What Is It Like Having Avoidant Attachment Style?

Written By Canh Tran

Attachment Theory

  • A theory created to explain and describe infant/baby-parent/caregiver emotional bonding

  • Essentially, we all need healthy bonding with our parents, particularly our mother in order to mature, develop, and grow into healthy functioning adults

  • Healthy bonding during infancy includes having a caregiver/parental attachment figure who is consistently available physically and emotionally, sensitive, compassionate, kind, tender, and responsive for support and proximity/closeness/being near

    • For example, when a baby cries, an attachment figure should ideally come in a few minutes to soothe and check on the baby to see what they need as the baby cannot talk, only cry. After doing so, they offer support to the baby in whatever capacity they need (changing diaper, feeding them, hugging them, soothing them, talking to them kindly, etc.).

    • Disruptions to healthy attachment can include, but is not limited to: 1) Neglect and 2) Abuse.

  • When healthy attachment doesn’t occur (also called secure attachment), this leads to insecure attachment which causes interpersonal and relational challenges/difficulties

Attachment Impacts

  • Our adult attachment styles impacts our relationships with ourselves and other

  • This can include: 1) Boundaries, 2) Emotion regulation, 3) Stress management and coping, 4) Mental health, 5) Communication.

Avoidant Attachment is an Insecure Attachment

The following points below are generalizations and are common traits, strategies, and tendencies of people with avoidant attachment styles.

Avoidant attachment style is a complex phenomenon with many factors shaping an individual.

  • Mistrusts others

  • Hypervigilance

  • Black/white or binary thinking

  • Strives to maintain independence, emotional distance, and self-reliance

    • Fears losing self in relationships

    • Values having a core sense of self

    • History of doing things alone/solo

    • History of not asking for help or relying on others

  • Needs physical space and distance, especially when overwhelmed

    • “This situation is too much and overwhelming”

    • “I need to go”

    • “I’m leaving now”

    • “There’s way too many people here”

    • “I’m not sure what I’m feeling right now, but it’s a lot”

  • Avoids emotional intimacy

  • Avoids vulnerability

  • Difficulty feeling emotions and sensations

  • Difficulty naming emotions and sensations

  • Difficulty tracking emotions and sensations

  • Difficulty talking about conflicts/challenges in the moment

    • Wants to go away/shut down/walk away/etc.

    • Feels overwhelmed and panic

    • Feels dysregulated and out of control

  • Difficulty asserting and setting personal boundaries/needs/wants

  • Difficulty being open and honest about feelings

  • Tends to internalize/push down/keep inside emotions/thoughts/feelings/sensations

  • Dismisses need for attachment and reliance on others

    • “I can do it on my own”

    • “Others aren’t as smart/quick/fast/effective as I am”

    • “It’s just easier to do it myself”

    • “Why would I ask for help?”

    • “I don’t ask for help”

  • Pushes down, dismisses, and/or downplays their emotions, particularly “negative” or unpleasant emotions

  • Shuts down when overwhelmed and dysregulated. This could include:

    • Ghosting

    • Not responding to texts/calls/emails for days/weeks and needing emotional space

    • Walking away and needing physical space

    • Dissociation

    • And more

  • Wants to prevent rejection (whether real or perceived)

  • Does not like negative aspects of self

  • Prefers positive aspects of self

  • Most often raised with conditional love by parents/caregivers (not unconditional love)

    • If you do X, I love you

    • If you look like X, I love you

    • And more

  • High levels of anxiety

  • Low self esteem

  • Self doubt, self criticism, self demand, self judgement

    • “I’m so dumb”

    • “What’s wrong with me?”

    • “I should’ve known better”

    • “There’s something wrong with me”

  • And more

Fearful Avoidant

  • Fear of rejection

  • Fear of abandonment

  • Fear of not being enough

  • Fear of being hurt

  • Fear of losing independence/autonomy/space/distance

  • Mistrust, doubt, questioning, and suspicion of others, especially those who are kind, tender, nice, warm, compassionate, etc.

  • Questions linger

    • What if X occurs?

    • What if X happens?

    • What if X ends up happening?

    • And more

  • Looking for the worst possible outcomes/fears in relationships

  • Threshold for intimacy and openness

  • Seeks safety through strategies above and more (safer than being intimate, vulnerable, open, etc.)

Dismissive Avoidant

  • Denies needing attachment or relationships

  • Difficulty asking for help and relying on others

  • High need for self reliance and hyper independence

Common Core Beliefs of Individuals With Avoidant Attachment

  • Abandonment/Instability

    • The perceived instability or unreliability of those available for support and connection.

    • Involves the sense that significant others will not be able to continue providing emotional support, connection, strength, or practical protection because they are emotionally unstable and unpredictable (e.g., angry outbursts), unreliable, or erratically present; because they will die imminently; or because they will abandon the patient in favor of someone better.

  • Emotional Deprivation

    • Expectation that one's desire for a normal degree of emotional support will not be adequately met by others. The three major forms of deprivation are:

           A. Deprivation of Nurturance: Absence of attention, affection, warmth, or companionship.

           B. Deprivation of Empathy: Absence of understanding, listening, self-disclosure, or mutual sharing of feelings from others.

           C. Deprivation of Protection:  Absence of strength, direction, or guidance from others.

  • Defectiveness/Shame

    • The feeling that one is defective, bad, unwanted, inferior, or invalid in important respects; or that one would be unlovable to significant others if exposed.

    • May involve hypersensitivity to criticism, rejection, and blame; self-consciousness, comparisons, and insecurity around others; or a sense of shame regarding one's perceived flaws.

    • These flaws may be private (e.g., selfishness, angry impulses, unacceptable sexual desires) or public (e.g., undesirable physical appearance, social awkwardness).

  • Mistrust/Abuse

    • The expectation that others will hurt, abuse, humiliate, cheat, lie, manipulate, or take advantage.  

    • Usually involves the perception that the harm is intentional or the result of unjustified and extreme negligence.

    • May include the sense that one always ends up being cheated relative to others or "getting the short end of the stick.”

From 18 Early Schemas

Attachment Research

  • In the case of attachment avoidance, proximity seeking is perceived as futile or even dangerous because of the distress felt by failing to achieve proximity to an attachment figure.

  • Consequently, avoidant individuals develop a dismissive approach to and a negative model of others, operating through the denial of positive traits in others.

  • They disavow needs for attachment, avoid affective closeness and intimacy, but seek independence with the goal to prevent the felt rejection by others.

  • Concomitantly, they tend to suppress negative aspects of the self and boost their positive features instead, leading to the emergence of a positive self-model.

From: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3398354/

Vrtička P, Vuilleumier P. Neuroscience of human social interactions and adult attachment style. Front Hum Neurosci. 2012 Jul 17;6:212. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00212. PMID: 22822396; PMCID: PMC3398354.

Canh Tran
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