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If you have ever tried to communicate with a dismissive avoidant partner but felt like you were speaking a different language, you're not wrong. Dismissive avoidance actually process emotional information quite differently at both the subconscious and neurological level. In the next few minutes, you are going to learn how to speak so that their body, subconscious mind and nervous system actually hear you. We're going to cover in this video a few things. We're going to cover five major keys to understanding a dismissive avoidant partner without actually triggering the withdrawal. We'll talk about what neuroscience reveals in regards to how avoidance process connection. We'll be speaking specifically about dismissive avoidance and then we'll talk about healing and, you know, how you can approach a situation personally. And I want to be really clear about something here. This is information that I would share with people when I was working in private practice with clients and they would come into my office and they would have different attachment styles. This is where this is rooted in and from. This is not me saying that you should be trying this every day for the rest of your life with somebody staying in a relationship. If it's not fulfilling you, that's where you have to be able to critically think about how you're approaching this situation. Right. This is not play with these tools and use these tools forever. And if the other person is not willing to get on board or meet you halfway, who cares? Just keep doing it until you're blue in the face. No, this is, hey, here are some of the best tools that work with dismissive avoidance. Here's how you can use them. It's up to you to set a deadline where you're like, I'm going to try these things as much as I can. And if at the end of this period of time and that deadline is up to you to choose, you know, I don't see the needle move. I don't see big improvements in our communication. Then you have to have the courage to walk away. Right. Please know this is not something you should do for the rest of your life if you're not seeing the other person co participate in the communication improving. But these are great tools that historically worked very well with my clients who would come to see me, who I was in private practice with and would help really move the needle and bridge that gap. So here's point number one. Speak to safety. And when you are communicating, you want to be able to communicate everything that you're feeling, but in a very logical, factual way. Avoidance often filter communication through logic basically as a protective mechanism. So if you say to somebody, you know that you're dating a dismissive avoidant. Why don't you ever open up to me? You can try something like, hey, I want us to be a little bit more vulnerable with each other and it looks like abc. So rather than it coming across as an accusation or something you're upset about, and especially if your tone is coming from a place of like, what's wrong? Like you never open up to me. Unfortunately, as soon as you get into that tone oriented space, you'll see that you lose part of the dismissive avoidance focus because they start thinking like, what am I supposed to do here? What are the answers? They usually weren't modeled communication in this way where, where it was vulnerable, where there was this co regulation happening between people because they didn't have that with their own parents. So emotional communication is not something they have much experience or comfort with. So if you can say it really factually, hey, I want to feel closer to you. That looks like abc. An example here could be that looks like we stay in one night a week and we play, you know, a fun board game that gets us to ask questions to each other from a connection deck. There's a really good connection deck. I forget what it's called. I think it's like we're not really strangers. Just on a side note, I have no affiliation with them, but like you can do things where you're, you're creating, hey, this is what I'm looking for. You're clear and specific. You say it in a factual way and right away you have such a greater chance of getting this person's buy in and attention and presence. If you can get that part right where you communicate through like facts. This is what I'm looking for. This is what it looks like. What I would see with couples all the time is that if one partner was able to take what was affecting them emotionally, but just say it in a factual way with a practical solution. Dismissive avoidance so often rise to the occasion. Honestly, I would actually say more than other attachment styles. Especially because dismissive avoidance, they do well with acts of service, practical steps. Like that's how they are very, very responsive. Not all of their attachment styles, but I would say like in a lot of cases, dismissive wouldn't show up very consistently. And sometimes if we didn't have healthy modeling for how to communicate in this way either, because we always just saw maybe growing up people getting frustrated with each other or communicating emotionally and not having that middle ground, sometimes we'll be skeptical of that. But when you find that middle ground where you can take emotionality, convert it into just like practical, rational steps and shares. Hey, I want to do this. And it looks like this so that you're clear, a lot of the time, you'll be absolutely shocked at just how well it goes. Okay, so really important practice if you wanna do a deep dive into this. We actually have a whole course all about how to communicate with people of different attachment styles, how to resolve conflict. It goes way more in depth. There's a workbook with worksheets. It just goes through things in a massive amount of detail. So you can really become masterful at communication quite quickly, irrespective of what somebody else's attachment style is. I'll put a link to that below. And as a free bonus, you