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Hi, my name is Tyhis Gimson and I'm the co owner and creator of the Personal Development School. In this video I want to talk to you a little bit about the fearful avoidant attachment style individual and how they can manage their activating and deactivating strategies. And I want to talk a little bit about what this is around and how to sort of relieve yourself of that feeling of ambivalence that like back and forth and why it's happening and how to sort of stay in balance because that's really what secure relating is about. And that starts with the internal relationship to self first. Let's talk about this here. So first and foremost, fearful avoidance have this like activating side and deactivating side. And that activating side obviously is based on some of those core wounds and traumatic imprints that are very similar to the anxious, preoccupied. So those fears around abandonment, being alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, not good enough. They have that side and then they also have the deactivating side. So the core wounds, wounds around feeling trapped or helpless, powerless, shame wounds from I am defective or something's wrong with me if I make a mistake, I am bad is a big core wound that's a little more exclusive to the fearful avoidant. And then also I'm unsafe is a really big one. And so a lot of these dynamics sort of play out. And then on top of that, of course the FA has the trust wounds, the I will be betrayed core wound. And what's happening is based on which wounds are being touched, it's creating an activated output by the fearful avoidant or a deactivating output by the fearful avoidant. The need to take space or the need to try to gain closeness, to not lose connection with somebody. Now what's really important is that because fearful avoidance, they have a lot of that, that trauma there so they can get so identified with their thinking. It's like somebody can hurt you. And it goes, it becomes sort of like an all or nothing type of situation a lot of the time. And it's like, whoa, I have to like really activate or really deactivate. And it's a really painful thing to have to go through on and off because it's like you have that push, pull and it feels like you can't just settle in and just feel at peace in a relationship, just feel safe. Often peace in a relationship even feels like, oh, what if we're getting bored of each other and now I'm unsafe and I have to do something to stimulate the connection and the drama and the Intent, the chaos in a way, even though it's not necessarily perceived that way by the fearful avoidant. And it's because if you don't have context and subconscious programmed associations that love is safe or love can be calm and placid and peaceful and that can be a healthy thing. Obviously when we go outside of our comfort zone, our subconscious mind starts to go, oh my gosh, we have to go back to what we understand love to be. We have to go back and regain gain that subconscious comfort zone again. Which often puts the fearful avoidant into this like swinging pendulum kind of dynamic from their activated side to their deactivated side. And that's exhausting. That's a really hard thing to feel like. You're always kind of flip flopping back and forth. So the first thing you have to be aware of is like the fact that this is happening. The fact that when you leave center, when you leave from like that, that peace, that feeling like you're just, you know, at a normalized state and you're regulated. The moment you get too activated or deactivated, basically the pendulum's waiting to swing. When we get really activated, we try to cling and then we can feel rejected and because we're wanting, we can hurt more easily when we feel rejected or dismissed or whatever it might be, which then can trigger that really strong deactivated side. I just wanted to pop in here and let you know we are doing a seven day free trial to the All Access membership pass at pds, which means you get access to literally everything inside of the school. And this includes the four live webinars I do with our students every single week. And on top of that, you get access to all of our different courses. We have over 55 different courses on relationships, Communication, boundaries, Emotional Mastery, Guilt and Shame. Learning your needs. So many different facets that are really important to master our lives and feel really good about our lives going forward. And last but not least, there's a daily community event. We have trained facilitators and coaches who are in there doing that work, showing up to support you on your journey every single day. Please join me on the other side. Come check it out, see if it's a fit for you. I'd love to see you there. Go ahead and sign up by clicking the link in the description box below. Fearful avoidance don't usually deactivate in the same way that a dismissive avoidant does. They don't usually deactivate just to have space or distance to keep them sort of independent. They more Deactivate specifically when they're hurt or triggered. And so they deactivate less pervasively than a dismissive avoidant, but more intensely when they are deactivating because it's coming from more pain, it's like a stronger force. What's really important is to first notice when I'm swinging either way and to be conscious about this. And then second, what you want to do is you want to go, what is the root cause of why I've left center? What is the root cause of why I'm feeling the need to cling or feeling the need to push away so hard? And what stories or meaning am I giving to the situation? And then we want to question those stories. Sometimes your stories will be true. Sometimes it will be more of a reflection of the past that you're reprojecting onto your present. So, for example, maybe somebody doesn't call you back. And I know this is like a very surface level example, but I just want to illustrate. So maybe somebody doesn't call you back and you make it mean you're not cared about and that, you know, the wool was pulled over your eyes and you can't trust the person now because they're not showing up in a caring way. And then you feel unsafe. I can't trust. And then you're feeling hurt, so you push the person away as a subconscious strategy to try to push the hurt away that you're actually experiencing. And so then you deactivate. But maybe when we really sat to question the story, maybe we can find lots of evidence for how the person does, in fact, care about us. And one behavior doesn't necessarily reflect their entirety of how they're feeling. And then maybe we come to find out later that they didn't call back cause they had a family emergency or cause something really scary was going on, or we can't know. And so the idea is to question our story so that when we do approach situations that we're faced with in life, we're not doing it from an emotionally dysregulated place. We're actually doing it from a place of balance. And okay, where am I at? Like, I can't know why the person didn't call back. I definitely know I have a need around it. And in fact, I can even express that need and say, hey, it's really important to me that there's consistency and that we call back. And maybe you have a need for reassurance at that point. Hey, I felt like a little afraid when you didn't call back. And, you know, I need some reassurance right now or some validation. And so we can do that part to get the need met, but not until we've really regulated the story. So we question the story. We try to find out what the need is underneath. What would we need to feel relief right now? And we ask for that need, or we meet that need in the relationship to ourselves. And by doing this, what you're going to do is you're going to stop pinballing back and forth by getting clear on those steps, you know, isolating what's bothering me, what's causing me to leave center, finding the meaning I give to it, really questioning it, and then finding the need. I guess it's technically like four steps there. We get to sort of root ourselves and we get to regulate ourselves and bring ourselves. If we went too far this way, we can sort of bring ourselves back this way. If we went too far this way, we can try to bring ourselves back to center. By the same token. So it's like, if I go into, I'm going to be abandoned. Okay, why will it not be abandoned? Or why will I be okay if this person does abandon me? You know, I sold a relationship to myself and all these other people. And, you know, so we want to find a way of regulating ourselves by not attaching too much painful meaning and also by being clear about what the needs are that we're trying to meet. Because when we look at activating or deactivating either way, those are actually just behaviors to try to get needs met at the subconscious level. And so when we can identify those things and do the work around them, we. We really empower ourselves in a positive way.