach them just to tell them how great they are!
Once committed avoidants can experience a lessening of their libido/sex drive. A once pretty sexually active partner can seem to lose interest sexually. Be careful not to take this personally. They would be this way with anyone and it has to do with them coming from families where there was not a lot of physical closeness. Now that you have become "deep family" to them they start to unconsciously revert back to the patterns of their childhood attachments, which probably did not include a lot of close physical contact.
Of course you can continue to ask for physical contact but be patient with them and try to find ways of approaching that don't provoke a defensive response in your partner. Also be careful not to trigger a shame response when discussing this with your partner as they tend to feel ashamed and embarrassed about letting their partner down in this way.
Once committed your partner may start to doubt that you will really be there for them if they need you (even if you have already proven that you will be there!). This comes from their history of having to take care of themselves emotionally a lot of the time. So now that they have taken you in to their inner level they will expect you to neglect them somehow. Make sure to let them know that you intend to continue to take care of them and don't let them push you away in this area because they "know" you won't measure up.
Remember that all of the above is NOT personal, NOT conscious and NOT immediately under their control. Like any human being avoidant partners can learn about themselves and can learn new behaviors. But this often takes time and some professional coaching.
And one final tip on not triggering your partner:
Try not to ask them why they did something. Most people probably don't know exactly why they do what they do in a given day because most of our brain processes are automatic. If we had to consciously think of everything we do we couldn't walk and breath at the same time, let alone explain ourselves from moment to moment. And since avoidants are not prone to thinking about themselves they feel caught off-guard and put on the spot if you ask them to analyze their own behavior. It's more useful to give them feedback on how their behavior is impacting you (what you like and what you don't like about their behavior) rather than try to have them explain themselves.
It can be an old relationship that blocks you from moving forward. Maybe you have to heal your broken heart before you can move on.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1169/healing-broken-heart
Empathy Brenee Brown
m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw
Work With your feminity/masculinity tips:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1376/work-femininity-masculinity?page=1#post-27175
Shadow work:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1247/back-projections-shadow-work
Avoidant and ambivalent friends talking about their own attatcmentstyles:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJtsPW6LwhY
Stan Tatkin interwieved by an avoidant in relationship with an avoidant on creating intimacy in a relationsship:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hgBOk88AoI
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eph9Z96NF4E&feature=youtu.be
How to deal with an avoidant and interpersonal stress (Stan Tatkin and Jason Gaddis)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d_wA5SfwyE
Dan Siegel
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgYJ82kQIyg
Button up and topdown
m.youtube.com/watch?v=FOCTxcaNHeg
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/3044/reach-out-help-care-love
Are You affected by your partners feelings
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1045/addicted-partners-feelings
Terry Real working with difficult men, avoidant men, the man child, narc men, shame ect. catalog.psychotherapynetworker.org/sq/pn_c_001308_breakthroughresultswithdifficultmen_affl-70580
Always remember when in a relatinsship (Raja Selvam):
Raja Selvam has a significant point about relationships. "If your partner does not remain in resonance, when you need to land your system - you will feel abandoned. You will get a feeling, that you have to manage yourself. It feels very lonely"
Often we do not only have one attatchment style but traits from more than one.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1188/4-attatchment-style-decription-test
Here is how to heal other parts of you, with one of the other insecure attatchmentstyles:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1072/healing-ambivalent-attatchment-tips-tricks
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1073/disorganized-trauma-speeder-brake-drama
Secure attatchment style:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1185/secure-attatchment-style
The problem with texting (Stan Tatkin)
m.youtube.com/watch?v=YWufgMYpYcU
What not to say to an avoidant partner under stress - www.instagram.com/reel/CZX1yHytxSn/?utm_medium=copy_link
jebkinnison.boards.net/thread/1687/healing-power-doing-good-socialising
(The information in this long thread is from various therapists working with the attatchment therapy and SE therapy in their work with clients.
There is also information from various attatchment/SE experts around the world, SE experts, bodynamic workers, gestalt therapists, clinical psychologists, neorobyologists ect.
The material has not been edited. l
Situational insecure avoidant style or avoidant attatchmentstyle can stem from:
Emotionally Absent Caregivers
Caregivers and parents with their own Attachment injury may not have the emotional capacity to provide their children with the security necessary for healthy Attachment.
Because the parent or caregiver never had a consistently emotionally available connection with their own parents, they failed to learn the skills and nuances of comforting and being present.
As the cycle continues, it can contribute to intergenerational trauma.
Physically Absent Caregivers
When mom or dad had other responsibilities vying for their attention, children are often left to their own devices for survival and self-soothing. This can be because of work, large family responsibilities, caring for an ailing elder, or even more tragic cases, such as serious illness or incarceration.
Single parents often have to make the difficult choice of supporting their families by working long hours, leaving siblings or single children to care for themselves. Their absence can over-develop the, “I can take care of myself” mantra of the Avoidantly Adapted individual.
Limited Nurturing Contact
Nurturing contact can range from physical cuddling and hand-holding to comfort or by actively listening and providing eye contact and reassurance through a non-physical connection.
Some families are more forthcoming with affection and connection than others. While hugging may be common in one family, a business-like approach to problem-solving might be popular in another. The key here is that individuals with Avoidant Attachment injury did not feel heard or understood, prohibiting their needs from being met.
For some children nothing in perticular has happend, but theres been emotionel neclect. Not enough/ a lack of:
warmth
comfort
physical touch
presence
attention
interest
joy
People that are dealing with avoidant attachment shut down their attachment system due to neglect or active rejection if it's related to parenting styles. This can also occur if they've only been related to when learning a task so that they become overdeveloped in the left brain with less access to emotional availability or responsiveness.
