Glossary

A complete reference of unique concepts developed from Paulien Timmer’s lived experience and work with 3,000+ fearful avoidant clients worldwide.

Fearbrain

The part of the brain hyper-focused on fear and survival rather than happiness. It believes anxiety and vigilance equal safety. Healing involves learning to recognize and disengage from its distorted protective logic.

Fear System

The bodily counterpart of the Fearbrain. Refers to the nervous system’s fear-based dysregulation — often more intuitive for fearful avoidants than standard “nervous system” terminology.

Fear of Connection

The true root of fearful avoidant dynamics: terror of fully surrendering to intimacy and emotional vulnerability, despite a deep longing for closeness.

Connection Control

The subconscious strategy of managing how much emotional closeness is allowed at any moment. Fearful avoidants may sabotage, pull back, or suppress emotions to maintain a felt sense of control.

Connection Breaking

The repeated cycles of disconnecting emotionally to relieve overwhelm and regain safety when intimacy feels too intense.

Fearful Avoidant Grey Zone

Living in limbo between being in a relationship but not fully surrendering emotionally. Fearful avoidants often wait for perfect internal and external conditions before fully attaching.

Strong and Struggling Sweetspot

A childhood survival adaptation: appearing strong while staying in struggle to keep parental attention. Power invites parental loss of control, while struggle invites parental engagement.

Judge Brake

An internalized self-monitoring system developed from chronic criticism, constantly stopping forward movement to avoid judgment or failure.

Emotional Management

The learned pattern of policing one’s own emotions, deciding which feelings are “allowed,” based on early experiences of emotional shaming or suppression.

Abandonment Flip

The shift from obsessive doubts about loving one’s partner into panic over being abandoned. Often triggered during healing as protective doubt defenses fall away.

Testing vs Shame Cycle

A loop where the fearful avoidant tests their partner’s reactions, gets angry if expectations aren’t met, then falls into deep shame, triggering fears of abandonment and renewed testing.

Relationship Perfectionism and Feelings Perfectionism

The attempt to achieve emotional and relational perfection to eliminate any possibility of later heartbreak.

Doubt as a Protection Mechanism

Doubt acts not as a relationship evaluation but as a survival defense — protecting against vulnerability, rejection, and perceived failure.

Crash State

The most destabilized state of fearful avoidant activation where fear dominates, emotional regulation collapses, and hopelessness feels overwhelming.

Vaulting vs Storming

Two extreme emotional regulation strategies: Vaulting is hyper-suppression, locking feelings down so tightly it feels physically painful. Storming is emotional overwhelm that triggers impulsive urges to escape, often through extreme actions like breakup threats.

Feardrunk vs Sober

The internal contrast between dysregulated fear-driven states (feardrunk) versus calm, grounded clarity (sober).

Shame Dive

An intense, deliberate collapse into shame used as a self-punishment mechanism — not simply spiraling but subconsciously diving into shame to force self-correction.

Emotional Hormone Allergies

Trauma-conditioned negative reactions to positive emotional hormones (oxytocin, serotonin), creating distress even during joyful or bonding experiences.

Vulnerability Whiplash

The intense panic and retreat that follows vulnerable moments. Vulnerability feels unsafe because it feels like giving others “ammunition” that could be used for future harm.

First Impression Consistency Crash

The anxiety of having to sustain an ideal first impression. Fearful avoidants often make excellent first impressions but panic over living up to perceived expectations in subsequent encounters.

The Ping

The reflexive mental “alarm” that triggers intrusive analyzing, problem-solving, and relationship evaluation the moment the mind momentarily relaxes.

Braindumping Method

A therapeutic writing technique to release looping intrusive thoughts without structure or censorship — allowing mental clarity and reducing rumination.

Pedestal Power Paradox

Simultaneously placing judgmental people on a pedestal while internally feeling superior to others. The fearful avoidant works obsessively for external approval while emotionally distancing to maintain control.

Fear-Dominant Brain

A fear-dominant brain is a nervous system state in which fear overrides all other systems, including logic, connection, and desire. In this state, fear informs every thought, behavior, and emotional response, making healing feel threatening rather than safe. 

Fear-Tractable

Fear-tractable refers to the capacity to lead the fear system without opposing it. A fear-tractable person or therapist understands how to work with the protective logic of fear and guide it gently, so that healing can happen without triggering internal backlash. 

Rewiring Bridge

A rewiring bridge is a transitional belief or series of beliefs that gently lead someone from a deeply rooted fear-based belief to a new, empowering one. In a fear-dominant brain, especially within the fearful avoidant attachment style, direct positive affirmations can trigger defensive mechanisms in the fear system. A rewiring bridge respects the protective logic of the fearbrain by first resolving the reason the negative belief exists, typically a belief about safety, responsibility, or harm, before offering the new truth.

Instead of trying to leap from “I am bad” to “I am good,” for example, the rewiring bridge offers beliefs like “I am learning to be safe with others” or “It is possible that I can be a safe presence for people,” creating a psychologically safe path forward.

Relationship to Other Terms

Fear-Tractability: The rewiring bridge is one of the core tools used in fear-tractable work. It aligns with the fear system rather than overriding it, respecting its logic and guiding it safely forward.

Fear-Dominant Brain: Rewiring bridges are especially essential when fear is in charge, and the usual logic of affirmation is rejected by the internal protector.

Emotional Whiplash: Attempting to move from a fear-based belief directly to a positive one often causes emotional whiplash in fearful avoidants. The rewiring bridge prevents this backlash.

Happiness Rejection Reflex

Definition:

The Happiness Rejection Reflex is a subconscious, automatic response in which happiness or other positive emotional states, such as calm, love, connection, or peace, feel bad rather than good. Instead of being experienced as desirable, these emotions trigger discomfort, tension, or even panic. This reflex is especially common in individuals with a fearful avoidant attachment style.

Core Insight:

Where most people, including therapists, assume that clients want to feel happy, relaxed, or at ease, there is an entire group of people for whom those states are not safe. For them, positive emotions have been linked to threat, often due to past experiences in which joy or connection were followed by rejection, abandonment, emotional instability, punishment, or loss. Over time, the nervous system wires in an association: happiness = danger.

How It Shows Up:

• Feeling restless, numb, or suddenly “off” during peaceful or connected moments.
• Becoming irritable, suspicious, or overwhelmed after feeling close to someone.
• Pushing away or sabotaging relationships that start to feel too safe or too good.
• Distrusting calmness: “Something must be wrong,” or “This won’t last.”
• Experiencing panic, intrusive thoughts, or OCD spirals after feeling joy or love.

Why It Matters in Healing:

This reflex often blocks progress in therapy and healing. If happiness is internally coded as unsafe, then no amount of “positive thinking,” self-soothing, or cognitive reframing will work, because the body is actively rejecting the very states the therapy is trying to create. The reflex must be understood, respected, and worked with, not against.

Effective Approach:

Treatment must be fear-informed and focus on unwiring the negative associations connected to happiness. Modalities like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), body-based trauma release, and gradual reconditioning of safety around positive emotions can help. The goal is not to force happiness, but to help the nervous system learn that happiness can be safe, and eventually welcome.