#5: 5 Traits of the Fearful Avoidant Attachment Style

(upbeat music) Welcome to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience dating, love, and relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach, and attachment expert Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. (upbeat music) Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. Today we're going to be talking about five traits of the fearful avoidant attachment style. So we've been through the dismissive avoidant attachment style and the anxious attachment style. Today we're gonna explore the lesser known fearful avoidant attachment style, which is also known as disorganized attachment. And I get a lot of questions, often when I'm speaking on Instagram or creating reels where I contrast anxious and avoidant attachment. And I get so many people asking me, how is it possible that I'm both? How is it possible that both of these things resonate with me, these anxious tendencies and these avoidant tendencies? And I'm always quick to reassure them that they're not crazy, they're not broken, they're not alone, and there's a word for that. And that is really the experience of fearful avoidant attachment. So before I dive into the five traits, I just wanna contextualize this a little. And particularly with respect to this concept of it being described as disorganized attachment and where that comes from. And the way that I find that most useful to conceptualize is that whereas anxious and dismissive avoidant and secure attachment styles, those people know how to get their needs met, right? In the case of anxious attachment or dismissive avoidant attachment, it may not be healthy necessarily, but at least those people have clear strategies that they know they can turn to. For example, the anxious person, it's like, okay, I'm feeling triggered by the distance between my partner and I. What do I do when I'm feeling triggered? Maybe I call them or maybe I display protest behaviors where I cause a fight or something, but I do something to get attention to get reconnection to get my needs met. And I've got my set of strategies that I use. The dismissive avoidant when they're feeling triggered, they withdraw, and that's how they come back to safety. So they both have these internal working models, these frameworks, these structures that they reliably turn to in an effort to get their needs met. By contrast, the fearful avoidant or the disorganized style, doesn't really know how to get their needs met a lot of the time, doesn't know what they need and doesn't know how to get there because there is this conflict and this push and pull and these really competing needs that can create a lot of inner chaos for the fearful avoidant. And so that's sort of the idea behind the organized, the disorganized, is there's no reliable set of strategies that the fearful avoidant can always resort to that help them to come back to safety. And that is part of why the fearful avoidant is considered arguably the most challenging style to live with for that reason. And it is so chaotic a lot of the time and can feel really like there's a lot of inner conflict and inner turmoil. So with all of that being said, let's dive into the five traits of the fearful avoidant. And as we have the previous episodes I've done on anxious attachment and dismissive avoidant attachment, this is not an exhaustive list. It's just a bit of an overview to give you a feel of some of the things to look out for, some of the things that might resonate with you or that you might notice in people around you and that can give you a little more context for their experience. Okay, so the first trait of the fearful avoidant attachment style is that this person wants intimacy, they desire intimacy, in closeness and connection with other people, but simultaneously they have a lot of fear around that. Okay, so it is this desire to be close to people and we can contrast that with the dismissive avoidant who has this outward projection of like, I don't really need people. I'm fine on my own. Relationships are hard work. You know, they're quite nonchalant and dismissive, as the name would suggest, around needing other people. Whereas the fearful avoidant, I have heard it described as the fearful avoidant is like the dismissive avoidant who hasn't given up hope yet. So the fearful avoidant, of course, it's more complicated than that, but it's one way of thinking about it, right? The fearful avoidant doesn't have that same hard and exterior of I don't need anyone. They do seek out relationships. They do really try to connect. They do want to be vulnerable with people, but often when it comes to it, when there is that vulnerability, they can feel really overwhelmed and really terrified, really suffocated and trapped and pull back very quickly because they are flooded with fear when confronted with the reality of what that experience feels like in their body and in their system. So that leads nicely into the second trait, which is that they exhibit both anxious and avoidant behaviors. And that's obviously as a result of this desire for intimacy, but also a fear of it. You know, they are pulling from aspects of both of those styles, right? The desire for intimacy and closeness that the anxious person experiences, but