When your attachment style isn’t what you thought it was…
…it feels both weird and clarifying to find out the truth.
Like the image says, I think I’m dismissive-avoidant.
I would never in a million years have thought I was avoidant. I was convinced I had an anxious style, because I’m someone who wants connection. I don’t see myself as afraid of approaching others. In fact, anyone who meets me agrees I’m extroverted. And I’m obviously not securely attached, or I wouldn’t attract so many devastating heartbreaks when trying to make friends… So I concluded, “oh. I must be anxious”. I never re-examined my conclusion and just took it for granted.
However… I don’t exactly insist on connecting. Ever. If I sense that someone is backing off, I give up instantly. The thought of insisting is sometimes a possibility I entertain inside my mind, because I’m wondering what would happen if I did that… But I never ACTUALLY put it in practice. My instinct is to just give the person space. (Unless their style is more confusing, like a disorganised one, where they initially get super close to me and then suddenly pull away for no reason or play “little games” and put me through “little tests” of loyalty. I hate that, it’s the only thing that can make me chase someone — out of spite, if anything — but that’s a topic for another post).
Another realisation that made me question my supposedly “anxious” style is the fact I can connect intellectually, and do so a lot, but feel extremely cornered if someone goes past the detached conversation / hanging out / etc phase and moves on to talk about touchy-feely stuff. When I started getting curious about why I have no problem with intellectual vulnerability (ie, admitting I don’t know something; showing people I don’t have an answer; changing my mind when I need to without making a fuss) but at the same time, emotional vulnerability scares me (letting someone in on my feelings; emoting outwardly what I feel inside; etc)… I realised it makes no sense. There’s no logic to what I was doing. BOTH kinds of vulnerability are technically scary and take a lot of bravery to practise. There’s no logical reason why my brain would point at one and say, “easy”, then at the other and say, “nearly impossible”.
Thirdly, I came across the theory that love languages and attachment styles are connected, read about it, and it didn’t resonate AT ALL — apparently anxious people love words of affirmation… But that’s precisely the only love language that annoys me. It sounds forced, I wanna see the evidence before you “just say” things carelessly like that. Best I can do is use words of affirmation with my husband or family members, because I already know if they MEAN something or are just being nice, and the same applies to what they can safely expect from me. Generally, though… I discourage most people from that love language. I’m okay with all other love languages, and have a slight preference for acts of service.
The fourth sign, and last straw, was when I admitted to myself that I find anxious people annoying. “Stop being clingy, stop being so needy, for heaven’s sake” is my go-to thought when anyone keeps talking past the point where I signalled I’m done for now and we can talk some other time; OR if during a conflict, someone keeps baiting, and baiting, and baiting, and baiting, and doesn’t seem to listen when I tell them “ok, I’ve gotta go now, whatever you say I won’t be listening anymore unless you give me space”… Which tends to result in me blocking them (on the Internet) or walking away as if they didn’t exist (in real life).
Hell! It doesn’t even NEED to be in a conflict. I recall vividly so many instances when I was at a party and someone basically felt entitled to my undivided attention and wouldn’t stop talking to me for a solid 30 minutes straight. It didn’t even matter that I liked them and had no problem engaging… One must know when to drop it and go do something else. Right? Isn’t it annoying by default? Or am I alone in feeling that way?
The above is, by the way, one of the reasons avoidants like me are often mistaken for autistic, because when we explain why we act the way we do, people just jump to the conclusion that, “oh, this is because of sensory overwhelm”. No. It isn’t.
[…]attachment style, alone or combined with tasks activating cognitive representations of attachment, may influence performance in vigilance, attentional monitoring, perceptual judgment, or memory for verbal material or emotional facial expressions.
Vrtička, Vuilleumier. (2012). Neuroscience of human social interactions and adult attachment style.
I can literally STAY in a party, in another crowded/busy/chaotic place for a lot longer AFTER I am done with this one person who is annoying me. It’s not sensory. It’s a matter of feeling a bit claustrophobic if someone (or a few specific someones) smother(s) me too much. There’s a difference.
This clip summarises the feeling:
When I revisited some of the aforementioned interactions, it made me have an epiphany: it’s not that I felt necessarily attacked by their words or gestures. It’s not that I wouldn’t have an answer on the spot either. It’s just that… the interaction ITSELF was becoming “too much” and I needed to breathe.
I went like, “oh”. I’m looking at an avoidant style here.
(In fact, I suspect Sophie is an avoidant too, in this movie. She wants love, in fact she insists on marriage before thinking much about it… But it’s with Sky. A guy who gets her attachment style. And most other people don’t get it.)
