The 6 lesser known causes of the fearful avoidant attachment style

Hi, I am so happy you’re here. In this blog I am going to talk about the six lesser known causes of the fearful avoidant attachment style. It can be that you looked up how the fearful avoidant attachment style develops and you saw that it has to do with severe abuse and you were like: ‘Well, that’s not me. I’ve had a pretty fairly happy childhood with parents who were always there for me, so that can’t be me’. But… it doesn’t have to be severe abuse. You can actually feel like you’ve had a really happy childhood and love your parents dearly and still have a good connection with them and still have this attachment style.

As a child it is so, so important that your parents feel safe and when looking for comfort as a child. Ideally you had a parent or parents that could soothe you at any moment and regulate their own emotions. In the fearful avoidant attachment style, this isn’t the case. The parent or caregiver is either frightening or frightened and therefore isn’t able to soothe you and regulate their own emotions, which makes it really hard for you to look for that soothing. And it’s also very scary and confusing for the child when that happens. So the parent or caregiver was unable to soothe you and the person you had to seek comfort from was actually the one that was causing fear in you and distress even when they were very well meaning. So let’s dive into the six lesser known causes, very specific things your parents might have done even as really good people that could cause the fearful avoidant attachment style.

#1 Hypercritical parent(s)
So the first is hypercritical parents. And when I say that, I can totally imagine you thinking: ‘Well, I didn’t have hypercritical parents, they wanted to help me and they gave me feedback so that I could succeed in the world’. That’s what I believed for a long, long time. And I really think that my parents (in my case it was my dad mostly) really thought that way. He really thought that he was just helping me and preparing me for the world.

Looking back, it actually was criticism. Anytime you do anything, express yourself and you get feedback on that which pretty much means what you’re doing is not right and you should adapt (you should do it differently if you want to be accepted): you can see that as criticism. You are not okay the way you are. And what that does, is that you’re really scared to express yourself, to be yourself and also to let out your big emotions and your weak moments.

It could be that your parents were critical about that, too. And you won’t let yourself be weak. You won’t let yourself be vulnerable. And you will definitely not see comfort then from your parents, because they could actually criticize you, which feels like rejection, which feels like abandonment for the small child that really needs their parents to survive, essentially. And not just in a physical sense, but also with your emotional needs.

A child needs that. It needs that it’s not a nice extra or a plus or a bonus. You need that emotional support from your parents and if you don’t get that, it can feel like your parents are abandoning you and that can feel so scary, which causes a lot of fear.

#2 Unpredictable/angry parent(s)
Being unpredictable is the main key here. I think all parents get angry. I don’t think there are parents in the world that are never ever, ever angry. But the thing is: when it’s unpredictable, that’s when it becomes really scary and confusing for the child. So when you know you’re pushing buttons as a child, you know your parent might get angry and that’s okay, you can handle that because you saw it comming. You knew that you were doing something they didn’t like and you were pushing it. So that doesn’t necessarily cause this attachment style.

What is more frightening for the child is when a parent can become angry out of nowhere and even less shout at you because they might have had a really rough day or they cannot regulate their own emotions so they kind of blow off steam on you. And that is really confusing for the child because you want predictability that’s how you feel safe as a child. Everything has to be predictable because there’s so much happening in your little baby toddler brain. You cannot anticipate or see that your parent being angry might actually not have anything to do with you because you need control as a child. You need control over your world.

And that’s why children, all children, have the tendency to think that everything is their fault because then they can adapt and then they can feel safe. It is so unsafe for a child to see that their parent is actually just unsafe because then they cannot influence that and they will always be unsafe, which triggers that abandonment again. And it really is almost like a fear of death in a way because you are so dependent on parents.

So then imagine that you are in a household where either one or both parents just get unpredictably angry. And as a child you’re like: ‘Wait, what did I do? What did I do? What can I do to prevent this the next time?’. And especially when stuff like this happens, when you see comfort and when you see connection and sometimes your parent is like: ‘Get out of here!’. And lashes out at you because they can’t handle themselves at that moment. That can cause you to become really confused about how to seek connection and how to seek comfort and to really relax in that because you never know when the next burst is going to come.