They also dissociate into parallel attention or activities that don't involve other people as a defense against their stress related to connection. In this case, the therapist needs to help the client learn to identify their needs and reach out and find comfort and soothing in regulation with another person for co-regulation and to enjoy the emotional connection.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/3916/adolescent-brain-second-window-opportunity
Corrective Experiences
As DAs have an underactive or shut down attachment system (the signal cry is turned off), they have to practice to:
be more active and open to include and experience others more in an embodied, nourishing way
move out of chronic aloneness and isolation toward more connection
invite a person into interactive regulation versus auto-regulation (disconnected from others)
learn how to participate in joint attention versus parallel attention (not including others)
access the right-brain, body and emotional awareness to better balance with the task focus of the left brain.
More about avoidant attatchmentstyle: (other therapists)
The avoidant often tend to avoid emotional challenges by avoiding them – either checking out mentally or even walking away
Regulation:
. Auto-Regulation
· Can be Dissociative
· Attachment System shuts down / attatchment system is underactivated
Narrative style
· Few words (minimalist)
· Might lack emotional vividness
· Factual
· Positive
Brain dominance:
More oriented to LEFT hemisphere
Focused on Future (do not talk much about the past or the now)
Bodylanguage:
The energy in their body goes up from their body and up in the head. This can give Them tension around the head and can give them a headace.
They can seem a little stiff in their body
Some of them dont use a lot of facical expression
They do not express a lot with their arms and hands
They can have trouble feeling their body from their neck and down
You can confuse them with a secure person
They often do not use a lot of words
If you ask how they are feeling, they can get confused
They can have trouble keeping eyecontact
Because they can find it difficult feeling their body, sometimes they can ignore (serious) injuries from doing sports ect.
They cant always feel if they are hungry, so they can look at their watch, to find out if they are hungry
They can be more masculine leaning
Parasympathetic leanig
More about narrative and Avoidant Attachment:
The Avoidant client may stick to the factual experiences without emotion. It may feel you need to pull words out of the client while they emit much of the emotional description.
Avoidants can become overwhelmed by other people’s words, especially if they go on and on or repeat themselves.
When in conflict, Avoidants are looking for the point or the story without embellishment. Avoidant behavior may make it difficult to get to the heart of the narrative because the client has grown accustomed to not having their needs met.
There tend to be an over activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, that takes us to lower energy, sometimes depression ect. A therapist can help an avoidant to up-relgulate the nerveussystem to allow the attatchment system to come ON again.
The avoidant as a needy person - Stan Tatkin and other attatchment therapists say:
The aviodants are not as good as they look!
They have a lot of inter-personel stress. Thats why they often feel relief, when they create distance.
Remember dismissing is just a reaction to the wound and nothing personel.
If you ask them: "What are you going to do without me, when I am gone" they can begin to realise, that they actually are going to miss you!.
Don´t ask, but say: "I know you are going to miss me! - and I have all this evidence", even if they look like they wont miss you. (It helps them to upen then window of tolerance and speaking to their dependency.)
Remember to be gentle, with a soft tone of voice and kind eyes.
They were not expected to depend as children, but they are actually very needy, and have a lot of unmet infant dependency needs!
They are more developmentaly delayd than a person with ambivalent attatchment style.
They are driven by mortal fear.
Speaking to the Heart of the Avoidant Pattern:
Be compassionate
Understand the danger of overwhelm
Their go-to is shut-down because it is familiar
Be present when the door opens for communication
Remember they often place a positive spin on narrative (even when it was not positive)
Often feel shame around having needs
Help them find relational attunement with kind eye-gaze
Use repair messages (it’s ok to have needs…)
Practice timely responsiveness
Avoidant leans toward future-focus
They minimize their longing for connection
Avoidant often upsets others through their withdrawal, especially relationally with Ambivalent. Helping them to open the door toward Secure allows the Avoidant client to re-wire those behaviors and historical expectations.
There are two types of avoidant attatchment style:
1: From birth, before birth or from 0-2/3 years old - mother who dident wanted the child, who prefered other siblings, mother/father who rejected the child, too much stress in the parents ect.
2: Have resigned later in life. Secure from birth or ambivalent before, but something happend later in life, where they have tried to reach out many, many times, but they finally had given up or they have experiend the loss of a relationsship that was important to them.
Important critical periods in life:
0-2 years old, teenager, when you move from your parents, your first love/partner with whom you have lived with, loosing important relationships later in life (parents/grandparents who died, loss of job, loosing people/friends/partners who were important ect)
This form of aviodant attatchmentstyle is of course easier to work with.
"Caretaking" of their parents selfesteem:
Some adult avoidants were tasked as children with regulating their caregiver’s self-esteem. (Some ambivalents have a history of taking care of their caregiver’s emotional well-being, and often becoming early victims (before age 14) of parent-child role reversal.)
Signs of dismissive avoidant attatchmentstyle patterns:
(maybe not all of them, but only a few traits combined with secure or any of the other attatchmentsstyles)
You are single-family, thrive best alone, go your own ways, is private
You subdue (unconsciously) the meaning of relationships with others
You "drive your own race"
You are easy to get calm and "land" yourself. But you are having difficulty letting someone else help you with this
You give (unconsciously) others a cold shoulder and overfocus on yourself
You are "up in the head" and may have difficulty to feel the body
Headache is common due to a ring of tension around the eyes and ears
You are intelligent and good at using your head - but have difficulty handling emotions
You are having difficulty experiencing and expressing feelings and needs - suppress or expose them to the better!
