#265: Fearful Avoidant Attachment: A Deep Dive (Part 3)
Fearful avoidant attachment can feel like an exhausting internal tug-of-war: deeply wanting closeness, while also feeling threatened by it.
You might crave love, intimacy, and connection, but once a relationship starts to feel vulnerable or emotionally real, your system may panic. You might pull away, shut down, become reactive, or suddenly feel convinced that the relationship is unsafe.
Healing fearful avoidant patterns is possible, but it is rarely quick work. Because these patterns are often tied to deeply encoded threat responses around relationships, healing tends to happen gradually, through self-awareness, nervous system regulation, and new relational experiences over time.
Here are five places to begin.
1. Turn Toward Your Shame
For many people with fearful avoidant attachment, shame is a major part of the pattern.
You may have parts of yourself that you have rejected, hidden, or deemed broken, defective, bad, or unlovable. You may also have a harsh inner critic that constantly tells you that you are the problem.
But shame is not the soil in which growth happens.
When we try to shame ourselves into being better, we usually become more defensive, reactive, or collapsed. Healing requires turning toward those parts of ourselves with curiosity and compassion — not to excuse hurtful behaviour, but to understand where it came from.
Your patterns make sense in the context of your experiences. And when you can soften the shame, you create more space for real responsibility and change.
2. Speak Up Before You Reach a Tipping Point
A common fearful avoidant pattern is suppressing your needs, preferences, or boundaries until resentment builds.
You might go along with things, people-please, avoid conflict, or tell yourself something is fine when it is not. Then, once you reach a tipping point, you may snap, withdraw, blame, or suddenly feel trapped.
This can leave the other person feeling blindsided, especially if they did not know what was happening internally for you.
Healing asks you to practise speaking up earlier. That means noticing what you need, allowing those needs to matter, and communicating them before resentment takes over.
Clear communication is not selfish. It is what makes relationships more sustainable.
3. Be Mindful of Idolising People
Fearful avoidant attachment can sometimes come with a tendency to go all in quickly.
You might meet someone and feel consumed by the possibility of them. They seem amazing, the connection feels intense, and you place them on a pedestal.
But when they inevitably disappoint you, make a mistake, or reveal their humanness, the fall can feel enormous. You may feel betrayed, let down, or convinced that you need to protect yourself by pulling away.
The work here is to let people be human from the beginning.
You can be excited about someone without making them perfect. You can enjoy connection without rushing into fantasy. And you can remind yourself that imperfection is not automatically danger.
Real relationships involve challenge, repair, and growth.
4. Get Honest About Your Dysfunctional Behaviours
Healing also requires honest self-reflection.
Where do you tend to act out? Where do you sabotage? Where do you lie, conceal, avoid, or use coping mechanisms that you know are not good for you or your relationships?
This is not about attacking yourself. It is about getting clear.
Many unhealthy coping strategies exist because they help you escape feelings that feel too big to stay with. They may numb shame, reduce anxiety, create distance, or give you a sense of control.
But even if those strategies once helped you survive, they may now be blocking the relationship you deeply want.
Compassionate honesty allows you to ask: What am I trying not to feel? What need is this behaviour meeting? What would help this moment feel safer, so I do not have to act from fear?
5. Support Your Nervous System
People with fearful avoidant patterns often have chronically dysregulated nervous systems.
You may feel anxious, agitated, hypervigilant, or unable to fully relax. Or you may swing into shutdown, numbness, low energy, hopelessness, or emotional flatness.
When your nervous system is constantly scanning for threat, relationships can feel much harder. Even neutral or loving behaviour from a partner may be interpreted through a lens of danger.
Supporting your nervous system is a vital part of healing. This might include prioritising sleep, nourishment, movement, sunlight, time outside, community, therapy, somatic work, or simply spending time with people who help you feel safe and grounded.
The more your body learns that safety is possible, the more capacity you have to stay present in connection.
Healing Is Possible
Healing fearful avoidant attachment is not about never feeling afraid again.
