Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign. Things dismissive avoidance will do is it will keep emotional distance from their partner. What I mean by this is as you progress in a relationship, it's very normal and it's actually very healthy to slowly, as trust is being built, more and more share more vulnerable things, open up about your feelings, share what's on your mind or on your heart. And I find that dismissive avoidance actually feel like their relationship to this is almost that if I do this, I, I'm giving myself away. I'm giving my, you know, sense of self away. I'm gonna share myself and then it's gonna be used against me later or hung over my head later. As a common thing, dismissive avoidance will say, and the reality is it's actually something that's going to cause conflict in the relationship because it's, you know, in the progression of a relationship, individuals that you're relating to are ultimately going to expect you to open up and share a little bit more about yourself or share your feelings. And dismissive avoidants don't do this just because they're trying to protect their sense of self, but they also do this because they're afraid their own feelings. And so you kind of try to keep yourself distanced from your own emotions and distance from your true self and your true emotional side of your experience. And in doing that, it obviously sends the growth of relationships as time progresses. So it's really important. Like it's one thing to take emotional distance when you need it. Like if you're triggered and you don't know what's going on for you yet, and you need some time to process, that's totally fine. But if you're constantly just like trying to keep people at arm's length, that is absolutely worth looking into. The next thing is dismissive avoidance will often go out of their way to prioritize their independence, but to the point of becoming counter dependent. And so what I mean by this is dismissive avoidance sometimes are afraid to even allow themselves to rely on anyone else or to ask for help because they're scared that if I rely on somebody else and I open up, what if they're not there for me in the end, you know? And that in its roots often comes from experiencing childhood emotional neglect. And being in a position where you experience childhood emotional neglect causes you to basically feel like if you rely on someone, the other shoe is going to drop all the time. But again, the these are things worth looking into because just because you grew up in a household where there might have been emotional neglect, it doesn't mean that that's the norm in relationships. It doesn't mean that that's what's out there in the world. And so we have to stop projecting this fear from childhood that might be there onto all of our future relationships and then using that fear as this armor to prevent ourselves from, like, being able to ask for help, rely on other people for support, and cause us to again, try to constantly keep people at arm's length. Number three, dismissive avoidance can absolutely struggle with comm. Committing to things. And a lot of the times it's actually because there's a big I am trapped wound. And even under that I've seen countless times with dismissive, avoidant attachment styles, they will say things like, yeah, if I show up with somebody and I invest in them and I do commit, what if I'm stuck forever with the wrong person? And it's like, well, you're gonna see when things start going downhill and you'll be able to leave at a good time, right? You're gonna see if something's not working and be able to leave. And partially, there's an I am trapped core wound of dismissive avoidance. But another thing is dismissive avoidants don't even trust themselves leave sometimes. And so dismissal points, because they don't trust themselves to leave will feel like, okay, once I'm in, I'm in forever. And that's something that's so important to also question and look into. The next thing is we can see dismissal avoidant attachment styles minimize their ability to be vulnerable. So they may end up in a situation where somebody's like, hey, I can tell you're upset. Like, let's hash it out. Tell me what's going on. We may actually see the dismissive one accidentally sabotage the potential for conflict resolution because they might say something like, I'm fine, I'm not upset. I don't get upset about stuff like that. And really, it's their way of suppressing vulnerability, but it can prevent them from being seen from being understood from their wounds or pain points, being known by their partner in a relationship, which can make it difficult to progress. 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. Number five, we may see some kind of hot and cold dynamics. We may see some, some dynamics of intermittent reinforcement, less so than you would see with a fearful avoidant, for example, but there nonetheless. And this push pull sort of pattern is a mirror into the relationship within the dismissive avoidant themselves, right? So if you're a DA listening to this, what you'll see is that you may have moments where you really feel like connected and enjoy the connection. And then other times where your feelings scare you, right? So you feeling that vulnerable scares you. And so you pull back as a means for self protection. And what's going on in this dynamic is this need to get closer, this need to self protect and pull away. And that oscillation, although it's not as extreme as you would see with a fearful avoidant, where the pendulum is kind of like swinging from one extreme to the other, it's still going back and forth a good bit and it can feel really difficult. And I want to say that, you know, if you are so avoidant listening, you can have the relationship to yourself and have a relationship to somebody else too. Those are not mutually exclusive things. That brings me to this next point here where for number six, it's this fear of actually connecting in interdependent relationships. So it's the sabotaging of healthy interdependency, which means I have a relationship to myself and I have a relationship to somebody else too. And I can rely on myself, but I can also allow myself to access, support, rely on other people and connect in that way. It's not one or the other. Number seven, dismissive avoidance may minimize problems in the relationship. Why? Because they are in a position where they're actually trying to downplay them to themselves so they don't have to feel their own feelings. And again, like, it's one thing to say this isn't a big deal if something's not a big deal, but oftentimes the things that we are judging as not a big deal to Us, because they're not touching a core wound within us can actually be a really big deal to somebody else. So you may see, for example, that somebody's really upset about not getting a call back because for them it's touching an abandonment wound. But maybe for you, as a dismissive avoidant, you don't have an abandonment wound that's really in your subconscious mind. And so you know it's not going to affect you in the same way. So you're like, oh, that's not a big deal. I don't, you know, people forget to call me back all the time. And yeah, maybe for you it's not a soft spot, but for somebody else it is. And so it's really important to realize that, like, not everybody is as we are. Everybody's so uniquely and individually programmed and remembering that can help us navigate different problems more effectively. And then as we go into number eight, you'll see this big fear of enmeshment. So dismiss avoidance may be in a position where they fear, like fusing their emotions with other people. They fear taking on their partners and emotions to a certain degree because they actually don't trust themselves to set boundaries. So the really interesting point here is that dismissive avoidant attachment styles are really good at setting these huge boundaries, like these kind of all or nothing boundaries. But they actually really struggle to set small boundaries to say, like, hey, you know, let's say, for example, just a really easy example as an analogy would be you have a date with a dismissive avoidant, or you are the DA going on a date and you're tired. Let's say you're the DA and you're going on the date, you're exhausted. And in that situation, rather than calling and saying like, hey, I'm really tired. Can we not go out? Can we stay in and just watch a movie together? And I might be kind of quiet tonight. I'm feeling tired. So instead of like communicating these smaller boundaries and said DAs would be like, I'm not coming over, I'm canceling the date. And you know what that's actually speaking to is how hard it is to set smaller boundaries within things. And that's very valuable to be able to do in relationships. And then this brings me to the last two. Number nine, this kind of quick exit that dismissive avoidance will do. And number 10, the way that you can sabotage intimacy is by not communicating your own needs. Now, the reason I paired those together here is often the lack of communicating about your needs will actually create the need for quick exits. Because you'll feel eventually, when you're not sharing yourself and what you need in a relationship, unseen, unheard, misunderstood, and Ds will start to flaw find from this. We can sort of put flaw finding as its own thing here too. But you'll flaw find, you know, because what's actually happening is we look for flaws in the spaces and places that we're not communicating our needs because we can't understand and conceive of how somebody we love and care about isn't meeting our needs. So we judge them for it, AKA flaw find. And so this can lead to this buildup of feeling that way that will eventually create this quick exit. And. And all of those things are solvable problems. By learning to communicate your needs and learning what your needs are from other people, and practicing receiving instead.
