What is This Behavior?

Yeah I guess I'm not too familiar with the terminology but it feels like a walking away internally kind of.  Hard to describe when it's not actually going on, impossible to describe when it is haha.  But not something that requires vacating the area immediately.  I think DA are somewhat able to escape internally, which goes with the description I shared in one of my other posts about not running from a relationship so much as giving up over time.  The emergency is absent.

This is also how I experience it. I want out or to manage your expectations down because I know I can't meet them.

I'll give it a shot, to try to explain because I haven't really nailed it down myself...
I experience flight energy when in an argument and I feel walked over... words put in my mouth, accusations against me especially pertaining to my motives (being misread or blamed). I just feel so angry and if I will lose myself in trying to defend myself and I can't tolerate it, I'd rather be alone and stand by myself than be trod on.

I feel engulfment fears when for example, I am going through an advancing stage of the relationship like talking about cohabitation. When this came up for me in this relationship I had a sense of despair and foreboding that I might lose my time, my inside time, or be expected to be "on" all the time and giving more than I have to give. The feeling was not to run however, I just had a feeling of impending doom that made me feel stuck.

Otherwise, I feel able to put myself in a bubble as if I can avoid engulfment internally... like I mentioned I don't have to be alone to isolate and get distance. I feel able to insulate myself with my inner life and boundaries.

I feel the fight and flight around toxic behavior from another.

I don't fear engulglfment much with commitment but again I think it might be because I operate in the one person psychology some still. I have a lot of autonomy that can be difficult to breach, at least I get that impression from past partners and even in this relationship my partner has commented. So really I only feel the real activation under aggression which is pretty normal I think?

I also don't experience a lot of engukfment because I stay on the edge of connection for the most part. Not with my partner, but we were friends for 5 months before we began dating so I eased in. I have a couple close friends that I'm intimate with emotionally but we are very independent, I don't get together with people a lot for shared activities. But I'm not antisocial, I like people, I just like solitude a whole lot too. Overall engulfment feels like a problem I don't experience much because I know myself to be on an island of sorts. I think my parents were not at all engulfing they were neglectful.

I will have to go back and read that to see if it makes sense, I'm hashing it out. Short version, I don't feel a panic and need to escape much. I just kind of put things that threaten me Over There.

It's normal to avoidance, which is estimated to be about 30% of the population, so it's not uncommon and you can find plenty of people who do think it's normal, but that doesn't make it emotionally healthy. I've always tested with extremely low avoidance, including when I was high AP, and I'd never felt what you're all describing except for when I was transitioning to secure and trying to figure out for the first time ever where my boundaries were and what was healthy. Once I sorted that out, it went away again because other people don't threaten my internal sense of self or regulation. If someone seems to be expecting too much, I'll just honestly communicate about what I can deliver (and if I can't meet their expectations, I probably feel bad about it but it is what it is), and then my actions will line up with my words so I've done my part to be respectful. If they have an issue with it and fail to communicate about it from there, I can't do anything about that so I'm not getting dysregulated over it. That in my opinion is the secure description. My AP response was to overextend myself to try to meet or exceed the expectations, not shy away from it, and not feel resentful about it but get overwhelmed and stressed later on without understanding why (because I wasn't connected to my own needs and wasn't realizing that I was putting myself second so the overwhelm was my own needs not being met).

Mostly DA, some FA and a small slice of AP in the tests, but predominantly DA in relationships confirmed by a therapist. However I've grown pretty secure over the last 3 years or so and don't experience much attachment stuff other than some general traits I guess.  Like I'm not struggling with anything attachment related these days.

It seems to me that it really depends on your childhood dynamic, whether or not you got engulfment wounding, abandonment wounding (which all of it is) or for me, the wounding of being feeling invisible which seems to have led to avoidant coping and the isolation and lack of belonging and connection.

While there are general templates for the styles, there are nuances and individual circumstances that contribute. 

As I have reflected, I can come up with an area that I have engulfment fears and that is around religion.  My parents were unloving but very religious, and like most unhealthy people they were not introspective with their beliefs, they did a lot of projecting and controlling outwardly. So I have had to work through engulfment without realizing that was the term when it comes to my own spiritual life and practices.  I'd say it still triggers me and I choose not to have contact with the family members that practice their fundamental evangelical religion because they completely wiped me out and abused me with their religion for a long time.  I was the black sheep to them because I rejected their system.  I do still have wounds and triggers around that, that I work with.  Thank goodness I don't have that active in my life anymore and I feel connection in my own spiritual beliefs and practices.