It is about learning to relate to your fear differently.
It is learning to pause before you run, speak before you snap, stay curious before you blame, and offer yourself compassion instead of shame.
This is deep work, and for many people, it is best supported by a therapist or trusted professional, particularly where trauma is part of the picture.
But every time you choose awareness over autopilot, communication over resentment, and regulation over reactivity, you are building a new pattern.
And over time, those new patterns become the foundation for safer, more secure love.
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[00:00:55]:
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment.
Today's episode we are talking once again about fearful avoidant attachment. In case you missed it, I recently did two episodes, a part one and a Part two, that were a deep dive on fearful avoidant attachment. If you missed those, you can go back and listen. But I sort of tossed out at the end of Part two saying maybe I need to do a part three about, you know, what it looks like to heal fearful avoidant attachment patterns. And I was met with a resounding yes, please do part three. I think I received more responses to that episode than than any other episode ever in the history of the podcast. So your wish is my command. I am here with Part three and today we are going to be talking about what it looks like to heal fearful avoidant attachment patterns.
[00:02:09]:
And actually, at the risk of overdoing it, I may even do a Part four because as I was mapping out what I'd like to speak to in today's episode, it occurred to me that maybe it makes sense to talk about, you know, what it takes for the person with fearful avoidant patterns to heal and then what it might look like from a partner's perspective to support someone with fearful avoidant patterns. You know how you can be a great partner to someone with that attachment blueprint and you know what kind of partner traits are going to be most I don't want to say compatible, but most supportive for someone as they do that healing work. And that I think is useful information for someone with fearful avoidant patterns in choosing a partner. But also if you're in a relationship with someone with fearful avoidant patterns and you want to know how best to support them. So at this stage it may well end up being a four part series, but today is all about what it looks like for someone with fearful avoidant patterns to do that healing work and some of the main things to be focusing on. Of course, as with any attachment style, trying to encapsulate like how to heal into a relatively condensed format is always going to be a simplification. But I've tried to set out what I think are some of the key points that you should be focusing on in creating not only self awareness mindset but also the self responsibility around how you might be keeping yourself stuck. And I do think that fearful avoidant attachment or disorganised attachment as it's also termed, can be one of the more challenging patterns to shift just because there is so much conflict around relationships and are fairly deeply encoded threat and stress response.
[00:03:51]:
And as I've talked about before in different contexts, there's a lot of that that just is a matter of collecting new evidence over time. So it's not an attachment style that you're just going to be able to heal overnight or even in eight weeks or 12 weeks. It's long term work and there's self work in that, there's relational work in that. But you can certainly start to see progress and feel better within I would say the short to medium term once you start knowing where of focus your energy. So that's what we're going to be talking about in today's episode. Now a quick reminder if you haven't already heard me share that I've recently launched on Substack. I've been doing lots of writing there and would so love if you could come over and subscribe. It's currently free, so if you would like to read and I've also recorded me reading out the articles so if you prefer to listen it would be a huge help to me if you could head on over to Substack and subscribe to my publication there.
[00:04:50]:
It's called Notes to Self and it's just longer form Reflections on All of the things that we talk about here, but in written format, which is something I've been really enjoying creating, so hugely grateful if you could head on over and support me there. Second, quick announcement. I have an upcoming free workshop all about understanding anxious attachment protest behaviours. So if you're someone who struggles with anxious attachment, or even if you're in a relationship with someone with anxious patterns, and you want to get a clearer understanding on some of those quote unquote sabotaging behaviours, some of the ways you can act out when you're feeling really at the mercy of your anxiety, I'm going to be breaking all of that down in this upcoming live free workshop. There'll also be a recording, but of course I would love to see as many of you live there as possible. So if you'd like to register for that and come along, please do. The link is in the show notes and I hope to see you there. So let's talk about healing fearful avoidant attachment.
