How to recognize the fearful avoidant attachment style

Hi, I’m Paulien and I’m so happy you’re here! In this blog I’m going to tell you more about how to recognize a fearful avoidant attachment style in yourself and in your relationships. It is the least well known and least well researched attachment style. So there are a lot of misconceptions, but also a lot of different takes on it and a different experiences with it.

The main sign of the fearful avoidant attachment style is that you’re confused. And that there’s chaos and that you go back and forth and that you feel a lot of anxiety. You want to be in a relationship, but don’t want the connection. It’s just it’s confusing you just go back and forth between wanting it and then not wanting it and wanting it and not wanting it. It’s confusing, isn’t it?

So here are eight other signs you might recognize mostly while you’re in a healthy relationship or when you want to be in a healthy relationship as a fearful avoidant. This list is definitely not conclusive, there are there are many more signs, but these are eight that you might not know or might not have heard yet.

Let’s dive in!

#1  You’re hot and cold sometimes
And this is especially the case in healthy relationships. Sometimes you’re like: YES, this is it! This is The One. I can totally see our future together. I want to be with this person. I want to be close to this person. And then the next moment you are out, you are shut down. You don’t want to be close. You want to be quite far away. You’re thinking, is this the right choice? Do I love them enough? Isn’t there somebody that fits me better, that is more compatible? And it can flip flop between those two back and forth really fast, which is really just so frustrating and so confusing.

#2 You are afraid you don’t love them enough / are not attracted enough / don’t miss them enough
The common theme here is: ‘not enough’. So you are really preoccupied with your feelings and there’s a lot of ‘should’. It’s just never quite right, that’s what it feels like. The reason you keep thinking these things is because that’s what you’re really afraid of, to really go for the relationship and really surrender yourself to it. So that’s actually quite a clear sign that you have at least fearful avoidant tendencies.

#3  You’re afraid of what your intuition will say
So you are mostly just scared that it will say that you have to break up and that this isn’t The One, even though you kind of don’t want to break up. It just feels like when your intuition says it: you do not have a choice. So that can make you really scared of your intuition or the word intuition and it just makes you feel like there’s this impending doom. Like at one point, your intuition will speak up and tell you: You have to break up and that’s not what you want.

Let me tell you: that’s not going to happen. That’s not what your intuition is. That’s not how your intuition works. The voice that says that, that makes you so scared of your intuition, is actually your fear brain. And your fear brain is trying to protect you by not fully committing to the relationship, by not fully going for it. So it keeps you in that grey zone of not going out of the relationship, but also not being completely in it.

#4  When you have a period of good moments, there’s a drawback
When when you had a good week, a good day, a good month, there is a drawback. It’s like a crash where you pull back, you shut down, you are back in your head. You doubt everything. You doubt your feelings. You doubt whether this is the right choice. You doubt whether you’re compatible. And your feelings seem to just disappear. You feel tense. You might even feel fear or panic. And that can feel so confusing because it it happens right after a good moment and it makes you feel like: Oh, I’m never going to get out of this because these moments keep coming back.

But what you might not know is that they are there because you fearbrain is like: OK, well, that was great that one day or that one week but we have to stay alert. We have to stay alert. You can’t just surrender and relax because that’s when bad things will happen. That’s when he or she will reject you or leave you. And your fear brain just decides to put up all the protection mechanisms.

#5 You are super sensitive to criticism
Any time your partner shows the slightest hint of rejection, your fear brain just goes in protection mode and starts to break them down in your head and you start to doubt the relationship. You start to doubt your feelings. You start to focus and maybe even obsess about really little things that you don’t like about them just to cushion the blow of that rejection. And you might not even notice yourself doing it because you might not even be very aware of the fact that your fear of rejection was actually triggered because it could be something that is completely harmless that your partner says or does. So it’s not a very clear process.

# 6  Fearing that you don’t want to be alone
And that’s the only reason you’re staying in this relationship, that’s what you’re fearing, that’s what your fear brain tells you. So this means that you are in the grey zone that I mentioned earlier. You are not out of the relationship, but you’re not completely in the relationship either. And when you have these thoughts. Your fear brain does this, and it allows you to not give yourself to the relationship because you think: Well, if I’m being nice now or if I’m being loving and kind and caring and I’m going to break up anyway, it’s just that I’m scared, too, and I don’t want to be alone. So I’m not going to be nice because that’s not fair to them.

This sounds so weird, right? This thought that you have will allow you to not really commit to the relationship, surrender, really go for that connection and that intimacy. It’s a pull back mechanism, a protection mechanism to have this thought, which is very common in the fearful avoidant.

#7 Huge feelings for emotionally unavailable people & lack of it in a committed loving relationship
When your partner is emotionally unavailable, you have a lot of intense feelings and you might even become clingy and work really hard for their attention and love. But when you have a committed, loving partner that’s just all in and it’s like: I’m here, I’m all in. Then you go into panic mode. And what that does sometimes is just evaporate all your feelings. You just don’t feel anything anymore. And you think that that means that the relationship is not right, while actually it’s not the relationship that’s not right. It might actually be that it’s really right and a really good and healthy relationship with such a huge potential for love. But you’re just scared. You’re just scared to surrender to that.

That connection is what you’re so scared of. So that’s why you’re trying to create space and not have that connection. And that’s why you have all these thoughts. That’s why you doubt your feelings. That’s why you’re in ‘the grey zone’ just to protect yourself from that connection, because you link that to pain and you link that to impending doom and things that can happen.

#8 You have difficulty with intimacy
You you don’t like it when people come too close, you don’t like it when it becomes too intimate or vulnerable and you don’t know why. And it can give you the sense that something is off or something is missing. Like when when I had this, I felt like I was missing that spark or I was missing the passion and the drama. So it it could be that you’re you’re feeling like: ‘Well, this can’t be it. This is not this is not right’. Well, actually, what is happening is you probably think this in moments that a connection is made. Your partner is coming really close, either physically or mentally or emotionally or spiritually, and you’re just really scared of that connection. So you shoot back into your head and you start thinking these things like: something’s off, something’s missing, something’s not right. But what’s not right is, is actually that you’re just really scared of that connexion…

So I really hope this was insightful to you that you maybe had eye openers, that you are like: Oh wow, I understand myself a little bit more. I really hope that for you. 

I’m so happy you’re here and just know that you are so absolutely worthy of love exactly as you are right now.

Much love,

Paulien

This is not to diagnose. I’m not a psychologist and it’s not black and white. You can definitely recognise so much of the fearful avoidant attachment style and maybe you’re even dominantly securely attached. So don’t see this as this is a strong diagnosis. I am just here to tell you all about it and really help you understand yourself a little bit better.