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The Thais Gibson Podcast
The 4 Most Toxic Fearful Avoidant Communication Patterns That Push Love Away (How to Stop Them)
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Okay, so we're going to talk about toxic communication patterns as a fearful, avoidant attachment style. And I am curious if you've ever had the experience of even taking a moment to audit what your experience of conflict was growing up, what you saw, what you thought conflict was, how conflict was presented to you in your childhood. Because so much of how we actually absorb our conditioning is through what we see and hear repeatedly and what's modeled to us in our own childhood. So in today's video, we are going to break down four toxic communication patterns of fearful avoidant attachment styles. I know when I was a fearful avoidant attachment style, I literally did all four of these. And I'm curious how many out of these next four communication patterns you score. So one being, like, you score on one of them, or four being, oh, I have all four of them. And those will also help you really decipher and decode what to break down in terms of what to do to heal. If you're new to this channel, hello and welcome. I'm really excited to share this with you. My name is Thais Gibson. I'm the founder of Gibson Integrated Attachment Theory, the proven method to help you actually rewire your attachment style to become securely attached in as little as 90 days. And I'm here to share with you daily videos that really help you understand the neuroscience of what's happening at a subconscious level according to the condition patterns you are playing out in your relationships. I'm here in LA for a whole bunch of different podcasts. I'm in a different sort of location, sing at an Airbnb and kind of bopping around and exploring, which has been so much fun and such an amazing experience. And, yeah, I really want to break this down, get into this, and I want you to just know before we start that if you see yourself in these patterns, do not worry. You know, don't sit here and think, oh, my goodness, this is such a terrible thing. These are very solvable problems. Don't judge yourself. This is really just a mirror or a reflection of how you are generally conditioned to view communication and conflict from your own past experiences. But being able to break these patterns out and change them will literally transform everything. Because there's almost no skill more important nowadays than learning how to have hard conversations in an easy way. Okay, so we're gonna talk about all of this. So here's the first communication pattern for fearful avoidance. Okay. First major toxic communication pattern is the hot and cold themes in their relationships. And what I mean by this is that fearful avoidance, when they're around somebody, they tend to have really intense closeness. They get really connected to somebody. They show up really intensely, they're super present, they're generous with their time, they're very all in and there. However, fearful avoidance, on the flip side of things, when they start to feel like they can't do that all the time with everybody, they burn out, they retreat. Or sometimes they just feel like they're all in and then they feel like they were too vulnerable in that conversation, causing them to then feel some guilt or shame about their behavior and how vulnerable they were and then causing them to also retreat. And so what often happens is these hot and cold signals are these hot and cold patterns of actually how you're communicating. Sometimes there's these big forms of reassurance and your ability to really show up. And other times you then pull away completely or even push somebody else else away that may be on the receiving end of the relationship with you. This is because over time, the more connected you feel to somebody. And this is honestly one of the things that's really tricky if you are a fearful avoidant, is that a lot of the time when you're a fearful avoidant, you associate intimacy or deep connection with being something that you want and yearn for and are excited for, but also something that scares you, also something that provokes a sense of danger in your life. And this is because in childhood you usually saw these exact types of themes. And this is the part I want you to really understand. Understand is, you know, pattern one of four here is that if you saw extremes growing up, if you saw that, you know, communication was very hot and cold in your own childhood, because that's how your own parents or people around you treated you. They were really loving and really kind, and then they were really withdrawn or even, you know, harsh or critical or mean, or maybe there was just a lot of chaos going on around you. You literally internalize these types of behavioral patterns. You learn to behave and connect this way in your relationships to others, and you're these things out subconsciously and not even consciously recognizing them. And this is so important to recognize because we don't want to just be going through life living as a result of whatever our, you know, conditioning was growing up that we're just playing out on autopilot without even recognizing. Okay, so that is point number one. And again, we'll talk about how to really start changing some of these things at the end. Toxic pattern number two of communication is what I like to think of as being protest communication. Okay, so Sometimes spitefulness in relationships this can look like, you know, retreating, you know, silent treatment, withholding affection, delayed replies. To be perfectly honest, this can even be like playing games, trying to like wait longer without responding with the intention of not being too vulnerable or making them have to guess where they stand with you. And all of these things literally are honestly control strategies rooted in fear. Anything that comes from, oh, I have to play any kind of game or I have to be anything other than my authentic self in a relationship, all of that is a method to try to control the outcome. It may not be to directly control another person, but it's a method to try to control the outcome of a situation. And the more that you're trying to control anything, it's all rooted in fear and hurt and often woundedness. And second to that, and I think this is really important, is that the more that you don't know how to communicate in healthy ways, the more indirectly we communicate instead. So for example, if you're in a position with somebody where you need to know where you stand in a relationship dynamic because you've been getting to know them and dating them and you need to actually be able to say, look, here's I want to understand where we are at. Like, are we moving forward with this? Are we keeping space? Like if you need to have some certainty, you should be able to go and have that conversation and ask for certainty. It's part of what secure people do and they do