[00:05:42]:
I'm not going to go into, you know, what it is and what it entails, because that was parts one and two. So please do go back and listen to that if you haven't already. And you, you don't have that context. The first piece that I think is so, so important for people with fearful avoidant patterns is turn towards your shame. Turn towards the parts of you that you have rejected, that you have disowned, that you have exiled, that you have sent away, that you have deemed to be broken and defective and unlovable and bad. For so many people with fearful avoidant patterns, there is a lot of shame in the system and there's a very punitive, harsh inner critic and it takes a whole lot energy to lock parts of us away and to be in resistance to ourself and to be so harsh towards ourselves all the time. It creates a very highly strung way of being. And I spoke about last time how there can be that quality of reactivity in relationships.
[00:06:43]:
And I think a huge part of that is because that internal environment of shame creates a lot of reactivity and defensiveness. And so until you can turn towards that and actually get curious and actually offer yourself some compassion to recognise that the way you struggle and the things you struggle with are things that you've come by honestly, you're not bad. You had certain experiences that made relationships feel really hard and that probably hurt your self esteem and internalising that as being your fault or as being a function of you just being broken or you just being not enough, it is so, so hard. And I say this to, you know, all of the people who I support with anxious attachment, which is kind of the bulk of the work that I do. You know, shame is not the soil in which growth is going to happen. It's so toxic. And when we try and shame ourselves into being better, and when we're really harsh and punitive and kind of beat ourselves up all the time, and we're really rigid and really critical, growth doesn't come from that as much as we can. Feel like I have to be hard on myself because look at all the ways I keep messing up.
[00:07:58]:
It actually just creates so much collapsing and so much internal pain that we then become really motivated to making the pain go away or getting away from the pain. And that will often manifest in dysfunctional behaviours or pulling away from the relationship, because the relationship holds a mirror up to all of that shame and pain and hurt that we're carrying. So until we really deliberately turn towards it and decide that we're going to air it out, that we're going to look at it with compassion and curiosity, it's going to be really, really hard to grow out of those patterns. If there are just like vast amounts of our being that we are trying to keep at bay because we've designated them as bad or wrong. And I know that that can feel really daunting. And certainly I should have said this at the outset. Not everyone with fearful, avoidant patterns will have a trauma background, but many people with a trauma background will have fearful avoidant patterns. And certainly if you have some big stuff that you know in your history, in your background, it's a really good idea to seek the support of a therapist or some other professional that you can work through that with, who feels like a safe person to go there with if it feels too overwhelming to even think about opening up that can of worms.
[00:09:12]:
If you've never gone there and you know that there's stuff there that maybe needs to be felt or looked at, it's certainly a good idea, if that feels overwhelming, to seek the support of someone who can help you with that. But in any case, it's going to be near impossible for you to heal your attachment patterns and your patterns in relationship if you are still carrying that heavy burden of shame, because it is at the heart of so many of your unhealthy relationship patterns and the ways that you act out and the ways that you pull away and sabotage and all of that shame is the root cause of a lot of that. And so getting curious, extending yourself Grace and self compassion and recognising that as is true for all of us, no matter the mistakes you've made, need the things you regret. We all come by our patterns honestly and it's actually only when we can recognise that, that a lot of this stuff was a product of things that we didn't have choice around, we can start to let go a little of that really harsh self criticism. And really importantly, it's only when we do that that there is space for us to take responsibility and to engage meaningfully with the things that we do regret rather than just collapsing around it. So you know, shame and accountability tend to be mutually exclusive because our shame stops us from feeling like we can take accountability. So it's only when we, you know, let go of some of that and can reflect honestly and with self compassion and recognising that we are human and we make mistakes, it's only then that we can start to take ownership and ultimately, you know, be more intentional and change our patterns moving forward. Okay, so the second tip that I have for healing fearful avoidant patterns is learn to speak up, to advocate for yourself before you reach a tipping point.
