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Attachment styles is a topic that is taking over the relationship space. And I would say there's literally nothing more important to our relationships than understanding our attachment styles because of such a massive role they play in what we expect from relationships, in the ways that we give and receive love, in how we communicate, what our boundaries are, what our expectations are. And the analogy I often use when it comes to attachment styles is if you are dating somebody or in a relationship to somebody really of any kind, a friendship, family, relationship, and that person has a different attachment attachment style than you, they basically have different subconscious rules for how to do love, how to do connection. And it really isn't much different than sitting down and playing a board game and having a different set of rules for how to play the game. So maybe one person has the rules for Monopoly, the other person has the rules for Scrabble. Like, you can only imagine all the unnecessary arguments and friction and potential points of conflict that will take place under that same umbrella. When we have a different attachment style than somebody we love or we are caring for or relating to, we, we can run into a lot of unnecessary conflict. So in this video specifically, I just want to help you, especially if you're new to attachment theory, to understand 10 of the most crucial traits, to identify whether or not you might be dismissive, avoidant, and this may be your major attachment style. And we're going to go through 10 key features, and we'll talk a little bit about why and where these things come from. The very first sign that you might be dismissive avoidant is that you find yourself being really afraid of being vulnerable. Although you may sort of be a little bit disconnected from your emotions and not even find that you relate to vulnerability from a place of fear. If you pay close attention, you do a lot of things to avoid vulnerability. So there is some sort of subconscious fear, even if you're not really connected to the emotion of it. And generally, you might make vulnerability mean that you will feel helpless if you're too vulnerable to others, that you're weak and you don't want to have to rely on somebody, that it's shameful to be vulnerable or that you're unsafe. And these are not things that vulnerability is. But when we get conditioned in an environment specifically like dismissive avoidance, do where your needs are neglected. If your needs are neglected for consistent periods of time, it feels really bad to try to open up and be vulnerable and share things about yourself. Share your needs, be known, because you associate all those things based on the way you were conditioned with Leading to those outcomes. As a child, you might have felt weak. When you felt helpless. As a child, you might have been shamed for opening up and being vulnerable. Don't cry. That's, you know, be a big girl or, you know, big boy. Don't cry. You know, these. These types of messages we get during being conditioned, right? During our upbringing and the way that we're socialized. And eventually those things get programmed into us as concepts or ideas at a subconscious level that we see and interact with the world through. So, number one is dismissive avoidants tend to really be afraid of being vulnerable, and they will do all sorts of different things to avoid vulnerability, especially as they get closer and closer to people in relationships. Number two, you may find that as a strategy to actually avoid your feelings as a whole, you constantly escape into things. I find that dismissive avoidance have a generally difficult time. And I saw this a lot throughout my practice, especially when I was working with couples, I would find that as soon as the ante was up, in terms of, like, vulnerability or openness or having to have tough conversations and get really present, if anything was triggering too strong of a feeling response for the dismissive avoidant partner in the couple, I would often find that person try to escape. And they would be through subconscious strategies. It wasn't like they would consciously get up and leave the room necessarily, but they would do things like get restless, want to move around, want to deflect, want to move the conversation in a different direction. And I would hear many discussions and stories of partners of dismissive avoidance over the years who said the same thing, right? A tough conversation would happen. Their partner would get really restless, move away, escape into their phone. And if had countless conversations with das over the years who say things like, I can't sleep without the television off. As soon as I get in the car, I'm turning up the radio right away. It's almost like they need constant stimulation. And I truly believe, through a lot of my research into dismissive avoidance over the last decade, that dismissive avoidance do this largely as a subconscious strategy to distract themselves from their own feelings and their own emotional state because they have some sort of barrier and fear of feeling. And again, this goes back to the way they were conditioned in their upbringing, right? If you had this deep dynamic of being neglected, and if that felt really bad, and if you haven't processed that, and if also when you were a child, your needs were neglected, there's a chronic feeling of unsafety that comes with that. Because if you can't trust your caregivers to be reliable, consistent, even if it's just emotionally. Like for the vast majority of dismissive avoidance, by the way, they will report to me that their childhood was wonderful. And it's not that there wasn't a sense of stability like a lot of dismissive avoid and have food on the table structure, a ride to school in the morning like a lot of DAs have that. But the emotional facet of connection in relationships is what's completely empty or lacking. And so we have different pillars of connection. We have mental or intellectual connection, where DAs tend to feel quite safe. We have emotional connection, which DAs usually have strong elements of neglect around in their upbringing. Then we have like physical connection, which we'll find often to some avoidance also have lacking like parents giving them a hug or having some sort of physical affection in a healthy way between parents and child. And then we have sexual connection, which obviously relates to our adult romantic relationships. And that can