Today I want to discuss about something that is rarely written of on the internet, which is addressing people who have avoidant attachment. People who are avoidant are deeply lonely. Usually, avoidance has such a bad reputation in society. People say they are the ones who hurt other people. They are the ones who are more emotionally unavailable. But at the same time, even if you are anxious or even if you are avoidant, at the core of it, you both have an abandonment wound which has different coping mechanisms.
So, it’s not that one is better than the other. But in most of the articles, I discuss about anxious attachment because the vast majority of my audience has anxious attachment. However, I also want to address people within my audience who have avoidant attachment as well.
So, if you are new here, I’m Akash, and I am a men’s relationship coach, and I help men heal from their traumas, attachment issues, and wounded masculinity in order for them to pursue meaningful connection with women. So, if you are a man who finds himself wanting space, wanting independence, not being able to understand people’s emotions, but at the same time you cry for love, you pray for attachment, but you just don’t know how to let people into your life, then this article is for you.
And this is one of the hardest contradictions to actually go through like when you want someone, you want to be with someone, but at the same time you don’t know how to be vulnerable enough to let someone in. So, in a way, you want a connection, but you stand outside the connection with the fear of abandonment, which is the underlying cause of avoidant attachment as well.
What Does It Mean to Be Avoidant?
So, the first thing let’s address is: what does it mean to be avoidant? Just because you are avoidant, that doesn’t mean that you do not want love. The thing is, you don’t know how to receive love. That’s where the difference lies. Because you never received love growing up. Your parents were probably emotionally absent, and your coping mechanism to that was to become hyper-independent with the thought process that people anyway do not stick to you. People cannot emotionally give you support as well.
So, in a way, what you thought was, it’s better to harden the walls around you in order not to let people come into it so that they don’t end up hurting you in the very first place. But then this coping mechanism becomes your way of living, and this starts affecting your relationships in adulthood as well. And if you are someone who has avoidant attachment, you might do one of these things:
- When someone is getting close to you, you feel that it’s too intense for you. You feel that it’s too much. You might not open up to people, even if you care about those people.
- You might even have the habit of ending a relationship when things become too much, when there’s a real conversation that starts happening in a relationship.
- You might get attracted to someone, you might feel a strong pull towards someone, but when things get real within the connection, within the relationship, you tend to pull away.
And in a way, you also find comfort in being in control of the relationship. You pull away from the connection because you are unconsciously trying to control the connection by maintaining a sense of distance. Because you fear vulnerability. You fear intimacy. And that is always going to stop you from having a meaningful deep connection in your life if that is what you want.
Why This Pattern Actually Exists?
Now, the second thing: why this pattern actually exists is because you suppressed your emotional needs growing up. There was no one to actually hold that emotional space for you as a child. Your parents were probably emotionally absent. So you had no container, you had no safe space where you could express your emotions safely. And when you don’t have that safe space, what you ended up doing was internalizing all that emotion, suppressing all that emotion. And this kind of becomes your way of living.
There was a research done where they found that people with avoidant attachment do not remember a whole lot of their childhood years well because you suppressed it so much. And you kind of create a fake narrative around your childhood saying that your childhood was absolutely fun, it was amazing. But think about it this way, if all your needs were met, you would have been a secure individual right now. You would have been able to give and receive emotions in a healthy way.
But the lack of it probably shows that maybe something did go wrong, and maybe you created stories around it for your survival as a child. And there is nothing wrong with that. This does not mean that you’re broken. This does not mean that you are not deserving of love. But when you understand the root cause of why you are behaving in certain ways, then you can easily work on fixing all these patterns which do not originate from the present moment but instead originate from your childhood.
In a way, growing up, you learned to be so independent, so self-reliant that you do not need anyone else to support you. And this is something that’s playing out in your adulthood relationships as well because you don’t know how to let anyone inside in fear of getting hurt by them. And this fear is not really about the other person. It’s the possibility of getting hurt that is stopping you from actually letting someone into your life.
The Internal Conflict
The third thing I want to address is the internal conflict that you have within yourself like where you want connection, but you also don’t know how to hold it. How to sustain it for the long run. On one side, you want connection, you want people to love you. But when someone gets close to you, let’s say when a woman gets close to you, your body kind of tenses up. Your nervous system could even go into a freeze mode in these cases.
Because you are internally panicking, because you kind of fear vulnerability a lot. You start overthinking. You feel that you are trapped in the connection. You also start finding faults within the other person in an attempt of overanalyzing and predicting what they can do to harm you. So even before they do something wrong, you kind of pull away because you are being cautious in this whole situation. And the reason you pull away is not because you do not care for the other person.
The reason you pull away is because you don’t have emotional safety within yourself when someone else is around you. And that’s not someone else’s responsibility to help you heal. When you don’t have that sense of emotional safety within your own body, there is no way anyone else can come and have a relationship with you as well. And in the majority of cases, avoidant men were so deeply sensitive growing up. And because they had to shut down their emotions altogether, this is what makes them look like they are very cold and emotionally unavailable.