I needed to unlearn some of the assumptions I had about attachment styles.
This used to be some of the topics I just dipped my toes into every now and then and didn’t really nurture a passionate interest for. In fact, I don’t think I have a passionate interest in anything in particular — even oracles — but attachment styles were definitely not my specialty. It’s no wonder I made wrong assumptions and had a misguided understanding of how they really work. So, a deep dive was in order. And speaking of deep dives, here’s one of the experts I recommend:
From a very young age, we’re talking like under 2 years old, usually, someone who develops an avoidant attachment style has the experience of having their vulnerability, their need, their upset, all of those kinds of emotion that go into emotional intimacy, being rejected by a caregiver.
Bingo. That’s me in a nutshell. In fact, this didn’t need investigation or even therapy to reveal itself to me — my mother told me, back when we were still in contact (usually during angry outbursts — but she never apologised for it, so I take it she truly believes it) that when I was a newborn, I “rejected” her because I “cried so much when she held me” and she knew “that would foreshadow how ungrateful and unloving of a daughter I would grow up to be”.
Yes, mom. Of course. A baby doing what babies normally do (crying) totally says it “hates” you. Everything is about you, people can’t express themselves out of free will, it always has to do with you or their opinion of you. You’re so important, so relevant, you’re always on everybody’s mind and you’re the centre of the universe. #Sarcasm
I can’t wrap my head around this woman’s craziness. WTF! But I digress.
Heidi’s content is very easy to understand. She’s a great teacher, on top of being a great researcher in the field of attachment styles. I haven’t talked to her, and I won’t, but her free videos are hugely helpful. Go check her out!
The first assumption I needed to let go of is the idea that introversion and extroversion have anything to do with it.
Granted — it seems to be a common mistake and I’m not alone in making it. In fact, maybe there’s correlation between cultural background and idealisation of one attachment style over the other. Back where I come from in Latin America, pretty much every culture I’ve been in contact with (except the recent Germanic immigrant “weirdos” — like my Swedish side of the family) seems to favour the anxious. Right? Because if you say they favour extroversion, that’s wrong, that’s a stereotype, the world is full of Latinos who enjoy their alone time. But anxious attachment style seems to be what we Latinos in general are culturally taught to understand (whereas the avoidant one, we stigmatise). It’s not that avoidant Latinos don’t exist, of course they do, and they aren’t even rare, but we’re culturally suspicious of them because how come this weirdo here isn’t waving their arms around and saying out loud everything that crosses their thoughts in an “urgent”, “pay-attention-to-me-please” tone of voice? That’s the cultural tendency anyway — and the reason why I thought I was introverted in my childhood.
Fast forward many years, here in Ireland (and Iceland, and Sweden, and other places where Latin influence isn’t so pronounced), I’ve come to understand I’m not exactly introverted. My natural style doesn’t seem to elicit a reaction out of the locals here, since culturally they’re more favourable to avoidant styles. I do like going out very often, approaching people, mingling and getting to know what’s up. It’s just that I am not frantic, or, well, “anxious” to get an immediate response. And neither are most of the locals.
On that same note, it’s interesting how some of the anxious people I cut out from my life after a heartbreaking argument thought of themselves as avoidant — including an ex-friend who works as a psychologist — which goes to show how misunderstood this subject matter really is, and how you can’t take your understanding of attachment styles for granted unless you’re ACTUALLY putting effort into researching it. Being anxiously attached doesn’t mean you can’t value your personal space or independence. It simply means you have a tendency to give paramount importance to how fast people respond to you, and whether or not they’re “soothing” this anxiety of yours in real time. Meanwhile, an avoidant will find it more important to focus on what was or wasn’t communicated, regardless of when — and especially, whether or not they’re being “cornered” to communicate more than they feel ready to communicate, without having the chance to deliberate on it first.
So, this kind of disconnect causes interactions that look like:
Avoidant: “you’re not getting where I’m coming from. I can try to explain further, but maybe we should just leave it for now”.
Anxious: “of course I get it! It’s obvious to me that you’re forcing me to keep talking when I have other things to do. And you’re saying we should just leave it because you’re guilt-tripping me into staying in this conversation”.
Both are projecting.