You have (unconscious) fear of wishing or desiring as it feels overwhelmingly vulnerable
You can "disappear" and get out of touch without discovering it yourself
You can suppress your wish for contact. You can convince yourself that you are best alone - that you do not need others
You can give up people / humanity and instead relate to animals, nature, spirituality, etc.
You have low expectations for others
You may feel like a stranger, wrong in relation to others, as if you do not belong here on Earth
You may have many friends and be engaged, but it is on a shallow level. You first meet the problems when you enter into a significant relationship of love - where the deep needs lie
You may find it difficult to read facical expressions and social cues.
Challenges in a Relationship:
You may be inaccessible to some extent and withdraw. It can be mental, emotional or physical. Your partner will experience it as being a distance
You suppress your needs - so your partner does not get a clear message about what you want or do not want
You condemn (unconsciously) and distance your partner's needs
You do not necessarily have much empathy, it may be completely lacking
You may despise (unconsciously) your partner's emotional expression. For example, you pull away if your partner cries or is angry. You speak disappointingly about emotional reactions
You are not (completely) up and are (completely) present in the relationship
You may have problems with the contact, such as eye contact or physical touch
You may have difficulty talking about relationships and feelings. You tackle things intellectually / practically instead. You do not say "I love you", but change the headlight of your partner's car or wash her clothes
More deactivating strategies:
When the attatchment system is activated or because of external stress ect.
Levine and Heller have a useful list of distancing behaviors (also called deactivating strategies):
• Saying (or thinking) “I’m not ready to commit”—but staying together nonetheless, sometimes for years.
• Focusing on small imperfections in your partner: the way s/ he talks, dresses, eats, or (fill in the blank) and allowing it to get in the way of your romantic feelings.
• Pining after an ex-girlfriend/ boyfriend—( the “phantom ex”— more on this later).
• Flirting with others—a hurtful way to introduce insecurity into the relationship.
• Not saying “I love you”—while implying that you do have feelings toward the other person.
• Pulling away when things are going well (e.g., not calling for several days after an intimate date).
• Forming relationships with an impossible future, such as with someone who is married.
• “Checking out mentally” when your partner is talking to you.
• Keeping secrets and leaving things foggy—to maintain your feeling of independence.
• Avoiding physical closeness—e.g., not wanting to share the same bed, not wanting to have sex, walking several strides ahead of your partner.
More:
“I take care of me. You take care of you.”
They tend to do whatever is necessary to avoid judgment and rejection, which means a low tolerance for blame or responsibility (and decreased likelihood of apologizing or acknowledging our their faults).
They need transition time into shared settings. They need time to surface from what ever they are doing - like a scubadiver. Give them time to come back. They can be grumpy or lash out, if they do it to fast.
They are drawn toward the illusion of connection, often describing their ideal partner as one that “gets” them in such a way that they need not put any effort into explaining, that they need not become vulnerable. This level of attunement is both the missing experience of empathy they lacked in childhood and the mirage of their attachment journey.
As a defense, they often remain intent on naming the absence of empathy, even seeking confirmation that their partners are not providing such a basic human need. They might say:
“This doesn’t feel like love.” Or, “I want to be loved, not needed.” More likely, they will say nothing.
Those on the avoidant end of the spectrum often feel helplessness in response to external emotion:
“You’re supposed to contain your emotion. If you can’t contain your own, I can’t contain it for you.”, reacting instinctively in ways that inhibit intimacy.
The avoidant tends to view time, space, and other resources in terms of scarcity. And when resources are viewed as individual possessions rather than shared, conservation often dictates competition and resentment.
“My time is not our time. We can’t both get needs met at the same time. When I’m with you, my needs will not be met.”
They can be affraid of "attack", because that is what they have been used to in their childhood.
Rigid boundaries: Avoidants do often have too rigid boundaries. They can practise having more flexible=healthy boundaries.
Beyond more obvious avoidant strategies like not speaking, physically isolating, chasing alone time and saying “No” by default in order to maintain space and physical regulation, they may utilize a wide range of more subtle strategies to conceal their needs and perceived inadequacies and ensure they avoid attack/judgment/rejection:
Deflecting or distracting: They redirect attention away from what they consider their flaws. This often presents as “shifting blame” if they tend to put the spotlight on someone else when they feel blamed or judged.
Scapegoating or gaslighting: They dismiss or invalidate perceptions/emotions. Invalidating reality, they tell others, they should not feel a certain way. Others around them may notice a lack of congruence between their words and nonverbal expressions when they deny their emotions in order to avoid conflict. (“You’re wrong. I’m not feeling that. I’m fine.”) As a result, their loved ones may question themselves, feel pathologized, take on blame in an effort to preserve relationship, and/or cease their behavior.
Placating: They give them just enough to claim they satisfied their request and then shift the blame (deflect) to them for not accepting this as enough.
Fixing: They offer others pragmatic solutions instead of being with them in their emotions (for fear they will realize they do not know what to do and reject them), then blame them (deflect) for not accepting their solutions.
Disowning fear: They let partners carry the relational fears and pursue and initiate so they never risk rejection.
Avoiding commitment: They keep a foot out the door in any relationship. They may also reject preemptively to avoid being rejected. They may even hoard resources (emotional, financial, etc) in preparation for the rejection they believe to be inevitable.
Rationalizing: After pushing others away, they create narratives to explain why they cannot move closer to them. This often leaves them confusingly oblivious to their own strategies and the fact that they are making things up as they go along.
