People have an innate need to connect with other people, but sometimes we don’t do it well, and the dangers of an avoidant attachment style can have lasting effects. Most of the time, we learn how to connect to other people from how we connect to our parents when we are young. For those with an avoidant attachment style, those early bonds were not secure and were the reason why their adult relationships never worked out, highlighting the importance of understanding this attachment style’s impact.
Types Of Attachment
There are two types of attachment styles: insecure attachment and secure attachment. A healthy bond between two people is a sign of a secure attachment. A person with a secure attachment learned early on that they could go out into the world and come back to their parents’ safety and love. This made them feel safe to explore their world.
The insecure style of attachment is different. For people with an insecure attachment style, they want to connect and feel like they belong, but they don’t know how to meet their emotional needs. Most of the time, the things they do to get close to people are habits that get them the opposite of what they want and need emotionally.
The Two Styles of Avoiding Attachment Are:
There are two different kinds of avoidant attachment styles: the dismissive avoidant attachment style and the fearful avoidant attachment style. For the person who uses either of these rituals to connect, it can be a rough, hard, and self-destructive ride through a rough relationship.
The Avoidant and Dismissive Attachment Style
A person with a dismissive avoidant attachment style tries to keep their partners at a distance, never letting them in emotionally. They keep their distance from people. In order to keep their “pseudo-independence,” they keep their partner from knowing how they feel. As a result, they often have to parent them.
The dismissive avoidant attachment usually only cares about their own basic and emotional needs. They don’t care much about the kind of people they hang out with.
The idea of “pseudo-independence” is just a make-believe idea. Every person has a need to connect with other people. Even though people with a dismissive avoidant attachment style try hard not to need it, they tend to live more alone and inward, keeping even the people who are closest to them at a distance.
The dismissive, avoidant type says they don’t need to love anyone and don’t want love either. They use defenses to keep people away so that they don’t get hurt.
They are also able to stop someone from talking. Someone who is dismissive and avoidant takes away all their feelings and doesn’t react to someone who is very emotional and desperately tries to break through their wall. If they feel threatened by someone rejecting them, they will likely act like they don’t care. Saying “I don’t care” or something similar to shut people up. They try to keep from getting hurt.
The Fearful, Avoiding Style of Attachment.
This style of attachment is always in a state of change. They work hard to keep their feelings in check and not cry until they can’t anymore.
When they feel someone pulling away, they hold on tighter to try to meet their emotional needs. This is because both of them are afraid of getting too attached. When they get too close, they pull back and push away because they are afraid of being hurt. Because they can’t stop worrying about getting close to someone, they seem unpredictable and moody and are always on high alert.
Even though they think they should reach out to others to get close to them, they pull away when they get close to someone. This causes them to always push and pull, which makes their partner angry and confused.
Attachment styles are the different ways people try to meet their emotional needs. Those who have a fearful attachment style don’t know how to ask their loved ones for help. They have no idea how to get what they want from other people, so they keep sending contradictory messages.
People with fearful avoidant attachment styles are usually adults whose relationships are very dramatic and chaotic, with a lot of highs and lows. They are very afraid of being left alone. And they have trouble getting close to people. For fear of being taken advantage of, they avoid close personal relationships. Sometimes, this fear keeps them in bad relationships or keeps them with people who hurt them.
Change Yourself to Strengthen Your Relationships.
A person’s attachment style is based on what they learn from their parents or caregivers when they are young. There is a way to change bad habits that keep you in emotionally difficult relationships, even if you do them automatically and without much thought. If you know your attachment style, you can change how you act to make your relationships safer.
The hardest thing to do is sometimes to figure out what helps you and what hurts you. If you want peace in your relationship, it might be because of how you attach to people.
Look closely at how you make connections and the messages you send. Does how you care for your emotional needs help you or hurt you? Then figure out if you have an avoidant style of attachment.
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