it in a healthy way. They don't say like, I need to know exactly where we are right now in this moment. They're not out there giving ultimatums to everybody, but they're not afraid to have a conversation and say something like, hey, we've been dating for a while and I value my time and I want to invest my time in the right places and with the right people. And I'm curious where we stand and if we're moving in the same direction because if not, I have to have a really big self reflection about like whether or not I'm going to stay in this in the same way. So like they'll be able to have an honest conversation in an open ended way that's still going to get them their certainty needs met without it being this, like I need an answer in this very second. And what's really interesting here is that the more indirect we become, so the more that we drift away from being able to communicate very directly, the more manipulative we become. Let's look at somebody who maybe they want to have that conversation they don't know where they stand and they're trying to find out where they stand. And that need is for that certain. Well, if you don't know how to have that conversation at all, you may try to provoke jealousy from somebody. You might flirt with your partner or somebody you're dating in front of them to see where they are and if they care about you. And that's a form of manipulation. Right? And manipulation and attempt to control. It's often rooted in this deep innocence of like not knowing how to communicate better or not knowing how to be vulnerable or even the idea of being vulnerable just scaring you. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. It's an unhealthy strategy and that's simply something that you want to repair and work on. Okay, so we're going to call that like, we're going to call that protest communication. We can even loop in there like punishment communication, where maybe you withdraw affection or consistency or you even become spiteful in some of your words when you're not actually communicating your needs and you're trying to get them met in these indirect forms instead. Okay, a really, really big theme 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 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 three is emotional dumping or over explaining in a conflict. Fearful avoidant attachment styles have a huge core wound. A feeling like they are, well, a couple but unworthy. Fear of being betrayed or being the betrayer. Okay. Because whatever we fear, and this is according to integrated attachment theory, where these are the big core wounds of fearful avoidance, there's more than this. But they fear being abandoned. Betrayed is the biggest core wound they very much fear being seen as bad or unworthy. And this can lead to you over explaining in a conflict. And I want to share this because this is really important. Sometimes when a fearful avoidance over explaining. And I'll tell you this, I worked with a couple who worked through this at one point where they were in an argument and the fearful avoidant kept explaining to her dismissive avoidant partner, like why she did what she did and why she pulled away and why she was responding to things the way she did because she felt badly, but she was trying to give context to her partner. And her dismissive avoidant partner turned around and said, hey, when you over explain, it feels like you're justifying your behaviors. I don't really need any of that. That doesn't help me feel like it's a sincere apology. I just need to know that you're sorry and that you're going to try not to do it again. And a lot of times fearful avoidance, what you is you need all the context. You need somebody to over explain to you why they did what they did because it helps you feel like you can understand them better and then feel safe. But a lot of other attachment styles they don't like when you over explain, they don't need all that context. In fact, it seems to make the apology more about you explaining yourself and absolving yourself of your own guilt and almost lessening the amount of accountability you're taking. Then it does help actually create a sincere apology. And so for fearful avoidance, it's so powerful to recognize that you don't always need to be over explaining. And a big part of how to heal that is to rewire the core wound of I am bad or I am unworthy so that you're not feeling like you have to prove your worth and prove to people that you're innocent as you're coming from that sort of lack mentality in that space to begin with because of a lot of your conditioning growing up. But the more you can get into that, the easier things become. And then the very last piece that I'll say here is sometimes fearful avoidance can become very defensive in a dynamic. So they may deflect, they may become defensive, they may stonewall and sort of play this silent treatment role when they don't know how to get out of a conflict, how to communicate more effectively, how to actually say what's going on for them and what's coming up for them. And I really want to share with you that when you are trying to heal, okay, when you are actually trying to change your relationship dynamics with other people and learn how to communicate properly. There's a really great framework that you can use which is to explain your experience of what triggered you and what you need to feel better. And it's the exact thing that often makes other people feel resilient, resolved in a conflict as well. So when somebody comes to you, and I want you to really think about this for a second, when somebody comes to you and they say, look, I can understand that you were feeling really hurt in this situation and I'm sorry for that, what do you need to feel? Relief. You feel way more calm. So when we're in that conflict, what we really need to be able to do is validate the other person's feelings and ask what they need. And it's the same way that you're going to feel resolved too. You want to be able to share what came up for you from an emotional standpoint. Hey, in this situation, I felt XYZ and I need need A, B, C. And when you can insert those things in that framework and really share from that perspective, it's a huge part of how we learn how to have uncomfortable conversations in a much greater way and in a way that actually creates resolution. So let me know in the comments how many of these four patterns you tend to have in relationships. Remember, the goal of this is not to beat yourself up or give yourself a hard time. It's to understand that this is probably what was taught to you growing up in various ways or what you've seen in relationships. And learning how to have hard conversations and use that framework can really help to properly resolve things going forward. Thank you so much for watching. I hope this was helpful for you in understanding how you communicate a little more effectively. And please, like, share and subscribe if you enjoyed today's video and I'll see you next time.