Passive aggression: Because a direct expression of emotions feels too vulnerable and leaves them wide open for attack/rejection, they attack in subtle, deniable ways (such as using silent treatment to get attention instead of saying they feel hurt).
Justification versus assertiveness: They justify their needs instead of stating them and asking for support. Rather than admitting they need time alone, they say they need time to work to avoid hurting a partner who feels easily abandoned.
Many of them practice any number of these avoidant strategies, but this doesn’t mean they are limited to them. They also carry anxious and secure strategies, right along with the avoidant ones. The challenge lies in recognizing the strategies they default to and working to develop their tool belt of alternatives.
When can the features of the avoidant show up in a relationsship:
Theese particular feature generally does not appear during the courtship phase of romantic relationships. However, as the relationship begins to appear more permanent and settled, approach issues become evident in areas concerning time (interaction), space (proximity), and sex (libido).
The way forward - how do you heal your avoidant attatchment style/attatchmnet traits:
Discover and experience that the world is (relative) safe and friendly
Discover that you belong
Join your life instead of observing it. Take the driver's seat!
Allow your vulnerability to have wishes and needs in relation to other people
Develop your empathy for your own and others' needs, wishes, desires, dreams, feelings, etc. Practice feeling your body and your passion
Practice talking about your inner thoughts, needs and feelings - to share with your loved ones
Develop your trust that there is support from other people. Practice reaching out and asking for this
Practice appreciating your relationships and other people
If you walk away, get back to your partner quickly and repair
Go into therapy to experience another human being supporting you and helping you with all the old scares and rejections
Practise joint attention activities - go for a walk side by side with a friend, your partner ect.
Practise approching other people
Work with a therapist to help you to be better, at reading facial expression in others and social cues.
When you have to leave, tell the person when you are coming back.
Your most important key to more love is that dare to reach out for it. Opposite the ambivalent and disorganized attatched, you are the master of coping with yourself. The ability (created as a defense against the lack of presence and attention) is your greatest strength, but also the greatest enemy of love and presence. The way to more love is to open your heart and dare to show vulnerability. Show that you like everyone else need to love and be loved.
You already have the ability to love. It should not be learned. The development and learning lies in restoring the contact to your heart. You can achieve that through different techniques Techniques as ex. visualization exercises, home assignments and sound exercises that calms the nervous systems and support your way back to love.
Practise beeing precent:
Indulge yourself by showing your body and heart care. You can do it with a spa day, relaxing massage, freshly squeezed juice, healthy diet, meditation, fun music, good night's sleep, breathing exercises, fun with friends and nature experiences. The purpose is to do everything with presence and attention. Then you canget more in touch with yourself, and your need for presence and love.
Focus on the good:
You already have good things in your life. Practice focusing on it. Maybe you have a good job, good friends, colleagues, partner, good health , a nice home. If you think 'No, there's nothing good in my life right now' then focus on 'something' you really care about. It may be nature, a hobby, your pet that you are / has been closely tied to. In short, your thoughts make your reality. For the simple reason, focus on the good and nutritious, rather than the negative and draining.
(An attatchment/SE/gestalt therapist)
Remember, when we are doing deep work, the most challeging thing is, that we are often expecting to wake up in the livingroom with mom and dad. We have to make a reality test to find out that there are other people in the world, who are friendly and caring.
(Diane Poole Heller)
Help to get from your head to your feelings and your body:
- yoga
- massage
- showers where you concetrate on feeling the water on your skin
- mindfulness
- self- and co-regulating exercises
- bodywork
- dance (with or without a partner)
- practise joint attention activities - go for a walk side by side with a friend, your partner ect.
(An attatchment/SE/love/gestalt therapist/teacher)
More work exercises:
Working with the mental fundament
Do visionwalks
Working with visions with a therapist/alone
Body awareness and feeling sensations in the body
Deciding that you want to bee in this world
Eye contact (remember looking away and then look again is natural)
Hugs (not as threatening as eyecontact)
Remember people who have been supportive. Use the coming into secure exercise. h
//jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/880/self-regulating-exercises?page=1&scrollTo=12850
Titratiion/pendulation (SE):
To help the avoidant to Get from their head to their body a se/attatchment therapist Can use titrating where the therapist talks to the cognotive part of the persons brain and Then helps the person to go down in the Body for a short While and Then Up in the head again. The technique is from SE .
Also pendulation Can Be a good tool. Also a SE technique. The therapist Can also use touch, But in the beginning the avoidant would think That IT is weird to Be tousched.
(SE/attatchment/gestalt/couple therapist)
Dan Siegel - how to work with the two hermophires:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=xPjhfUVgvOQ
Diane Poole Heller suggests:
- Kind Eyes – For Attachment Gaze - www.youtube.com/watch?v=leVxB1l5NiY
- Welcome to the World – to be met and celebrated
Specific Corrective Experiences that can help break the grip of a wounded past and bring other people back into the Avoidantly-attached person’s life in nourishing ways.
These Corrective Experiences include the Kind Eyes Exercise that involves a person looking out into the world into the kind, loving eyes of someone looking back at them.
In this exercise, you imagine someone lighting up when they open their door and see you. You take that image and feel “into” your eyes and allow your eyes to reach out to that joy you see in the other person’s eyes.
Sounds nice, right? But this exercise requires a tremendous amount of trust and the overcoming of intense fear as an Avoidantly- attached person takes the huge risk of “looking again” after years of blinding themselves to contact, especially in their eyes.
When successful, this exercise helps to restore healthy contact and reduces the defenses and/or disconnection in the eyes.
