When Anxious & Avoidant Get Together

In my last post, I talked about the two most common insecure attachment styles, anxious and avoidant. You could actually think of attachment styles on a spectrum, with anxious on one side, avoidant on the other, and secure in the middle. So, even those that fall close to the secure attachment style are likely to lean towards either anxious or avoidant.

Why Anxious and Avoidant Get Together

We tend to date/ marry people that confirm our attachment styles and our fears. Thus, people that lean towards an anxious style tend to those that lean towards an avoidant style and vice versa. And when we confirm our attachment styles in adulthood, we are likely to become even more polarized towards either an anxious or an avoidant style.

For example, when someone with an anxious attachment style begins dating someone with an avoidant attachment style, they are likely to be met with unresponsiveness when they express their needs. Pushing the person with an anxious style towards more and more extreme attempts at getting the attention of their partner. And on the other hand, the avoidant partner is likely to become more and more avoidant as their partner becomes more overbearing.

The Anxious and Avoidant Cycle

So, how do we stop this dance of the anxious partner getting more and more activated and the avoidant partner getting more and more deactivated?

According to Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), couples get stuck in rigid and reactive cycles of unprocessed attachment injuries. What this means is that when our relationship triggers a potential of disconnection, we are likely to respond with either a fight (anxious) or flight (avoidant) response.

Effort to Cope

Pictured above is the pursuer-withdrawer cycle. At the very top, we see our “effort to cope” which is the action that we use to protect ourselves from, prevent, and cope with disconnection. This part is what differentiates the anxious and avoidant attachment styles. It is also the part of the cycle that is the most noticeable. Common actions of people with anxious attachment styles are:

• Poking

• Probing

• Questioning

• Confronting

• Attacking

• Yelling

• Judging

• Disapproving

While those with an avoidant attachment style experience:

• Clamming up

• Dismissing

• Reasoning

• Advice giving

• Avoidance

• Yelling

• Shutting down

• Blaming

• Leaving

The Meaning

Before we get the point of action, our gut makes an assumption of what we think about ourselves, our partner, and our relationship. For example, someone might assume this:

• Assumption about me: I am not lovable

• Assumption about my partner: My partner does not love me

• Assumption about our relationship: Our relationship will not last

Which is of course what leads up to act, protect, and protest the potential disconnection with our partner.

Surface Emotion

This is the emotion that we could potentially identify and that we certainly show. This emotion is a reaction to our underlying and most vulnerable emotions. It is an attempt to protect us from the vulnerability of our core emotion. Some examples of surface emotions are:

• Anger

• Frustration

• Annoyance

• Defensiveness

• Hopelessness

• Anxiety

• Urgency

• Numbness

• Shutdown

• Overwhelm

Vulnerable Emotion

This is the emotion that we feel at our core, which relates to the threat and fear of disconnection. Our surface emotions cover up these core emotions to protect us from their tenderness and vulnerability. Some examples of core emotions are:

• Fear

• Sadness

• Hurt (this is the vulnerable version of anger)

• Loneliness

• Joy

• Longing

• Shame

• Guilt

If your therapist has ever asked you, “where do you feel that in your body?” this is what they are getting at.

Threat Appraisal  

This is the part of us that is constantly looking for signals of disconnection. We assess the gap between actual and desired contact, comfort, care, acceptance, belonging, togetherness, love, valuing, and safety. If our brain determines that disconnection is imminent, we begin to move through the cycle.

As you see, at the core of our effort to cope, is a fear of disconnection from our partner. But what we share with our partner is our protest of disconnection which is likely to trigger their own side of the cycle.

So, what if we increased vulnerable communication and allowed our partner to see the part of us that is afraid to lose them?  

Join my relationship processing group and learn more about your attachment style and how it comes up in your relationship!