get to keep the attachment styles and intimacy course for life. It's all about attachment styles. Each of their patterns around sex, intimacy, closeness, bonding, the things that cause them to want to pull away and that they fear and that you should watch out for, and the things that they like and enjoy and appreciate. So I'll put that down below as well. It's a free gift just for a limited time. Second thing, use timing properly. When you are in the heat of an argument, a discussion. I know that if you're listening to this video, you probably want the issue resolved right now, and you probably want your emotions validated. And you have a great right. And in any healthy relationship, that's what you should have. But there's this nuanced place where dismissive avoidance, they process differently, they don't process well in real time. So by you creating just a pocket of space, okay, so I want you to imagine you're here on the continuum. You want this issue solved right now. You want it fixed, you want it done, dealt with. They are here on the continuum. They don't like talking about things in real time. They like to. To lick their wounds after an argument, process, think about it, and come back. Should you be completely on their timing? No. Should they be completely on your timing? No. Should you work to find a middle ground, a pocket of time where you leave just enough room for them to process? Because in turn, you know that by creating a little bit of space, if. If there's the heat of a moment and you can tell the communication's just not going well, then you say, you know what? Why don't we take five minutes, why don't we take 10 minutes, think about what we can come back to in this conversation with one constructive point. One thing we can do to meet each other part way or one thing we'd be willing to compromise on. Why don't we take five minutes? If you can feel the communication heating up, that is where get the most likely chance of your partner, who's dismissive, avoidant, actually coming back and being constructive with you, hearing you out, having room to honor what you said, if you can communicate. If things are a little bit heated, hey, let's take five minutes and let's return to this discussion after we've taken a breath and let's return with like one thing that we can honor or validate about each other's emotions here in, in this situation and one thing that we could maybe do to try to meet each other's needs in this dynamic. Okay, because I have other videos about this. But the vast majority of disagreements and arguments are actually about feelings not being validated and needs not having constructive steps to move towards. And so if you can come back with those two things, you will be again shocked, okay, at how well things tend to go even if you were in a rocky space. We're gonna get into three other points in just a second, but I wanna share with you a little bit of this neuroscience component here. A 2019 study by Dr. Amir found that avoidantly attached individuals actually showed reduced activation in the interior insula of the, the region linked to emotional awareness. Which can explain why they may misread or minimize feelings at times because they have so much brain activity in that law, those logical centers of the brain, because that's how they've literally adapted and been conditioned to show up for things to, to do life right. Emotions weren't safe, as in, as children in childhood. And so of course they move more away from that and they may be a little bit less equipped in that area in certain periods of time. Another 2021 study by Dr. Hu demonstrated that avoidance experience heightened amygdala reactivity to emotional faces, also suggesting that they sometimes perceive closeness as a threat, emotions as a threat. And you know that already. But it's interesting to actually see these studies played out. Lastly, in 2022, Dr. Susan Johnson's research on attachment focused therapy showed that when partners use co regulation techniques, things like slower voice tone, gentler eye contact and more calm presence, the vagus nerve actually activates, increasing connection and reducing defensive shutdown. That's a really beautiful thing that your literal physiology is responding to this. And all of these findings collectively essentially reveal that successful communication with avoidance is not just about the words. It is about nervous system entrainment. It's our ability to stay regulated, present logical, focus on healthy solutions. If you can work really hard to not give in to the temptation that you feel, to raise your voice, to get frustrated, to let your emotions take you over and instead to talk about logical practical steps that you can take to solve for things in a relationship with a loved one. You can really see that needle move now. Of course, if you don't, you set a deadline, you walk away if it's not working right. But these are really important things to be able to dig into. We're still going to cover three more points here. Okay, point number three, state needs make sure they do not sound like an ultimatum if you say things. And this is really the difference. I talk about this a lot on this channel between positive and negative framing. Okay. It's one of the most important and yet simplest tools when it comes to improving communication. If you say it to somebody, you never text me back or you don't text enough and it comes off in a critical tone, you're telling the person what you're not doing instead we want to be able to frame this positively to what we need to happen instead. So you may say something like consistency really helps me feel connected. Could we plan for check ins that work on a daily basis for each of us? And this invites collaboration and communication rather than control. Okay, point number four. And this is all about when you are communicating, leave it open ended. Leave this communication with your dismissive, avoidant loved one open ended. A lot of times dismissive avoidants get very