The disconnection or dissociation can become a pattern from meeting too much hostility or vacancy as a child. This exercise accesses the original attachment gaze and gives it support, and perhaps emotional limbic nourishment as well, and exposes the original wound. We work with the attachment gaze to give it time to heal, discharge emotion, overarousal and the original distress. Often the eyes have stopped “seeing” in terms of actual contact. Safety in contact has to be restored to resurrect the possibility of deeper connection and for the client to literally see a new in a way based on the reality of today.
"Imagine you are looking out into the world and seeing kind eyes looking back at you. Perhaps you remember a time you showed up unexpected at a friend’s door, and they opened the door truly delighted to see YOU!
What happens in and around your eyes, your body, your emotional state? This guy, the Dalai Lama, has been through tons of trauma! But he’s definitely hooked up to a social engagement. You can see the contact in his face and the kindness in his eyes.
You might think about the people you’ve talked about that reminded you of secure attachment. Take a moment to close your eyes. Keep tracking what happens in your body, and specifically your face and your actual eyeball.
Imagine and if it helps to look at the Dalai Lama, you can open your eyes and use that imagine looking out into the world as a baby or a young child, and seeing someone (could be an animal, too) looking back at you with loving, kind, caring eyes.
Let’s take a moment to see if any person, or pet, or situation comes up. Sometimes it’s nature, but see if you can bring in actual eye contact from some source.
Notice what happens in your body, your emotional sense, your thoughts, and let your eyes move out to their eyes. Let yourself register their kindness, their caring, their love.
Take a moment to see if you can see that, take it in, and bring it back into your body, back into your eye, while you are maintaining an awareness of how it’s affecting you. It might be one person, it might be more animals and people anything that helps you connect to that loving kindness and passionate, caring presence that you can see in the eyes.
Another example might be stopping by a friend’s house when they don’t know you’re coming. You ring the doorbell and they answer the door, and they open the door and say, “Oh my gosh, it’s you! How wonderful to see you!” And you feel, as they are saying that, that you surprised them, but you feel authenticity in the fact that they are really glad you are there; they are really happy and delighted that it’s you at the door. They look at you with that “you are special to me” gleam beam truly, deeply welcomed.
Just notice. This might bring up a wound, or it might bring up pleasure. There are all sorts of possibilities, and there’s no incorrect response. We are just looking for awareness of what was it like for you in eye gaze. What do you expect in eye gaze? What happens when you see positive caring, nurturing, “you are special to me,” “I love you,” being communicated through the eyes?
Take a moment to feel what’s arising. Whatever is there is fine. You can track your emotions or thoughts, the sensations, images, the body’s reaction, the nervous system. And when you find an okay place to land, give yourself a moment to transition into opening your eyes when you are ready!"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=leVxB1l5NiY
Stephen Porges - polyvagel theory
And the social.engagement system:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=lxS3bv32-UY
Interactive regulation exercise rocking the attatchmentsystem m.youtube.com/watch?v=EoAqXh8hOZ4
Welcome to the World Exercise
is another highly effective Corrective Experience exercise for repairing Avoidant attachment.
In this exercise, clients create their version of a perfect, well-celebrated welcome of themselves as a unique being with very special contributions to make to the world.
The fulfilling and “full-feeling” experience communicated by the therapist (or other) and received by the client (or person) is: “We are so glad you are here. We have been waiting for you. I celebrate you and your very existence. You have the birthright to exist. I want to be in real contact with you. I welcome you. You belong here. We want you here!”
This Welcome to the World Corrective Experience helps clients regain the sense of their existence being celebrated. Instead of having one foot on the planet and one foot off— as if they have never committed to arriving here in the first place—they can land on their feet in a more connected, embodied, grounded way. Now the life force and brilliancy predominantly residing in their heads, including their often extraordinary intelligence, can more fully inhabit their physicality and beingness.
PS: The kind eyes exersice can also be used by FA/disorganised attatchment style.
Because it is difficut for the avoidant to feel the body, they can "ground" throw their eyes.
(Diane Poole Heller)
Film caracters with DA as main attatchmentstyle:
Miranda, Sex and the city
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJQLQA5mEg
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ntN7xwJpDQ
Fight between Miranda (da) and Carrie (AP Friend )
m.youtube.com/watch?v=O2GSZOodPis
Samantha, Sex and the City
Katja (business woman with dark hair), The bonus family (Netflix)
vimeo.com/288502043
Mr. Big, Sex and the City www.youtube.com/watch?v=m27vWqJU7zw
Schroeder, Peanuts
Samantha (Sam), Dear White People www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpZWHZC8g-Q
Books: Life will be the death of me
eu.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2019/04/09/chelsea-handler-life-death-me-book-memoir-brother-chet/3394394002/[
www.amazon.com/Answer-start-relationship-make-last/dp/9187441969
Selfregulating exercises (and co-regulation): (for breating, body, nerveussystem ect.) Learning co-regulation is important for the avoidant.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/880/self-regulating-exercises
How to be vulnerable:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1010/vulnerable
Trauma and shame:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1007/trauma-shame
There is a difference between self Worth and selfesteem
Because the dismissive have closed off from feeling their body and from feeling their feelings, they can't really know if they have low self-worth.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1051/love-tips?page=1&scrollTo=26381
How to help (regulate) your avoidant partner when you are in a breakdown:
Remember your partner is conflict avoidant, is trying to stay out of conflict/trouble, do not giving full answars but says "YES"/"NO", do not like to stay in physical/emotional contact under conflict for too long, that their need to be alone is about interpersonal stress and they therefore walks away/closes off, are afraid that you are going to trap them and force them to do something.
