Written by | Wei-Hsuan Chuang, Intern Psychologist
Reviewed by | Tzu-Jung Chang, Counseling Psychologist
I once saw a discussion on social media that mentioned: Stay away from avoidant partners to protect yourself from harm. When we don't understand this group well and lack an understanding of avoidant attachment, it's difficult to comprehend our own or our partner's behavior. We wouldn't know how to interact with an avoidant state or assess if we have enough emotional capacity to handle the other person's avoidant state. This article will share how to understand the "avoidant" group from the perspective of attachment needs.
Different Types of Attachment Styles
Attachment theory refers to how a person's emotional interactions with their primary caregiver during childhood influence their ability to form connections with others and partners in adulthood. The relationship with caregivers during childhood helps children develop interpersonal skills. When children feel that significant others can respond to their emotional needs in a timely manner, it helps establish secure attachment, which impacts adult interpersonal and intimate relationships.
According to research by Hazan and Shaver, adult attachment styles are measured by two dimensions, "anxiety" and "avoidance," and are divided into four types:
- Secure: Low anxiety, low avoidance. Can form relatively stable and healthy relationships, express feelings and needs freely in a relationship, and respond to others and provide support appropriately.
- Anxious-Ambivalent: High anxiety, low avoidance. Feels insecure in a relationship, often needing reassurance and reconfirmation to maintain the relationship.
- Avoidant: Low anxiety, high avoidance. Often appears distant and cold in relationships, expresses fewer emotions and needs, and prefers to maintain distance in a relationship.
- Disorganized: High anxiety, high avoidance. Combines traits of both anxious and avoidant styles, simultaneously craving closeness and dependence while also wanting to escape relationships, leading to inconsistent behaviors.
These four attachment styles form our internal working models for interacting with people, influencing an individual's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors across three dimensions: self, others, and the world. Not only do they affect the development of an individual's self-concept, but they also reveal "habitual interaction patterns" in relationships when forming intimate connections.
The Avoidant's Way of Survival
For avoidant attached individuals, maintaining a "breathing room" in the relationship is one of their crucial needs. Many times, avoidant individuals don't not love you or not want to be close to you; they just don't know how to face the fear that "the relationship might be broken."
An avoidant person's inner thoughts might be like:
- If I tell you my feelings, will they really be accepted?
- If I let you see my unpresentable side, will you leave me?
- As long as I hide and don't show my true thoughts, there shouldn't be any problems, right?
All these fears of having their "true feelings" discovered lead to a natural protective mechanism and distance from others. In the heart of an avoidantly attached person, others cannot accept or will not like their true self. As long as they don't stand out too much, they won't have to face the self that scares (or shames) them, and they won't have to worry about being abandoned by others.
Seeking More Effective Survival Strategies
However, in real-life interactions, if relationships are managed with avoidance and aloofness, it can indeed lead to certain consequences. For example, the other person might want to get close to you and build a relationship but is scared off by your aloofness; or sometimes, you might also want to receive support and warmth from interacting with others. So, what should be done?
If you are an avoidant attached individual, you can:
- Try to understand your own needs, knowing that "appropriate space" is your way of recharging. Gently let important people around you know your need for space and coordinate suitable interaction frequencies.
- In every moment you want to escape, pause and feel your current state: "What am I feeling right now?" "What happened that makes me want to escape?"
- Find trustworthy people around you and try to trust and express your feelings to them.
- In the process of approaching your avoidant state, don't rush to change. Instead, first try to understand your avoidant self, try to care for it, and slowly get to know the part of you that really needs space.
How to Interact with Avoidant Individuals?
Not only are individuals with avoidant attachment affected, but those around them may also feel helpless (whether you are a very close partner/family member of an avoidant person, or a classmate/colleague). At first, we all hope to get along well and are willing to understand the other person. But when an avoidant person pushes us away repeatedly, the constant feeling of rejection can make us feel increasingly powerless, or even angry.
If you are close to an avoidant individual, you can:
- When anger or powerlessness arises, pause and observe your own state: "What's happening to me right now?" "What am I angry/wronged about?"
- Temporarily stop interacting with the avoidant person, creating space to slow down your feelings and thoughts.
- Identify the source of this emotion and your own needs: "Is it because I'm unhappy about being rejected?" "Or is it because my need to be close to the other person cannot be met?"
- Respect both the other person and yourself. If the avoidant person cannot respond right now, consider if you can temporarily give them that space. At the same time, find someone who can offer you support to talk to.
- You can also try to understand your own attachment style, knowing what situations trigger emotions and when you need intimacy from others.
- In a relationship, everyone is an independent individual, interacting with each other with their own needs. Many frictions and misunderstandings stem from an unclear understanding of oneself or the other person. Relationships are interactive and require our collective effort, but if trying to understand becomes too difficult, remember to allow yourself to rest.
Every attachment style requires continuous awareness and feeling to enhance self-understanding or to better know how to interact with people in interpersonal/intimate relationships.
If needed, and if you wish to further understand the development behind avoidant attachment or the relationship between avoidant attachment and yourself, feel free to come to a counseling session. This might be a detailed and slow journey of exploration, and counseling can accompany you in sorting out the attachment styles developed from childhood.
References:
Wu, L. J., Cai, X. L., Du, S. F., Fang, G. Z., & Deng, W. Z. (2017). Interpersonal Process Approach in Therapy—An Integrative Model (Original authors: Edward Teyber, Faith Holmes Teyber). Taipei: Shuangye Shulang. (Original publication year: 2005)
Sun, S. X. (2014). Identification and Classification of Love Attachment Styles. National Education, 54(6), 46-56.
Wu, C. (2009). The Relationship between Attachment Style and Self-Concept Clarity: The Mediation Effect of Self-Esteem. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 42-46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2009.01.043
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