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Insecure attachment – Avoident

Insecure Attachment Styles

Over the next three lessons we look at insecure attachment styles –  Avoidant, Ambivalent, and Disorganised attachment patterns.
Each section includes childhood roots, adult tendencies, parenting tendencies, child manifestations, and superpowers.

Insecure Avoidant Attachment

Childhood Experiences

Your primary caregiver:

  • May have ignored you and your attempts to meet your needs for connection.
  • Was not present in their body.
  • May have become angry at you often for small things and had limited capacity for feeling or witnessing emotions.
  • Fled the room or forced you to move out of their proximity when you expressed emotions they could not cope with.
  • May have struggled with vulnerability and avoided close connection with you.
  • Didn’t share much about themselves and typically stayed quiet and non-descript.
  • May have expressed, verbally or nonverbally, that you were a burden or a “handful, perhaps having this belief about themselves as well.

Adult Patterns

You may:

  • Feel numb to your feelings and your body.
  • Struggle to truly connect to those closest to you, or let someone close to you.
  • Not remember your childhood.
  • Want to reach out and offer or receive warmth and comfort, but your body seems to be “stuck.
  • Dismiss your childhood as “Yeah, I was mistreated, but now I’m fine!” This may manifest as a very literal and logical way of making sense of your life, without considering the more subtle nuances like emotion, connection, and relationships.
  • Not take time to self-reflect and be curious about your inner experiences.
  • Offer yourself very little to no self-care, mostly working or staying busy with tasks.
  • Want to run away, literally, when you are experiencing stress.
  • Avoid conflict and “sweep things under the carpet.”
  • Not communicate your needs, because you do not know what they are and assume they will not get met anyway. You just “don’t have too many needs.
  • Want to do better for your child, but have trouble connecting in meaningful ways.
  • Live with a deep-seated fear of rejection.

Parenting Patterns

You may:

  • Sense a “dismissive” attachment with your child. Just not able to truly connect and understand what they need.
  • See your child as “needy” and feel resentful at times, or suffocated about how much they depend on you.
  • Want your child to be self-sufficient at an incredibly young age. *Note: Even when a child is “old enough” to do things, they often still want their special person by their side!”
  • Need a lot of space from your child and view your child as “clingy”.
  • Struggle to hold space for your child’s feelings and think they are “over dramatic.”
  • Deny vulnerability.
  • Focus on hyper independence.
  • Tend to boost their self-image by ignoring or rejecting any negative beliefs about themselves. This can manifest as “toxic positivity.’
  • Want your child to self-soothe at a young age. *Note: Children need inter-soothing, or “borrowing their parent’s calm, -until around age 12. This need never goes away: humans need each other!”
  • Place extreme emphasis on science and material evidence, and feel that emotions are uncomfortable and inconvenient.

Child Tendencies

(Caveat: these manifestations could be from an insecure avoidant attachment, or other mental or physical health diagnoses. Remember, attachment is not etched in stone, the brain and nervous system can ALWAYS heal and mend through connection and safe, empathic relating.)

Your child may:

  • Avoids connection with you; would rather be alone.
  • Does not communicate how they feel or what they think. They may shut down or hide away from you when a conversation needs to be had.
  • Seems withdrawn, “spacey,” and has trouble focusing or concentrating.
  • Struggles with memory and may appear irresponsible.
  • Struggles with emotional regulation, erupts and won’t allow you to soothe them.
  • May struggle with empathy for siblings or others. *Note: The anterior insular cortex, which drives empathy, takes many years to fully develop. As a result, empathy should not always be expected. It begins to develop around age 9.”

If you notice these tendencies in your child, it is OKAY. We understand that reading this may bring up feelings of overwhelm, fear, shame, remorse, anger, skepticism, apathy and more. These feelings make complete sense! If you, and/or your child lives with an avoidant attachment system this is not bad or wrong. It just is. You are here to learn how to support your child to feel more safe, secure, and self-connected. There is hope.

Superpowers

Yes, an avoidant attachment is considered insecure. And, that does not mean that you are “less than” a person with a secure attachment. We will not have more moments of inner security if we are demonising the avoidant attachment style. To support you to find grace and unconditional acceptance for your experience, let’s explore the strengths of an avoidant attachment. As a parent living with moments of avoidance, your strengths may be:

  • Giving your child a lot of space and freedom. You don’t struggle with hovering or always needing to be involved in what they are doing.
  • Modeling independence and teaching your children how to do things on their own in a way that truly serves them.
  • Respecting your child’s boundaries because you know how important it is for people to give you the space you need.
  • Easily accessing the positive side to difficult situations, which can serve your child to have an ability to look at the glass as half full.
  • Feeling quite confident as a parent, and not spending a lot of time in self-doubt.

Reflection

  • What resonates with me?
  • Where do I see avoidant tendencies in myself?
  • What avoidant strengths do I possess?