Do not give them a preview.
Do not take too long to get to your point.
Hit quickly, and repair and explain afterwards.
Catch and release quickly, say: "Come here, give me a kiss, tell me you love me, then go along" (do this before the avoidant feels that he/she needs to get away) (Stan Tatkin)
Scuba diving:
Communication: Like Slowly Coming Up for Air!
If you think of scuba diving, you just don’t dive in, like diving in a swimming pool – you go deep. You take time to adjust to the depth. You also can’t come up too fast because you get the bends.
So if you have an Avoidant in your life that you care about and they do love you, they just don’t know it—they are not very demonstrative. Having Avoidant Attachment does not mean someone doesn’t love you. They do love you, it’s just that the way they manage that, and, communication might be difficult for them. They do have a strong capacity for connection, it’s just that they have a lot of stuff around it.
Say you have an Avoidant partner, and they are on their computer and are deeply involved in it. You want to invite them to have an anniversary dinner or something so you say, “Honey, I want to take you to our favorite Italian restaurant.” Their first response would probably be gruff, and if you take it personally, you’ll feel repelled. You just say, “You know what? I know you are busy with your computer. I am wondering if in the next 10, 15, 20 minutes, or when you are ready to surface from that, you could meet me in the living room by the door so we can go have a good time at the restaurant.” If you let them transition, then they’ll buy in and talk to you. “Okay, I had my transition, now I am here, I am ready for the restaurant, let’s go,” and they can have a good time with you. If you don’t give them that time, then you get this kind of grumpy growl. They need that time, and they can’t do it fast. (Diane Poole Heller)
Exercise on needs:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1078/independence-dependence-inter-codependence
Exercise accepting what is - paradoxial change method:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1128/accepting-paradoxial-change-method
Walking patterns:
When you go for a walk, lets say when you are on vacation, and your partner almost all the time walks in front of you and your partner dosent notice that you could be out of sync: (maybe you have told you partner before, if he/she can wait for you to catch up, and your partner have said yes, but still forgets about it):
A solution could be : snap them out of it by suggesting that you go for coffee at a cafe nearby or that you want to bye something in a store. Then they maybe will wait for you or come back to you, and you can enjoy some time together. Avidants are often single focused and paralell focused instead of thinking of it as a joint adventure.
Often they do not notice, that they are out of sync with their partner, so if you take it personal, try not to.
The avoidant can also practise joint attention activities in their daily life - ex. go for a walk side by side with a friend, your partner ect.
(Recommended by Diane Poole Heller)
Being droped at the door step/how to keep a secure connection when you go out:
When you are at a big party and your partner leaves you without introducing you to people they know and they somehow "forgets" about you the hole evening:
Because DA´s are single focused, and in the left part of their brain, and they often do not think about it, a solution COULD BE:
Agree before you out to introduce each other to people you know at the party from your own "tribe" OR
make eye contact ONE OR MORE times throw the evening (an eyegaze) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grd9XLkn2hw OR
sit/stand together at a time through the evening OR
drop by and touch your partners shoulder and maybe ask if he/she are having fun.
(Stan Tatkin, Couple Bubble, Diane Poole Heller)
Do avoidants really want connection?
Often Avoidants don’t recognize they need their partners until the partner actually leaves, through divorce, death, separation, illness, or something else. Then, when they realize nobody is in the house, that’s when the crisis hits. It’s then that a very deep depression can happen, because they actually want connection like anybody else. It’s their adaptation, which seems like they don’t want connection. A lot of attachment writers sometimes they describe Avoidants as not wanting connection and that’s not true. If you unpack it, there is a very deep longing for connection; they want it like everybody else, and there are certain things that are in the way.
In the house but not in the same room:
It’s not that avoidants don’t want anybody around. For some avoidants the ideal situation is: somebody is in the house but not in the same room, so they have the experience of “somebody is around,” which is what their history usually was: they had a parent that was around, in the house somewhere, but not in contact with them, so they are comfortable with that.
Operating within a one‐person psychological system - an example: (Stan Tatkin)
Mandy and Mike are upstairs getting ready for bed. Knowing that Mandy is interested in business ideas, Mike reads her something he read in a magazine. A light bulb goes off in her head. Without saying a word, Mandy goes downstairs while Mike is still reading to her. She grabs a pen and paper to write the idea down. She comes back upstairs to find Mike who is now angry. She is surprised by his reaction and unaware of having done anything wrong. Mike complains: she was rude for walking out of him while he was telling her something. He’s angry because she seems to do this a lot in other instances.
Mandy, operating within a one‐person psychological system, "forgot" that she was with another person. Never occurring to her to share her thoughts about the idea with her partner, she instead ran downstairs to protect the idea herself. Had she been oriented to a two‐person psychological system, she would have used Mike as her pen and paper by sharing her thoughts with him thereby recording them within his brain. Mandy is alone all the time whether or not physically present with someone. This default position is ego‐syntonic without awareness of its downside. She is not oriented toward to utilizing her partner as a brain into which her own brain can expand.
When Mandy realized what she had done, she was shocked by her own behavior. She didn't understand why she would do such a thing even though it was quite natural to her. Though physically with Mike while getting ready for bed, she was in a dissociative state, autoregulating and unaware that she was with another person at that moment. Mike on the other hand was completely aware that he was with Mandy and so, for him, her walking away caused a momentary breach in the attachment system. The severity of the breach was moderated by her surprise at her own behavior.