The avoidant is projecting their over-intellectualisation onto the anxious. They think the anxious person’s mind works the same way, when it doesn’t. They assume the anxious person is happy to deliberate things internally before coming back with an answer without the other person’s help (namely, without co-regulation) in real time, because that’s what avoidants automatically do, so the knee-jerk reaction is to go like, “oh, that’s what everybody does. Right?” — but that’s not right. That’s a projection. The anxious, on the other side, is projecting their need for constant co-regulation onto the avoidant. They assume that when any complaint is made to them, “it must be because this other person wants MORE contact” because contact is all there is, give-and-take is all there is, there can’t be any other thing in their toolbox other than responding to somebody IN REAL TIME — when in fact that’s not what the avoidant is asking for — but the presence of a projection here makes it look as though this avoidant person (in this specific dynamic) is “chasing the other too much”. In fact, they aren’t. They’re asking for a conclusion/opinion as an end-product, without witnessing all the grinding or gears and all the moving parts in the process it takes to arrive at it; However long it takes to arrive at this conclusion/opinion before communicating it out loud to them, doesn’t actually matter.
There are anxious introverts and there are avoidant introverts. Same for extroverts. The anxious attachment style simply means you “go for” real-time, out-loud, deliberation of feelings and emotions so that no step of the process is left in the dark, whereas with the avoidant you’re “running away from” that level of exposure and vulnerability, and preferring to go through that same process quietly, protected, on your own, without any external help, because external help in real-time can feel smothering instead of reassuring or “loving” to the avoidant. (Again, refer to the Mamma Mia clip where Sophie feels smothered by her 3 dads “invading her space with real-time deliberation” instead of keeping that to themselves and approaching her with more decisiveness and less chaotic energy at a later time. And I bet all the 3 men assumed they were just being loving and kind to her. Granted, this was made worse by the fact Sophie wasn’t honest, but that’s a film thing, I’m focusing on attachment styles only here).
The point is, extroversion/introversion (how your “social battery” works, regardless of the way you’re attaching to people DURING interactions) is an entirely other spectrum and there’s no correlation.
The second assumption I got wrong was taking the attachment style names literally.
“If you’re anxious, you can’t wait to connect, you want it so much!”
“If you’re avoidant, you avoid connection. It’s not your cup of tea”.
Both assumptions are very, very wrong.
Avoidants can be very warm, loving people. Similarly, the anxious can be very moody and hesitant (and vice-versa too, but that’d be the common stereotype). This is not about what they ultimately want as an end goal — I suspect our end goal is always similar, because we’re all human, we all want connection and love — but instead, it’s about how each attachment style operates in their pursuit of connection.
Neither the avoidant or the anxious are secure. So, we’re talking about two attachment styles borne out of dysfunction. In other words, they aren’t “quirks” to maintain throughout your life because they make you cool; they’re problems that need our attention. What we all need, as human beings, is to become securely attached.
I’m not pointing this out to nag you, my intent is actually to draw your attention to the fact we shouldn’t give insecure attachment style names so much of our attention and energy. That’s because, in the end of the day, they aren’t healthy “labels” we can choose to wear and go about our lives and be satisfied. They aren’t to be defended as a part of us, either. Instead, they need to be healed so that hopefully we all arrive at a secure style.
The third and last (so far) wrong assumption I identified was the idea that securely attached people dislike me.
I used to make that assumption because I don’t know a whole bunch of secure people. I can think of one, and she keeps me at arm’s length. The thing is… I am probably signalling to her that I would prefer if she keeps me at arm’s length. And since she isn’t overly anxious, she respects my unspoken wish. Similarly, I imagine there are securely attached people I come across here and there, but just don’t get to know them too well BECAUSE of my unconscious defense mechanism.
It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that securely attached people are out of our league when our own style is some kind of insecure (avoidant, anxious, or disorganised); first of all because of the human instinct of comparison to try and see how we “measure up” to each other; And secondly, because research confirms that insecure attachment styles do in fact end up attracting each other. But what we need to debunk here is the myth that secure people are choosing to stay away from us, because it’s far more likely that this is a projection.
I know it’s hard, but let’s admit one thing: the person who brings the most dysfunction to the table is likely the one preventing a healthy dynamic (in this case, securely attached) from playing out as it naturally should. If in doubt, think of the people you dealt with who were MORE dysfunctional than you: chances are you thought, more than once, “oh boy… how I wish this person would realise their problem and work on healing it!” — I can think of the narcissists and sociopaths I’ve met, they were UNDOUBTEDLY more dysfunctional than I, and that was pretty much what crossed my mind. Well… attachment style-wise, the tables turned: in order to relate to secure people, I’m the one who needs to do most of the work to heal myself first.
This is why a victim mentality isn’t always helpful if you’re avoidant, disorganised, or anxious.
I’m still far from an expert in attachment styles, all I’m after doing is kick-starting my research into this topic. So, feel free to share your thoughts in case you noticed I missed anything.
Until next time!