Struggles Avoidant Faces in a Relationship
Now, the fourth thing I want to address is the struggles that avoidant individuals face in a relationship.
Initially, you might feel a strong pull towards a woman. You might like the chase in the beginning. You might like the intensity in the beginning. But when things start getting emotionally deep, you tend to pull away because you don’t feel safe in that kind of environment anymore. You also prefer to keep things surface level, and you also kind of don’t want to end up in commitment.
Most of the time, men who are avoidant do not engage in a form of commitment because they feel that they will be trapped if they are in a relationship with someone. And sometimes you emotionally disconnect physically as well, even when things are not clear in the connection. And sometimes when things do end up ending in the connection as well, there is a mixed sense of relief and sadness.
In a way, you feel relieved that the connection is over and you have that sense of freedom. But there is also sadness which kicks in much later, which comes a few weeks after the relationship has already ended.
You Are Not Incapable of Love
Now, I also want you to understand that it is not that you are not capable of loving someone.
It’s not that you are unable and you will never be able to love someone. It’s just that there was a point in your life where you couldn’t handle the emotional pain, and you built yourself in such a way that you don’t have to handle any kind of emotional pain going forward.
So this is purely a survival mechanism that you have trained within your unconscious mind. And this can be reversed. But this requires conscious effort from your side.
How to Start Working on Avoidant Tendencies?
Now this is how you can start working on your avoidant tendencies.
1. Notice Your Triggers
Firstly, start noticing your triggers. The moment you are in a connection with someone you love, notice when you are actually feeling suffocated. Notice when you are actually tensing up your body and you feel that your sense of freedom is being taken away.
Because that’s a trigger. That doesn’t mean the relationship is actually suffocating you. And you need to remind yourself, okay, this is an old strategy that is playing up in this moment. And instead of acting on those feelings, pause for a minute and ask yourself: What am I trying to protect right now? What is happening at a body level to me? Because when you bring awareness to your responses, this is where you can stop reacting. Because you have conscious awareness of what exactly is happening at a body level.
2. Communicate Your Need for Space
The second thing you need to do is communicate that you need space without pushing people away.
Now, if you have avoidant attachment, I would recommend that you communicate with your partner. Communicate with the person you are in a connection with that these are some of the tendencies that you tend to show. So that they do not end up feeling hurt or rejected by you, and they don’t take the whole thing personally.
But what matters is how you express it. Instead of completely ghosting them or pulling away without explanation, take a minute. Show some grace to the person in front of you and explain it clearly. Tell them that you are feeling triggered right now and you need some space, and you will come back when you feel better.
You can literally say: “I really value our connection, but I need some time to breathe. I will come back to you tomorrow.” It’s completely fine to voice out your need for space. But what is not okay is to use this as an excuse for bad behavior and for not communicating your needs in a healthy manner.
3. Let Yourself Be Seen Gradually
The third thing you need to do is let yourself be seen gradually in the connection.
You don’t have to open up about your entire life story on day one. But slowly start letting the person in. Have a thought process where you decide like okay, this week I am going to reveal this side of me to the person I am in a relationship with. This is the only way you can build a meaningful connection.
You will have to take small emotional risks. If not, you will forever push away people who genuinely care about you. So start sharing things step by step. Do not overwhelm yourself. And you can also tell them honestly how hard it was for you to share something. Honesty will not make you look weak. We all have flaws. And what makes us human is acknowledging those flaws.
4. Build Inner Emotional Safety
The last thing you need to do is build a sense of inner safety. Build emotional safety within yourself. Let yourself feel your emotions. If vulnerability feels unsafe, you need to create that safety within yourself instead of suppressing your emotions. You can do inner child work. You need to learn emotional regulation.
When your body goes into freeze mode during emotional situations or conflict, instead of ghosting or pulling away, stay present. Because ghosting is hurtful for the other person. The goal is not to become overly emotional. The goal is to regulate yourself, hold space for your emotions, and stay connected at the same time.
My Final Message
My final message that I have for you is this that, You deserve love as much as anyone else in this world. People might call avoidant individuals bad, emotionally unavailable, or incapable. But that is not true. You are not bad. You just don’t know how to regulate yourself yet. You don’t know how to give love to yourself or hold space for your own emotions.
And because of that, you don’t know how to let someone else into your life. You do not need to hide the parts of you that are scared. There is strength in being authentic. And if someone cannot accept you for who you are, they were never meant to stay in your life. But the solution is not to hide yourself.
It’s okay to show your vulnerabilities. It does not mean people will leave you every time. That is a story your past created. But that does not have to be your future. So remind yourself, this is not permanent. You can heal. You can grow. And you can change.
So I hope this article was helpful to you. I hope everything is clear, in case If it’s not, so you can ask your doubts in the comment section, you are welcome. So yeah, that’s all for today’s article. So I will see you guys in the next article soon. Thank you so much for reading this article. Thank you!