There’s not enough limbic-to-limbic connection:
In Avoidant there’s a lot of isolation and a feeling of existing in an emotional desert, in a way. There’s not enough limbic-to-limbic connection in the caregiving dyad.
They’ve even made studies now, suggesting that memory of a personally felt sense of being somewhere in your past depends on having had enough limbic connection to make an emotionally-rich – versus just fact-based – memory. So if you’re born into a family where that’s not really available, it’s harder to develop an emotional sense of the world, an emotional sense of yourself, and also having a self-sense in your own narrative of your history of actually being there. You might remember going to school in the red brick building on Sheridan Street, but you don’t remember what it felt like to sit in that wooden chair. You don’t realize emotionally what happened with you and your first grade teacher or friends on the playground. So we’re looking to help people come out of that isolation.
Co-regulation vs. auto-regulation (and selfregulation) and positive dependency:
Another challenge in Avoidant Attachment is that from the get-go, if that was the original pattern, the child doesn’t learn how to interactively regulate – their body and nervous system actually don’t really know how to do it. And that’s something that needs to be brought back later, and because the isolation is so strong, often people don’t even recognize this lack of connection is particularly a problem.
There tends to be a lot of dissociative reaction, or dissociative style of Auto-Regulation that occurs without the presence of another person. For people that have an Avoidant style, one of the things we’re trying to teach them in therapy – or within the context of their partner relationship, if we’re lucky enough to have them in couples therapy – is how to co-regulate each other, and also how to experience Secure Attachment nourishment that was missing in childhood inside the present day relationship.
An exercise with Avoidantly-attached folks is helping them recognize the relational field, just to notice what’s even happening between the therapist and them, or someone that they have in their mind, or if their partner is there that’s really helpful, because they tend to feel stress when they are aware of the relational field.
They’re more comfortable, it’s more familiar to not be aware of the relational field, to be in their own sort of virtual reality. They might be resourcing about going through something where the therapist working mostly with the nervous system regulation, but they’ll keep referencing their own legs, or their own capacity, or their own something. And then I might say, “Well, I know your legs are there for you all the time, but I wonder if you’ve ever had that experience with a person.” And that’s a much bigger challenge.
What you need to understand is that we don’t want to just selfregulate, we need to interactively regulate, and we learn to self-regulate in the right sequence which naturally arises out of interactive regulation.
And you cannot develop the true autonomy, that a lot of Avoidantly-attached people feel they have, from neglect. Our necessitated sense of independence based on neglect is what I call a “Reactive Autonomy” that reflects a no-choice adaptation to a deficient caregiver, and is largely based on wound, not development. Capacities may be there, of course those can be great capacities, but they can be fear-driven or based on lack.
There also needs to be a positive dependency, and a true interactive regulation, in contrast to a reaction to the painful absence of a primary other – a caregiver or your relationship partner.
What happens when the avoidant opens up to relationsship:
Avoidants are not aware, how much energy it takes to try to stop their attatchment system. When they do open up to relationsship, and you are able to connect with them, there is a deep risktaking ect. They feel it more deeply than the ambivalent feeling their abandomend fear, because when the avoidant have to give up this numming out, that was helping them to deal with so much emotional pain, they do not have the tools to seek help from others (co-regulation).
When you do not really get interactive regulation from a nerveus system perspective, you do not build the physiologial capacity, to co-regulate and seek support. Selfregulation comes later in life than co-regulation.
Affect regulation is also difficult as their brain do not have the capacity for emotional regulation.
How to work with your avoidant partner once comitted to you and they see you as their "deep FAMILY":
Once committed, avoidants folks tend to distance more. Remember that in courtship our brains are on all kinds of love chemicals that make us act like the most perfect version of ourselves. Those things that later will drive us crazy, like how our partner snorts when they laugh, which seemed so cute when we are dating but is now repulsive. Avoidants can tolerate a lot more closeness during courtship thanks to the cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones we are on.
However once those hormones and neurotransmitters settle down as a real relationship develops, avoidants start to have more trouble with the stress of being close. They find close relationships more stressful than ambivalent or secure people so they are more prone to this problem.
Once committed they also tend to be more secretive. They may feel the need to 'protect' themselves as we become more important to them. Closeness can provoke a sense of danger to an avoidant so they will "beef-up" on their boundaries as the relationship progresses. Remember that this is NOT specific to you (they would do it with any partner) and also they are NOT conscious of it or doing it "on purpose".
Reassure them that you accept all of them and that they don't need to keep secrets from you for fear that you will judge them. This should help them feel more comfortable with the closeness and intimacy.
Once committed they are likely to be more protective of their alone-time.
Try to let them know that you respect their need to be alone some of the time and that you are committed to letting them have some of that. Don't let them be alone all of the time (which they may think would be good for them). In fact, if left alone too long they tend to neglect themselves! So they truly do "need" us, but they also need to feel separate and autonomous.
Once committed their preference for "auto-regulation" can become more pronounced. Auto-regulation strategies are things we can do alone to help ourselves feel more calm and happy, like listening to music, reading, watching movies, exercising, etc. Everyone needs some auto-regulation skills but don't let your partner over-rely on that strategy.
Help them use you for safety and security when they are under stress. They may protest against this at first, saying that they want to "be alone". But remember if under stress an avoidant would to better to seek solace in their partner, they just don't do that instinctively. The brain literally needs more resources to get regulated alone-- it takes more oxygen and glucose (the power sources for the brain) to calm down when alone. They are not aware of this, they feel "normal" being alone, even when upset. They don't realize that if they could "plug in" to their partner and use their partner to get calm that they would literally have more oxygen and glucose available in their brain for other things. Partner's help us save resources so that we can get more done, but avoidants do not come from homes where there was a lot of "plugging in" to other people for comfort. So they don't intuitively do that and they need to be shown the value of that.