I remember when ten years ago I was in the depths of my fearful avoidant attachment trauma and I was walking outside with my now husband and we had a relationship for three years and I said: “I’m still waiting for you to just explode out of nowhere and get really angry with me”. And he laughed and he said: “Oh well I never felt like doing that so I don’t think that will come”. And now it’s twelve and a half years later and he still hasn’t done that. But that was just so wired into me that that would happen at some point that I was just waiting for it to happen.

Which makes you tense all the time. It makes it really hard to relax in the relationship and have those really tender, beautiful connected moments. That’s what you’re really afraid of when you’re a fearful avoidant.

#3 Parents that blow of steam at you
So that means that when they feel overwhelmed and can’t self regulate when they feel tense, they cannot deal with for themselves, they might blow off steam on you. You don’t even really have to do anything. It’s just one thing that causes a reaction in them with all kinds of bent up feelings and they just blow it off on you and that can actually feel like a relief for them. Which also makes it kind of hard to talk to your parents about this because they will not have the feeling that they got angry with you so often because for them it didn’t even really feel like anger, it didn’t really even feel like blowing off steam for them.

They just felt a lot of unease. Then you did something and then they feel relief in the reaction they had on you and that can be a really frightening reaction for you. But for them it actually might have felt kind of good, like they might have felt guilty if they really were yelling and they saw your reaction but it will never feel as frightening for them as it had felt for you. But what this does when parents do this, is that you have a feeling that you have to walk on eggshells around them. And can you imagine then, that when that happens with the first person or the first people you love, which are your parents, that you just take that dynamic into your relationship right now and you still walk on eggshells, even if that’s not really necessary.

And it can even lead to you feeling like something’s missing. Because in a way, when it’s so wired into us that a parent will explode, a parent will blow off steam, and your parent will lash out at you, that’s almost what becomes predictable. Like the unpredictability becomes predictable. So when you then have a healthy, steady, committed relationship with somebody that just doesn’t do that and that’s safe, that feels safe and secure: it can actually feel really uneasy, like you just wait for something to happen. And when your fear brain cannot pinpoint the threat but knows that it can come at any time, it starts feeling really anxious and starts looking for things to focus on just to prevent something bad from happening.

Which can mean that you start to have doubts about the relationship, start to really put a magnifying glass over every single flaw your partner has, even when it’s not that big of a flaw. Just to have something to focus on that might go wrong, that might cause him/her to leave or that might cause the relationship to deteriorate, or not go right.

That’s just because your fear brain is so trained in perceiving and seeing threats that when it’s not there: it’s still doing it.

#4 Parent(s) that shames your emotions but is very emotional him/herself
So when you had a parent that got unpredictably angry or just pissed off or unhappy it could be that they are very emotional, cannot handle their own emotions but shamed your emotions because they cannot handle emotions as a whole.

So this is really confusing as a kid that you see your parent having all these big emotions and whenever you have the urge or have any emotions such as being sad or being angry or being even elated happy: it could be that your parent snapped at you, said something, criticized you, shamed you for it. For example: “What do you have to cry about? Be a big boy, pull your big girl pantsies up”. I don’t know the English expressions, I’m Dutch if you didn’t know, but there are a lot of ways we can shame emotions in child, in children and that makes you feel like you are bad for having these emotions even though your parent is having those emotions which makes those emotions seem even more scary and frightening. So when you are not allowed to react in whatever way you want to react: it kind of shuts you down and you can take that dynamic into your relationship now too and that really can also lead to a fearful avoidant attachment style. It’s a part of it.

So you just don’t allow your feelings, you cannot feel your feelings, you’re scared of your feelings. And what happens when you shove all your emotions and feelings down? The only emotion you feel or the only feeling you have is fear because that’s like an instinct we needed for thousands of years to survive. So that is the one thing you can’t really suppress so that is the one thing you feel and it can really cause you to be scared of any emotion and feeling that comes up and think: “This is not right, this is not right, this is not right!”

#5 Parent(s) using emotional manipulation through anger/shame/guilt to get you to do things
And this manipulation sounds really harsh and it can really be that your parents do not even know consciously that they are using this. And they don’t really use this as a way to manipulate you but they do it because that’s what they’ve been taught in their childhood. So they think that’s normal and that’s just the way to go. So what that means is that whenever you don’t want to do something that your parent or caregiver wants you to do: they get angry. That is a form of manipulation. You have to listen to me or else that’s even a threat.

