What is the fearful avoidant attachment style?

Hi, I’m Paulien and I’m so happy you’re here! In this blog we’re going to dive into what the fearful avoidant attachment style is. I’m going to tell you more about the signs, the typical thoughts, the signals your body gives you and what a crash state is. So let’s dive in!

There are four types of attachment styles and the fearful avoidance one is actually the least well known and well researched. Partly because it was the last one added, because they found a whole group of children and adults that didn’t fit in the other attachment styles. So that’s why they added a fourth. So it is the least well known, the least well researched and least understood, but having it can have a big impact on your life and on your relationships, which is why it’s so important to me that you’re here, that you’re understanding and that you’re learning about this!

Let’s look at all the attachment styles just to know where to place the fearful avoidant attachment style. So 50 to 60 percent of people all over the world are securely attached, thank God! The other two are anxious and dismissive. There are several names for them, but let’s keep it simple.

Anxious & dismissive attachment style
So you have anxious and dismissive and with anxious attachment. There is a lot of anxiety and preoccupation with your partner. So you’re thinking about your partner constantly. You you want to do it right? You want to know if he’s happy with you, if she’s happy with you.

And there’s a lot of anxiety involved with the dismissive avoidant. It’s quite the opposite. So there is no too little anxiety and no preoccupation with the partner, which kind of comes off aloof and just not interested and just not wanting to deal with relationships, mostly, this is quite in the extreme.

What about the fearful avoidant?
So as a fearful avoidant you go back and forth, you go back and forth between the two, but also you want to be in a relationship, but you are afraid to give yourself fully. So there is quite a lot of anxiety and sometimes there is preoccupation with your partner. And sometimes you slip into that dismissive, avoidant role. You shut down sometimes to the point where you can’t really even speak. So you kind of go back and forth.

It’s kind of this grey zone.

You are in the relationship, but you are not completely in the relationship because you are afraid to give yourself fully. You’re afraid of that intimacy, of that connexion. And this can play out in different ways. So it could be that you find yourself in toxic relationships often, which means that the relationship is not very healthy to start with. And you work really hard to get love and attention because that could be a familiar dynamic for you. But it could also be that you’re actually in a healthy relationship and you feel so much fear and tension and you are all the time preoccupied with: Do I love him/her enough? Is this the right choice? What if I don’t miss my partner enough?

So the grey zone is that you doubt the relationship & you doubt your feelings. It’s never quite enough. And you do that because then you don’t have to surrender to the relationship as long as you have doubts because you’re really, really afraid of that.

So what are the signs of fearful avoidant attachment?

#1 A negative view of others and themselves
The anxious attached has a positive view of others, negative view of themselves, and the dismissive has a positive view of themselves with a negative view of others. So the fearful avoidant actually has a negative view of others and of themselves, which makes it maybe even the attachment style with the most impact.

But not to worry, because you’re you’re a badass too! And you can heal this!

I know it can come off, as you know, people that have this attachment are like victims. And we’re not we’re not. We’re definitely not. You have so many gifts that maybe you can’t see yet, but you do have.

#2 Preoccupation with your feeling
So that means you constantly check: Am I in love enough? Shouldn’t I feel more? Shouldn’t I miss him/her or shouldn’t I feel that spark? Shouldn’t I feel fireworks? So you are pretty focussed on your feelings. And this happens mostly when you’re in a healthy relationship as a fearful avoidant because you’re so afraid to surrender.

#3 Vulnerability hangovers
Another sign is the vulnerability hangovers. So that means that when you’ve had a good, beautiful moment where you might have felt the connexion, you feel really bad the next moment. That could be the next day, it could be five minutes later. It could be a few hours later. So you notice that doubts creep back in, your feelings just completely disappear, maybe you shut down and you wonder if this is the right relationship.

#4 You are scared to find out that ‘he/she is not the one’
Another sign is that you are scared to find out that this is not the one at a later date. So you are very preoccupied with what if after we’re married, after we have children, I find out that this is not the one. So you really want to make the right choice. You really want to make the right choice. So you think about it constantly. You analyse, you check your feelings just to be absolutely 100 percent sure that this is the one. And you constantly check whether you feel enough, whether you two look good together in pictures, for instance, whether you’re compatible, whether your friends and family like him or her. So you constantly check, is this right? Is this right? Is this the right choice?