Once committed they may start reacting poorly to being approached. This is especially likely if you come unannounced or they do not know you are approaching until you are there. They tend to feel that their independence is being threatened when their partner walks up to them. They tend to expect that you need something from them and this makes them uneasy.
Reassure them that you don't "need" anything from them but you just want to be around them because you love them. Let them know you are not using them for anything but rather that you choose them because you love and appreciate them. And try not to call them, especially by name, from another room. That tends to set off their alarm systems and they will likely react with anger or irritation. Instead go to them if you need them.
Once committed avoidants fear of engulfment from childhood tends to return. This makes them behave in all of the ways mentioned above.
Reassure them that you want them to have their independence and that you also know that even though they want their alone time you also know that they love you. They tend to be afraid that if they ask for what they need for in terms of alone time their partner is going to feel hurt. Let them know this is not the case. They also often have some shame about the feeling that their partner is overwhelming to them. They may not want to admit that they prefer being alone at times because they find relationships stressful. Let them know that you know this about them and you don't judge them for it. That can be VERY healing to an avidant.
Once committed avoidants can be peckish about feeling they are being used, as noted above, so make sure to tell your partner that you love them just for who they are. And don't always come at them with the "honey-do" list. Try to sometimes approach them just to tell them how great they are!
Once committed avoidants can experience a lessening of their libido/sex drive. A once pretty sexually active partner can seem to lose interest sexually. Be careful not to take this personally. They would be this way with anyone and it has to do with them coming from families where there was not a lot of physical closeness. Now that you have become "deep family" to them they start to unconsciously revert back to the patterns of their childhood attachments, which probably did not include a lot of close physical contact.
Of course you can continue to ask for physical contact but be patient with them and try to find ways of approaching that don't provoke a defensive response in your partner. Also be careful not to trigger a shame response when discussing this with your partner as they tend to feel ashamed and embarrassed about letting their partner down in this way.
Once committed your partner may start to doubt that you will really be there for them if they need you (even if you have already proven that you will be there!). This comes from their history of having to take care of themselves emotionally a lot of the time. So now that they have taken you in to their inner level they will expect you to neglect them somehow. Make sure to let them know that you intend to continue to take care of them and don't let them push you away in this area because they "know" you won't measure up.
Remember that all of the above is NOT personal, NOT conscious and NOT immediately under their control. Like any human being avoidant partners can learn about themselves and can learn new behaviors. But this often takes time and some professional coaching.
And one final tip on not triggering your partner:
Try not to ask them why they did something. Most people probably don't know exactly why they do what they do in a given day because most of our brain processes are automatic. If we had to consciously think of everything we do we couldn't walk and breath at the same time, let alone explain ourselves from moment to moment. And since avoidants are not prone to thinking about themselves they feel caught off-guard and put on the spot if you ask them to analyze their own behavior. It's more useful to give them feedback on how their behavior is impacting you (what you like and what you don't like about their behavior) rather than try to have them explain themselves.
It can be an old relationship that blocks you from moving forward. Maybe you have to heal your broken heart before you can move on.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1169/healing-broken-heart
Empathy Brenee Brown
m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw
Work With your feminity/masculinity tips:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1376/work-femininity-masculinity?page=1#post-27175
Shadow work:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1247/back-projections-shadow-work
Avoidant and ambivalent friends talking about their own attatcmentstyles:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJtsPW6LwhY
Stan Tatkin interwieved by an avoidant in relationship with an avoidant on creating intimacy in a relationsship:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hgBOk88AoI
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eph9Z96NF4E&feature=youtu.be
How to deal with an avoidant and interpersonal stress (Stan Tatkin and Jason Gaddis)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d_wA5SfwyE
Dan Siegel
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgYJ82kQIyg
Button up and topdown
m.youtube.com/watch?v=FOCTxcaNHeg
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/3044/reach-out-help-care-love
Are You affected by your partners feelings
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1045/addicted-partners-feelings
Terry Real working with difficult men, avoidant men, the man child, narc men, shame ect. catalog.psychotherapynetworker.org/sq/pn_c_001308_breakthroughresultswithdifficultmen_affl-70580
Always remember when in a relatinsship (Raja Selvam):
Raja Selvam has a significant point about relationships. "If your partner does not remain in resonance, when you need to land your system - you will feel abandoned. You will get a feeling, that you have to manage yourself. It feels very lonely"
Often we do not only have one attatchment style but traits from more than one.
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1188/4-attatchment-style-decription-test
Here is how to heal other parts of you, with one of the other insecure attatchmentstyles:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1072/healing-ambivalent-attatchment-tips-tricks
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1073/disorganized-trauma-speeder-brake-drama
Secure attatchment style:
jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1185/secure-attatchment-style
The problem with texting (Stan Tatkin)
m.youtube.com/watch?v=YWufgMYpYcU
What not to say to an avoidant partner under stress - www.instagram.com/reel/CZX1yHytxSn/?utm_medium=copy_link
jebkinnison.boards.net/thread/1687/healing-power-doing-good-socialising
(The information in this long thread is from various therapists working with the attatchment therapy and SE therapy in their work with clients.
There is also information from various attatchment/SE experts around the world, SE experts, bodynamic workers, gestalt therapists, clinical psychologists, neorobyologists ect.
The material has not been edited. l