also the fear of intimacy that the dismissive avoidant experiences. And so there is this sense of inner conflict. Now that can be that they are almost a chameleon and they go between anxious and avoidant behaviors, or sometimes they'll experience them both at once. And so it's this simultaneous push pull of in the same moment I want to go close, it's almost like, you know, go away, come back. It's like I want you close, but also wants you close, go away, I don't need space. And one of the ways that this can show up is depending on who the fearful avoidant is in a relationship with. If they're in a relationship with an anxious person, they're more likely to tend towards avoidance. If they're in a relationship with an avoidant person a dismissive avoidant person, more specifically, they are more likely to tend towards anxious behaviors because their fear systems around rejection, which will come to, are being activated by the avoidant, right? So they do pull and draw upon aspects of both anxious and avoidant behaviors. And that can be somewhat fluid depending on who they're in a relationship with or the general temperature of the relationship at any given time. If they're feeling overwhelmed because their partner is wanting a lot from them, needing a lot from them, then they're likely to tend more towards avoidance. If their partner is pulling away, if they're feeling unsure, if they're feeling unsafe because their partner is distant, that's when their anxious behaviors are likely to be activated and they're likely to seek reassurance and go closer. And obviously, for the partners of the fearful avoidant, this can be really challenging because there is that sense of hot and cold and push and pull and a level of inconsistency in their behavior that can be really hard to be on the receiving end of, particularly if you are anxious. We know from discussions of anxious attachment that inconsistency is a trigger. And so to have someone who's really up and down in terms of their presence and affection and vulnerability, that can be really challenging for the anxious person. So if you are in that kind of relationship, being mindful of where that's coming from can help you to depersonalize it and hopefully open up more of a compassionate view of what your partner is experiencing. Okay, the third trait that I wanna discuss is that the fearful avoidant really struggles to trust other people. There is this starting assumption that people are not safe and particularly like the people that I love of being in a relationship is not safe. And there's this fear of betrayal that is really prevalent for the fearful avoidant. And so when someone's close and someone's loving, there's this lurking fear in the fearful avoidant of it's too good to be true or it's a trap or it's a trick. There's always like the sense of betrayal being not far off. It's like this looming, something's going to go wrong, right? And they really struggle to trust that other people can just have loving pure intentions. And so they can have a bit of a guard up when it comes to really opening up to people and really trusting. people because they have a lot of fear stories around that. And so even if they do open up, even if they are vulnerable with someone, they might then really pull away afterwards because they might have a fear consciously or otherwise that that vulnerability is going to be used against them or that that person is going to betray them or that they shouldn't have trusted that person and that's going to, yeah, it's going to like come back to get them in some way. So the fear of trust and the fear of betrayal and rejection are really strong for this attachment style. Okay, the next point that I want to go through here is that the fearful avoidant is really attuned to other people. So they're quite emotionally intelligent and again, this is by contrast with the dismissive avoidant to is less in touch with their emotions and typically less attuned to the emotions of others. The fearful avoidant is quite emotionally attuned and they spend a lot of time thinking about themselves, right? Again, this is closer to the anxious attachment style in terms of when they spend time ruminating, they spend time in introspection thinking about themselves, trying to figure themselves out and often that stems from this sense of not understanding they're in a world and seeking to find an explanation for why they feel so inwardly conflicted and chaotic. But one of the manifestations of this is that they are very attuned to others, right? In much the same way as the anxious attachment style, there's this sense of being really tapped into other people's emotional state and almost a hyper vigilance of monitoring the environment, right? Seeking cues of safety or danger in the people around them. And again, we can see how that ties in with this sense of not really trusting others, fearing intimacy, fearing relationships, and anticipating that something's going to go wrong and that there's always some sort of like trouble or pain or betrayal on the horizon that they need to be prepared for. And so they may struggle to feel really at ease and calm and grounded in their relationships because of this sense of hyper vigilance that they experience. And that can be true of the