[00:11:03]:
So what's really common amongst people with fearful avoidant patterns is kind of engaging in some people pleasing, fawning, approval seeking behaviour, you know, going with the flow, maybe suppressing their needs or preferences up until a point where they snap and actually there's this big clamp down and almost turning on someone who might be quite unassuming, they might not have known that there was anything going on internally, but they can kind of spin around and then blame and say like you are the reason that none of my needs are being met or that I feel smothered or that my boundaries are being crossed or whatever. And actually there's not been any communication of that, but that the fearful avoidant can be very quick to then turn on someone and blame them and make them the villain, even though they maybe didn't communicate or make clear. And it's like you've done this to me, therefore you're bad and I need to make you wrong for it. And as a side shoot, I think that the more shame you have towards yourself, the quicker you are to make others wrong or bad because it feels like either I'm bad or they're bad. So I want them to be bad so that I don't have to be bad. And so much of our healing, and this applies all relationships, is actually just letting go of the, you know, need to find the bad guy need for there to be a villain. And we can actually just then let go of that very dualistic binary thinking because that just keeps us in opposition to each other and it really blocks connection. So the more that you can be clear and speak up for yourself and that requires, you know, knowing what you need and being okay with that, rather than again doubting yourself or shaming yourself or making yourself wrong or feeling guilty or feeling like I'm going to upset someone if I tiptoeing around it.
[00:12:50]:
Respecting yourself and respecting the other person enough to actually just share those things, to bring things to a partner or a friend or a whoever speaking up for yourself so that you don't then have to get resentful and feel cornered and then turn on them and end the relationship or do something impulsive because you feel like you're trapped. And I think that that can happen a lot is like, like going along with it, going along with it, going along with it and then snapping and going, this is too much, I gotta get out of here. And I talked a little bit about that last time in part two around that, you know, going really close and then feeling like it's too much and pulling way back. I think the more responsibility you can take for what you need and what's best for you along the way and being less concerned with avoiding conflict or making people feel bad, actually just realising that that's what makes relationships more sustainable for you, is communicating clearly and trusting that the other person can handle it. And that actually it's much better for everyone involved if you're honest and clear along the way so that it doesn't bubble up and become this big volcanic eruption that then really does make repair much more challenging because you might act out in those ways that you then regret or that cause a lot of damage to the relationship. Okay, the third tip, try not to idolise people and then feel betrayed when they disappoint you. Okay, so this might sound kind of niche, but I think if you have fearful avoidant patterns, this might resonate. I think there can be a tendency because fearful avoidance do tend to be hopeless romantics and sometimes be quite obsessive by nature.
[00:14:31]:
They can be the sense of going all in and getting super excited about something or someone and it occupying your whole field of vision. And I'm all in on this. And they're amazing and it's all going to be amazing. And so it's like full pelt on the accelerator, really putting someone on a pedestal and then at the first sign of trouble when they disappoint you when they inevitably show their humanness and they make a mistake or they trigger you in some way. The fall from grace feels so profound. And the sense of betrayal. And most people with fearful avoidant patterns have a bit of a thing around feeling betrayed, feeling let down, you know, having really high hopes for someone and then, you know, feeling like they didn't meet those expectations. And so again, the tendency is to like really turn on them, cut things off altogether, or like really feel personally let down by them.
[00:15:28]:
So try not to create that pattern for yourself by putting people on pedestals, by idolising them, by assuming they can do no wrong, or by rushing into something at full speed only to feel, you know, really disappointed, let down, betrayed, when it doesn't, you know, meet your impossible, unrealistic expectations. And again, I think that's good advice for anyone who knows that about themselves, that you put someone on a pedestal. Because just generally speaking, the higher you put someone on a pedestal, the farther they have to fall. And they will fall because we will all make mistakes, we will all reveal our imperfections. And there can be this sense of like bait and switch or like what has happened here or this is not what I signed up for, this is not what, what I expected. And I think particularly for fearful avoidance, because there can be this sense of mistrust and hyper vigilance and like, oh no, something bad's going to happen because you have this imprint of, I both want relationships, but I don't trust them and they always come with pain and hurt. That can be the thing that really triggers the fear response that says, I've got to get out of here because this is exactly the thing that I didn't want to happen. And if I don't end things now or if I don't pull away, then it's going to get worse and it's going to be really bad and I'm going to get hurt.