triggered when they think that you're saying this has to be done right now. So if you're like, hey, could you take a turn doing the dishes? And they're in the middle of like doing a report for, for work and they have a, a deadline first thing in the morning and they, they're working really late, they freak out, they often get frustrated, they don't freak out. Cuz dismissive avoidants aren't necessarily ones to become super emotional. But they'll shut down or they'll get clearly irritable and frustrated. And that's because they tend to hear and assume a lot of the time that when you're asking something it means right in this moment. And it's actually a really important thing to distinguish that you say hey, it's your turn to do the dishes. Are you able to do that sometime later this evening or tomorrow and by giving more open ended communication or hey, I want to hash something out with you and have a conversation, are you open to doing it Sometime this evening, okay? Things like that, where it's not in this moment allows a dismissive avoidant to not feel the sense of being trapped or controlled, which is often what their core wounds will cause them to jump to. And that allows them to have space to think about it logically and rationally themselves and be much more eager and likely to participate in what needs of yours you are requesting. Last thing here, and probably one of the most important ones, or at least one of the big needle movers in a very short period of time, is to ask your dismissive avoidant loved one when you're doing something, time box it a little bit, okay, this is something that you should only have to use. I would work with clients and I would get them to use this initially, but this would be something that they would use for a month, two months until communication really got fine tuned and they didn't have to worry about it after that. But just like dismissive avoidants tend to jump to thinking that this is right now that you need to do something or that you're requesting something, they also tend to think that when you're asking, oh hey, can we hash something out this evening, I just want to chat with you about something or you know, something's been on my mind, they assume it's going to be the whole evening. They fear like, okay, I'm going to be in this situation, it's going to last forever. And they really fear like being engulfed from a timing perspective. So I don't mean just right now timing perspective, like ultimatum type of timing. But I mean they think that things are going to take forever, okay. Or if you ask them for a favor, they think it's going to take the whole day or that you want to spend more time together, you want to spend every night together forever, you know, so if you can time box things and say, hey, I'd love to spend more time together, and that looks like, you know, an extra phone call every Thursday evening for half an hour when you can tell them like what your actual, your pain, painting a picture, what you're actually needing. Just like anxious attachment styles tend to jump to worst case scenarios. Thinking if you're pulling away, oh my gosh, you're pulling away forever. If we've texted a little bit less this week, we're going to stop texting next week. Just like every attachment style jumps to the worst case scenario for their own core wounds. Dismissive avoidant attachment cells also do this, but they do it in regards to feeling trapped and how long things are going to take and how engulfed they're going to be. So by actually just opening that up to say, hey, I want to hash something out, I want to have a 15 minute discussion about something that I was thinking about earlier, or I could use your advice for 15, 20 minutes. Can we sit down when you have a second? By keeping things like, hey, it doesn't have to be in this very instance, and hey, this is roughly how much time it's going to take. It's also okay if it goes longer, right? You would be shocked at how often you get this person's buy in. Because when we are not affected by our own wounds, then we are more likely to be there for somebody else's needs. And with somebody else, the same thing goes. I would teach the same thing for reverse communication. If somebody was dating an anxious attachment cell and they were dismissive, I would say, look, if you need a little bit of space to do your own thing on a weekend, you want to go and hang out with your friends at the cottage on Sunday afternoon or whatever it might be, you know, tell the anxious person, hey, I'm gonna do this for one day. Be clear and specific about how long it's gonna be so that they also know, hey, you're not leaving and pulling away forever. Because when we can bridge these gaps around the fears that we carry individually and then collectively into the relationship, you will be shocked at how much easier things get. So these are five key tips. You do not have to practice them. I'm a big believer that it's great to become a better communicator under all circumstances. It will help you in your workplace, relationships, family relationships, friendships, literally. It will affect you positively everywhere you go. I'm going to say, you know, you should definitely give it a shot. However, if you just want to pull away from somebody, you don't see something working, you are entitled to that option and I think it's a great middle ground. A great thing to do is set a deadline, practice these tools, see if it dramatically improves your needs getting met in the relationship and you feeling seen and heard. And if it doesn't, then you have a great answer for yourself. You know clearly that it's probably not the right space to be investing your energy. And if it does, then it's a win. So check it out. I hope you enjoyed. Stay tuned for more videos this week. I put a video out every single day this week. We'll be talking more about a lot of these topics going into the next few days. If you don't want to miss any make sure you hit the like, share subscribe button and I'll see you next time.