#5 You have a lot of feelings with emotionally unavailable partners
And you have a lot of feelings with emotionally unavailable partners, but not with healthy, steady, loving partners, even though you really want to. So that means you are used to have to work for love and attention and what that does is it gives you a certain degree of control: as long as you have to work for connexion and love and attention, you get to control how much of that connexion you have. And that is amazing for the fearful avoidant, because connexion is actually what you’re really scared of.

So when you’re then with a healthy, steady, committed partner, that really just is all in, you have the feeling or your fear brain has the feeling that it’s losing control. You don’t get to control when you’re connected because your partner seems to be connected all the time and you’re like: this is overwhelming. I cannot deal with it. And that’s definitely a subconscious thing.

I know, it is frustrating especially when you’re in a healthy, steady relationship.

#6 You think you’ll stay in relationships because you are scared to break up and be alone
And this this is kind of a mindfuck which happens a lot with the fearful avoidants. Your fear brain just tries to protect you so hard that, yeah, there’s a lot of ‘mind’ involved. And it means you think you’re leading him/her on, which is not not fair to him or her, which makes you feel guilty, which makes you think even more that you just are just too chicken to break up, which is just not true.

This is that going back and forth and staying in the grey zone, staying in the grey zone. Staying there is important for the fearful avoidant, because that prevents you from having to surrender completely.

#7 Racing thougts and doubts
To give you an idea of the thoughts that are quite common for a fearful avoidant: What if I don’t love my partner? What if I don’t love my partner enough? What if I’m not really in love with my partner? What if my partner is not the one? What if I don’t miss my partner enough or miss them at all when they’re not around? What if I’m not really attracted to my partner? What if I can’t stop thinking about my partner’s lack of attractiveness or their flaws? If I didn’t feel sparks or enjoy our physical touch, does that mean they’re not right for me?

You get the idea?? 😉

Those are really typical thoughts, because what they do, is they they get you back in that ‘grey zone’ again. As long as you have those doubts, you feel like you don’t really have to surrender.

So as long as you don’t find your feelings enough, you don’t have to surrender. You don’t really have to connect. You don’t have to be intimate, not just physically, but also emotionally. And that’s really hard to deal with if you don’t know what it is, if you don’t know what’s happening.

But again, you can definitely heal it!

#8 Body signs
Your autonomic nervous system handles pretty much all subconscious processes in your body, so your heart rate, your breathing, your blood pressure, but also how your body handles threats. And with all the insecure attachment styles your fear brain perceives threat in your relationship, even when it’s not there.

Your body can respond in different ways.

You can have actually quite a lot of energy, anxious energy or a combination of both, which is chaos. And what your body does differs for attachment style. And for the fearful avoidant attachment, it’s chaos. So panic, straight up fear, and then the next moment you completely shut down. So you feel numb, you don’t feel anything, and it can flip-flop between it. And it can also almost feel like you’re completely shut down and don’t feel anything, except a kind of shaking with tension.

#9 Crash state
There can also be a crash state when your attachment style gets activated very harshly or thoroughly. It’s very possible that you crash for example in a panic attack but it can also be an absolute shut down where you might not even be able to talk. So that’s the weird thing about fearful avoidance: that it goes back-and- forth.

And what I mean by ‘crash’ is that it gets triggered. So something happens. Either your partner does or says something which can be completely harmless or you think something or you hear something and it gets triggered and this is what happens. And it usually happens when we’re already quite tense, but it doesn’t have to be, it can also really happen, especially when you feel calm and relaxed, because that for your fear brain is actually quite scary, especially in a relationship when you’re in connection.

When you have a crash it can happen that you doubt everything, you’re not sure of anything anymore, you want to break up, but you don’t. You’re just, like, completely confused. And sometimes you might even feel like you’re just completely going crazy and you just don’t know what to do.

This is the explanation that I was missing for years, for years and years, which is why I started this program Healed & Happy!

Because I just really, really, really wanted to help you with this!

With 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.