[00:16:43]:
And I've just realised how vulnerable, vulnerable I am. And that's just intolerable to me. So I gotta go. So I think noticing if you do that and really trying to keep that a little bit more measured, so reminding yourself like, yes, this person's really great, I can be excited about them, but they are imperfect just as I am. And we are going to be in a real relationship that's going to have challenges and I'm going to trust that we can work through that and that that's okay, that's not a sign of danger. I don't have to run for the hills. I don't have protect myself. If this is a person that I'm really excited about and that seems trustworthy, can I let them be who they are and can we walk down this path at a sustainable pace rather than rushing in at full speed and then feeling like it all burns out really quickly because it was unsustainable? Okay, the fourth tip that I have, and this is kind of a broad one, and it follows a little from the first around shame and trying to soften some of that shame to facilitate greater accountability.
[00:17:50]:
And this is just to get honest about your dysfunctional behaviours. I think oftentimes when we have a lot of shame in the system, we can engage in dysfunctional behaviours, whether that's unhealthy behaviours, coping mechanisms, addictions, you know, reactivity in a relationship, any number of things. But there can be so much stress in the system that there might be protective strategies that you know are not in alignment with how you want to show up. And a really good way of identifying those things is where do you feel those intense shame, hangovers, or what are the things that you try to keep secret that you lie about, that you conceal, that you are convinced, no one could ever love me if they knew this? You know, some of those things might just be vulnerabilities, but others might be areas of dysfunction that you know are really unhealthy, that are not really conducive to relationships and as I said, like things that you lie about, things that you're secretive about. You. You can't build a healthy relationship with yourself or with anyone else if you're continuing to lie, to be secretive, to be deceptive, to conceal and to engage in those unhealthy coping mechanisms. Now, again, the shame link is really important here because you can't shame yourself out of your unhealthy coping mechanisms. You can't just tell yourself that you're an idiot or that you know you're not strong enough or you're so weak or you're pathetic or whatever other voice you might have in your head.
[00:19:17]:
The curiosity piece is so important here. And again, this is true for anyone with unhealthy coping mechanisms or dysfunctional behaviours. We've got to understand what is the purpose of this behaviour, what need is it meeting and you know, an unhealthy coping mechanism is helping to buffer the intensity of a feeling that you don't know how to feel, right? It's taking you out of an experience that you don't feel equipped to be in. And so. So being able to shift away from those things is finding newer, healthier ways of being. And that might be building your tolerance for certain feelings, situation, circumstances that you feel like you don't currently have the capacity for, and that everything in your system tells you to just find a release valve or something to take you out of the experience. So getting really honest around, what are my personal, unhealthy coping mechanisms? What are the things that I do that I know are not good for me, that are not not good for my relationships? What's my role in the relational dysfunction? What are the ways that I act out? What are the ways that I sabotage, so to speak? Can I get really clear about how my cycle tends to look in relationships? And that might be part of some of these other pieces that I've been drawing on. Not speaking up for myself, then turning on someone, making them the villain, putting them on a pedestal, and then feeling like they've betrayed me or let me down.
[00:20:41]:
All of those things might be part of your pattern. And until you realise and can kind of clearly map how that tends to go, that's a really important first step in ultimately shifting it, because you can take responsibility and figure out at each step of the way, how am I blocking myself here? And what would it take for this to feel even a little bit safer so that I could stay in it, rather than acting out from fear and impulsivity and protection? Because ultimately, while that protective intent is very real and sincere, it may also be blocking the thing that you want most. Okay, and the fifth tip is kind of a general one, working on nervous system wellbeing and regulation. Because people with fearful avoidant patterns tend to have pretty chronically dysregulated nervous systems. You might swing between a kind of a hyperactivated high anxiety state of being very mobilised, can't sit still, very agitated, feel like you're always buzzing, feel like you're very fidgety. And that sense of can't switch off and I can't afford to switch off. And oftentimes that is a byproduct of someone who's grown up in an environment that never quite felt safe. And so you can never quite rest or relax.