And then I think there’s a lot of parents wich generation just really has this belief that a child just has to listen to you and if they don’t: that’s their problem. That’s the child’s problem and not the parent’s problem. So using emotions to manipulate you can also be so scary and confusing for a kid and it can make it really hard to relax around a parent because your belief is that whenever any emotion comes up… I’m unsafe.

So emotions will come up because that’s just what emotions do. You cannot control them, they just come up in a natural state. Like you can suppress them but that’s not really a natural state nor is it very healthy. So as a child you’re like: I’m not allowed to be angry, sad or have any emotions come up. Which means you can’t really relax around your parent or caregiver that you want a connection with, which makes it really hard to relax into that connection which might lead to a fearful avoidant attachment style.

#6 Parent(s) being afraid of connection and lashing out when it happens
And this is a really key one because you might not even really recognize all the other ones. But when your parent is scared of feeling a connection: that will definitely has it’s effect on how you are with connection, with intimacy, with closeness in a relationship which is really the core of a fearful avoidant attachment style. You’re afraid of that closeness. So if a parent in his/her childhood has had this too whenever he or she came close to their parents: they would kind of not want the connection because that felt scary. Because connection can be overwhelming. It takes a lot of vulnerability, it takes allowing all your feelings to be there and allowing all your emotions to be there. So it’s actually quite scary for a lot of people.

And I think different people react in different ways. But when your parent has a tendency to kind of get angry, and it doesn’t even have to be like full blown real rage just angry, then that could happen in a moment that you’re seeking connection. So as a small child, like I said, connection is so important, it’s almost as important or maybe even as important as a physical need like food and water.

So you’re seeking that emotional closeness. You maybe go to your parent or caregiver and you are being tender and gentle and relaxing in that connection that causes a feeling. You can feel the moment a connection happens. And when that feeling is scary to your parent: they can have this jolt, this fear reaction that can cause them to get angry if that’s their preferred emotion or if that’s their default emotion when they get scared in a way. So what can happen is they will physically push you away, or they will be really annoyed with you, or they will criticize you, or they will reject you, or they will start talking about something that you did wrong, or they will say that you’re coming too close and that you should back off.

Or it can happen in all different kinds of ways. But what you get as a child is: connection is not safe. Not safe because of the reaction of your parent, but also because of what you feel and the moment that you felt connected and then something happened. So this is why it’s also confusing and why it can happen.

You can definitely have a really good relationship with your parents. Maybe they were there for you, they were cheering you on, they were very interested in what you did, they wanted to see you win. But that can also kind of lead into having to be a performance. And it can also be a performance in like, being perfect for them with your emotions and with you being exactly the way they want to be, they want you to be. And parents can be hot and cold in this too.

So sometimes they are like super intense into what you’re doing and cheering, and sometimes they’re not. Or they’re annoyed that you don’t give it your all or don’t do any better. And that inconsistency is what is hard, but it’s also the love bombing that makes it hard. So the intense moments of connection in another way, but only when that parent feels up to it.

So it doesn’t always have to be that every moment of connection was scary for the parent or for you. It can be that some moments were actually really intense and really beautiful and very connected, but it was only when the parent was able to and when it wasn’t, when he or she wasn’t able to, they kind of lashed out. So it was actually scary. They weren’t able to say: “Wait, this is kind of overwhelming for me. I love you, but can we try this again in, like, five minutes? I really do want to hug you, I really do want to be close to you, but I just feel like I have to deal with my emotions right now”. They cannot say that and they cannot even feel it. They probably won’t even notice that the annoyance that they feel, is really not about you as a child. It’s really about them not being able to deal with their emotions.

All right, I hope this is clear. This is quite a lot, but it definitely can be generational trauma that is not severely, like, severe abuse. So that’s what you read a lot about the fearful avoidant attachment style, that it’s severe abuse that causes this attachment style, but it can be generational trauma and the way a parent or caregiver handles that moment of connection. So the main cause is that the parent or caregiver that was meant to soothe you was also a source of fear for you in whatever way. We’ll dive into this in the Healed & Happy program as well!

I really hope this was eye opening to you. I really hope you understand yourself better. You understand where things come from better. If that’s so, please let me know in the comments below. Just tell me which ones of these were new or an eye opener.

And please also share if you have your own wisdom around that. I really do always want to hear that.

Know that you are amazing and that you are 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.