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The fearful avoidant attachment style in a relationship craves and yearns for love, but fears it equally. And underneath the surface of all of that intent to connect and be close, they do have some really painful stories that they do silently believe. And these five stories, or essentially lies that they may tell themselves about the future of relationships can literally shape everything about their present and the way that they try to connect and especially shape a lot of what happens in the future. So in today's video, we're going to unpack the five lies. A fearful avoidant attachment style tends to tell themselves about love and connection. Her name is Thais Gibson. Thais Gibson. Thais Gibson. Thais Gibson. Thais Gibson. Thais Gibson. I hope I pronounce her name properly. Thais Gibson. I am so excited for you to be here with me today. Thank you for joining us. Here's the first one. One of the biggest things that will happen is a fearful avoidant thinks one of us has to have the upper hand. Now, they don't think this from a place of yearning for power. In fact, fearful avoidance generally don't really want power over other people, but they do this from wanting to avoid somebody from having power over them. A lot of fearful avoidance usually saw growing up a power struggle in relationships. Whether that was because they were around a single parent who constantly was dating people and they experienced a lot of chaos witnessing that, or whether they saw a lot of power struggle in the home because perhaps they had family members who were just caught in the power struggle stage of a relationship. So they generally enter into a relationship wanting connection but being so scared of feeling powerless in that connection with somebody else that they think that relationships are about who has the upper hand. And unfortunately, this can lead them to not so much in the honeymoon stage, when things are a little bit easier, or in the dating stage before there's a lot of vulnerability and deep commitment required. But really, when you get into the later stages, like the power struggle stage, they will deeply fear losing their sense of personal power because they tend to equate vulnerability with taking that away. And as a result, you may see some of the games start to ensue. You may see them, you know, pull away if they think that you're not investing enough. And one of the biggest things that fearful avoidance struggle with in this particular case is they really struggle to leverage the true power of vulnerability and the ability to communicate openly and express their needs, which is something that securely attached people do very well in relationships, and that allows an entire relationship dynamic to not stay in any Kind of power struggle. And in that case, we. Relationships are about connection rather than a struggle for power. But if somebody doesn't understand that relationships can be something so much bigger and greater and more fulfilling than simply a power struggle of who has the upper hand, they can get roped in to this idea of monitoring for that and feeling like they have to struggle to not be too vulnerable, to not open up too much, which can be a terribly painful thing to experience, especially as an attachment style that generally values true connection so deeply. Number two, a huge fear or lie that a fearful avoidant tends to have is, I need to be perfect to be worthy of love. And it's interesting. Fearful avoidance aren't necessarily always perfectionists, although they can be. But it's almost like the standard they hold themselves to is as close to a state of perfection as it can be. In other words, they may feel like every time they go out to spend time with somebody or go on a date, it has to be the best date ever. Every time they, you know, plan a trip or plan something fun to do, it has to be, you know, the most climatic experience ever. And they tend to put so much pressure on every phone call, on every text message, text message exchange, on every single interaction that they end up in a situation or truly they feel like, okay, everything has to be at this next level standard for me to be worthy. And of course, one silver lining of that is that they tend to truly invest deeply in their relationships. They tend to really care about things growing and progressing all the time. But the downside is, just like in our first lie that they tell themselves, it basically stops them from being able to be vulnerable and just have a day where you're tired and just want to hang out and stay in and take it easy and not think about always rating the scale of how great the hangout was or how good of a time you had. And in, in avoiding that vulnerability, it causes them to go into relationships in the long haul, connecting always through a mask. Of course, these things start to change as you work to become securely attached. But these are huge things that cause a lot of distress and discomfort and overwhelm in a relationship long term. And it's part of why you would see a fearful avoidant often be so hot and cold, because that level of intensity and pressure can literally lead to burnout. Number three, a huge lie. Fearful avoidance tend to tell themselves if it is that if I open up or I'm too vulnerable, somebody will think I'm weak and they will abandon me. And again, this is A huge detriment to a relationship evolving because to literally make it out of the power struggle stage of relationships. So if you didn't already know this, every relationship has six stages. The dating stage, honeymoon stage, then the power struggle stage. And literally the rite