[00:21:57]:
So there is just this sense of always being at the ready, always on the lookout, always in that starting position. And if that's kind of where you hang out, your baseline might just be one of dysregulation. And again, while that makes sense in the context of where you've come from and what you've been through, that's kind of not where healthy relationships Hang out in that zone of our nervous system. And this is true for people with anxious attachment patterns as well. That mobilised state will be familiar to you. That is the domain of anxiety. That's our fight or flight, sympathetic nervous system. But it's where anxiety lives.
[00:22:35]:
And so that sense of always being on the lookout, it's really hard to be in a healthy relationship from that place because it means that we're much more prone to interpreting things through the lens of threat and danger and much more prone to interpreting our partners through that same lens. And along with being in that activated state, people with fearful avoidant patterns might spend a lot of time in a freeze state, which is actually a blend of activation and deactivation. So it's like you might be internally really, really mobilised and like there's lots going on, but externally you're a bit frozen and numb and blank looking and. Or you might spend time in kind of depressive, of what's termed dorsal vagal shutdown or hypoactivation of your nervous system. So feeling low energy, flat, depressed, you know, a sense of despair, hopelessness, pointlessness, why bother? You know, I can't, I can't do it, there's no point. That kind of energy. So those are all different experiences of dysregulation which people with fearful avoidant patterns, you know, you might have a home base in amongst those or you might kind of move between them. But what will often be the case is that people with the fearful avoidant pattern don't spend much time in a regulated state of feeling calm and at ease and connected and open and, you know, like, I can just be here, I don't have a job to do, I don't have to be on the lookout, I don't have to be worried or on alert.
[00:24:10]:
And that is really taxing. It's taxing for your health. It's just taxing as a way to move through the world. And it tends not to be very helpful in relationships. So all of the, you know, tools and tips and tricks and things like that for nervous system wellbeing more broadly, which I'm not going to go into here because that's a whole other conversation. But eat well, get good sleep, get sunlight, go outside, be around people who bring you joy and who you can be yourself with, community, all of these things that support you. To feel like I'm safe and the world is a good place because there's a good chance that that's not the set point of your nervous system. Feeling like the world is safe and I am safe and people are good.
[00:24:54]:
And so it's really important you can do what you can to reprogram that and to collect new evidence that says that actually that can be true. And I can create that for myself and I can have new experiences that allow me to feel like it's all good and I'm okay. And that's what eventually allows you to kind of recalibrate away from this constant bracing threat detection. Gotta be on the lookout, gotta be ready to something that feels a little more easeful and that's ultimately more conducive to healthy relationships. Okay, so those five tips, as I said, far from being exhaustive, obviously there's so much to talk about here, but I hope that that's at least given you, if you are someone with fearful avoidant patterns, a bit of a sense of where you should be focusing if you do want to start to shift some of those patterns. And as I said also it can be really helpful to do that with a therapist, to have a trusted person who can support you along the way and who can be a safe person for you to turn towards some of those bigger pieces with. Okay, I hope that that's been helpful. I will plan to do a part four.
[00:25:56]:
I think that will be the final part of this series about, you know, what a partner can do to support that work and to support themselves in relationship with someone with fearful, avoidant patterns. So let me know if that is something you'd be interested in and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks so much, guys.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
fearful avoidant attachment, healing attachment patterns, disorganised attachment, shame, self compassion, inner critic, self awareness, self responsibility, trauma background, seeking therapy, relational work, emotional regulation, boundaries, people pleasing, fawning, approval seeking, reactive behaviours, sabotage in relationships, idolising partners, betrayal feelings, coping mechanisms, unhealthy behaviours, nervous system regulation, anxiety, hypervigilance, self advocacy, communication skills, conflict avoidance, relationship challenges, support for partners