anxiously attached person as well. But I think it's probably coming from a slightly different place. The anxiously attached person is more hyper vigilant around abandonment and so any cues that their partner is pulling away, they tend to read as confirmation of their worst fears that their partner's going to leave them. So the hyper vigilance exists in both the anxious person and the fearful avoidant. But it's probably protecting against something slightly different. Okay, the fifth point on the fearful avoidant that I wanted to cover is that the fearful avoidant will often engage in self-sabotaging behaviors in their relationship and then really struggle with guilt and shame. And guilt and shame are deep. They really run deep for the fearful avoidant. And I think part of that is because the fearful avoidant, you know, stemming from this deep feeling that they have, they really are deep feelers and they really do care very much because they really want intimacy and they care so much about the other person. They feel the other person's emotions. And so they really are aware that they're hurting someone when these self-sabotaging behaviors come up. But they feel so powerless to stop it because their own fear tends to override, you know, their empathy for someone else's pain. And so in the moment they will get swept away with these self-sabotaging behaviors. But then in the aftermath of it they will feel intense guilt and shame for the pain that they've caused to someone else. And that can be a really challenging experience for them. Again, by contrast with the dismissive avoidant, it's not to say that the dismissive avoidant doesn't ever feel bad about hurting people. But they do tend to have more of a veneer of like feeling entitled to behave the way that they do. And that's part of their system and how they kind of get by and get through life is by telling themselves that they're fine and they're justified in their behavior. The fearful avoidant feels more broken and they are more aware of how their behavior impacts others and they really feel that. And so when these self-sabotaging behaviors come up, it's not coming from a place of like callous disregard. It really is just the intensity of the fear that they experience. And then it does tend to be followed up by a level of guilt and shame. So that can be a really challenging experience for the fearful avoidant. So those are the five traits of the fearful avoidant attachment style. And as I said, and you can probably hear it in the way that I describe it, I have so much compassion for the fearful avoidant because it is a really challenging experience to feel so at war with yourself and to feel like you're at the mercy of these competing forces. And please know if you're listening to this and that's your experience that I know how overwhelming that can feel. But it doesn't have to be your future and there are ways to create a level of inner unity and calm and to feel like you get to be the active operator of your system rather than feeling like these competing forces are driving the bus and it just you don't get to choose what's going on for you at any given moment. There are ways to learn to feel safe with other people. And a big part of that is secure relationship, right? Often, you know, there's sort of a saying that our relational wounds can only be healed relationally. And I think there is some truth in that that, you know, while we can do a lot of healing on our own, it comes to a point where we have to learn how to feel safe around other people and having safe co-regulation in a secure relationship is a really powerful way to do that. So if you are in a relationship with a fearful avoidant, and I may go into this in more detail in a future episode, but just to drop it here to instill some hope, if you're in a relationship with a fearful avoidant, my advice for you would be, you know, acknowledging those competing drives within the fearful avoidant. The way to create safety for them, and how you can really contribute to their experience of safety in the relationship, is by being really consistent in your love and acceptance of them, while also really honouring their need for space and boundaries, right? Because that really soothes both of those parts of them, both of those pieces. It's like, I'm here, I love you, I accept you the way you are, I'm not going anywhere, and I understand that you need space, and I understand that sometimes this gets overwhelming for you, and that's okay, I'm not going to make you feel wrong for that, I'm not going to make you feel broken, because we really don't want to feed those shame stories that the fearful avoidant struggles with. So I hope that that's been helpful. As always, thank you for joining me, and if you've enjoyed this episode, please do leave a five-star rating, leave a review, it really helps so much, and I appreciate every single one of you. Thank you for joining me, and I will see you again soon. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @steffany__retweets.com or it's definitely rig.com. I've got loads of free content there, plus if you're interested, you can join the waitlist for the next round of my Signature 6-week program, Healing Actress Attachment. Thanks again for joining me, and I'll see you soon.