of passage to get out of this stage is to learn to be vulnerable, to learn to open up and show and share your fears and flaws and learn your partners and learn how to navigate those collectively. And if you do, you then make it into the stability, commitment and then bliss stage, which is like the honeymoon stage, but you truly, deeply know each other. And so if there's this idea that me opening up or showing my fears or flaws makes me weak or makes me, you know, worthy of abandonment, then it literally stunts the growth of a relationship, preventing it from ever progressing beyond the power struggle stage and in turn causing a fearful avoidant to think that the entire life cycle of a relationship is just dating stage, honeymoon stage, power struggle stage, and then literally everything falls apart and we go back to the dating stage. But literally, in reality, we don't have to just go from relationship to relationship like that. Relationships are so much richer and deeper when you learn to make it out of the power struggle stage. If you're ready to build secure and lasting relationships, this is for you. Start your 7 day free trial and gain lifetime access to my 6 Pillars to a Secure Relationship course, which is a step by step guide designed to help you understand securely attached relationships and how to get there by rewiring your own insecurely attached patterns. Complete the course within seven days and it's yours for life. This is a limited time offer, so don't wait. Click the link in the description below to begin your healing journey today. Lie number four. The fearful avoidant tends to tell themselves, and this is probably the biggest one of all, is that even if things are going well now, they can never trust the future with another person. And so they may be dating somebody and be like, yeah, I trust you now not to do anything to hurt me, but I don't know how things are going to be in five years, in 10 years and 15 years, how could I possibly know where you'll be and where I will be and that we'll still be interested in each other, that we still won't want to hurt each other in some way? How is that even possible? And the idea of trusting somebody in the for the long haul, that the idea of letting their guard down and being vulnerable when they can literally be hurt by somebody later on is rooted in the fact that Usually they saw a lot of hurt in relationships growing up, whether that was their firsthand experiences or what they witnessed between their own parents. And so they have this huge lie or story that they believe wholeheartedly a lot of the time at a subconscious level that literally the more I fall, the more I care about somebody, the more this person is going to hurt me. And it causes the entire process of falling in love or developing feelings for somebody to be very bittersweet, where there's a sweetness to like that care and that connection developing, but this bitterness to thinking the more I care, the more capacity you then have to hurt me. And by the way, if this is something you're struggling with, if you are just going through a relationship wondering like how do I even take it from something that's we're insecurely attached and we're struggling into something that's actually working into a secure relationship that lasts, that thrives. Because securely attached people not only report being more happy in relationships and more fulfilled, but obviously the relationship statistically also lasts longer. So how do you make a move to that? Well, we actually have, just for a limited time, something you can check out fully for free. And it's how to create a secure relationship. The key pillars of a secure relationship course that when you join into PDFs and check out all of PDFs for free, you actually get to keep that course for life. And we're just doing this for a limited time, so don't miss out. I will put that link down below, but let's get back into the video. Number five, this is a big one too. Fearful avoidance. Believe that if they ever truly rely on somebody else and lean on them and count them, count on them for a longer period of time, they truly believe that that person will not show up and they will be left feeling helpless. There's a huge fear of fearful avoidant attachment cells. They fear very much opening their guard and being trapped or helpless in the wrong situation. And they tend to believe that people won't show up or follow through for them, which is what causes them sometimes to be like so hyper independent and to never ask for help or receive support. And again, it can be a huge fundamental lie that often ruins relationships and unfortunately often includes the relationship to. So if you want to do some deeper work on healing those things, actually learning how to heal all of the inner wounding that may be a part of your life currently so that you can feel at peace within yourself and as a result by extension build really thriving relationships. Don't forget to check out that fearful avoidant course in the six stages of relationships for free and get access to that bonus course for life on top of that about how to master dating and secure connection. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to subscribe, rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Share it with friends and family who are on their journey of personal development and growth, and thank you for listening. Next week we'll be back with more insights to guide you on your journey. And until then, keep practicing our tools and strategies to change your subconscious mind and apply some of the powerful learnings from this podcast so that you experience real life transformation.