be affected by our other pillars of emotional and physical connection. So going back to staying on track here, I'll often find dismissive avoidance because of that neglect triggering this chronic feeling of being unsafe. Dismissive avoidance are they feel this low level, they're often in this like low level fight or flight response because it's become a set point at a subconscious level. And that neglect growing up in childhood, even if it was just emotional neglect, led them to often feel like, oh my gosh, I can't trust, I can't rely on somebody, are my needs going to be met? Will I be okay? And that will lead to that subconscious comfort zone of feeling unsafe regularly and needing to escape that chronic feeling of unsafety that's lingering. And I want to be clear about one other thing. And then I'll move on to point number three, which is that dismissible avoidance as well. They can find themselves in a position where they are overtly neglected. So they can also struggle with neglect as a whole. They can struggle with like routines, food on the table, like their needs can be neglected from a very basic level as well. But I would say the vast majority of dismissive avoidance generally suffer more from that covert neglect under that emotional pillar of relating. Whereas, you know, more extreme DAs, we can see a bigger theme of neglect that's overt, both with basic needs, physical needs, food, survival needs, and those emotional needs as a byproduct as well. If you really want to do some in depth healing around these things, we have a codependency and enmeshment course that you can check out fully for free and actually keep for life. It's valid at 250. That course will really help you if you struggle with emotional over functioning, if you struggle with keeping your boundaries, honoring your truth, not self silencing. The course will really go into all of the reasons why this happens and what you can do instead. And I'll put the link for free for you below. So number three, and this really relates back to the I am unsafe core wound that a lot of DAs have. They tend to really dislike conflict. It doesn't mean that DAs will never be in a conflict, but it does mean that generally they will do what they can to deflect, avoid, shut down, withdraw from conflict as quickly and as easily as possible because of that I am unsafe core wound. So we may see, for example, that a dismissive avoidant in the middle of an argument will be like okay, I'm sorry, I get it. And then later on will not really come back and you know, okay, I'll do that, I'll do that thing you asked me to do and then won't necessarily follow through because sometimes they're in this, this fight or flight response mode where they're afraid of the conflict. It's really dysregulating and uncomfort and so they'll just kind of say yes, yes, yes, no problem to escape the situation without like necessarily being fully present and involved in the conversation in order to resolve and move the needle to whatever outcome needs to be happening for the growth of the relationship that they're in. I'll see das do the sort of deflecting mechanisms around conflict. But also I may see DAs really just avoid conflict, really don't like drama, will really do what they can to avoid engaging in conflict, avoid arguments, just anything as a whole. Number four, dismissive avoidance are so much more sensitive to criticism than you might think. They tend to struggle with this I am defective core wound, which really is like something's wrong with me, this sort of like inherent belief that something's wrong with me. And the reality of where this comes from is again going back to neglect in childhood. If there's a substantial amount of neglect under a particular or multiple pillars of connection in relationships, DA children when and because our attachment cell develops really young dismissive white children, they can't conceive of oh my parents are emotionally unavail or oh my parents aren't very stable. So the child mind personalizes everything. This is what it does. And so what essentially takes place is when their needs are not being met, they instead of seeing the lack of availability from the caregiver goes, well, there must be something wrong with me, then I must be defective. Something must be wrong with me that I'm not getting my needs met. And they have this deep, deep subconscious program around that. And this really leads to chronic shaming of themselves. If you're listening to this video and you think you might be a dismissive avoidant, I would really urge you to check in and ask yourself, like, how much do you shame yourself for little things? I have had countless conversation with dismissive avoidant clients over the years who have said things to me like, when I really do a shame audit with them, they'll say, yeah, like, I got out of bed late, you know, I wanted to get up at 8, I got up at 8:30. And I really, for the first hour of the morning, like I really was giving myself a hard time. I didn't really identify it as shame, but now that we're talking about it, yeah. So I really shamed myself, really put myself down for it. And it really is this triggering feeling of like, oh, something's wrong with me, like I'm just defective. And I want to be really clear that these are programs. Programs are not reality. They are just an idea you adopt and it gets embedded into the subconscious mind because the subconscious is programmed through repetition plus emotion. So if you have repetitively unmet needs and it elicits this emotional response of like, oh, it must be me, then the firing and wiring of that idea across time leads you to believe this about yourself. It doesn't mean it's the truth, but it's a belief. And it creates this filter. Your subconscious mind is essentially this filter that you see and interact with the world through. Or I guess a lens would be a more appropriate term. So this lens you see and interact with the world through. And so it's really valuable to learn to recondition some of these ideas by really questioning them, by really bringing them to your conscious mind's awareness, being able to do some reprogramming work. So number five, dismissal, avoidance. Tend to have low emotional bandwidth at all times. They're sort of in like a low level deactivated state. In other words, they tend to not really feel like they can pour into other people emotionally. Why is this? Because again, if you didn't learn how to fill your own cup emotionally because there was no modeling in childhood to pour into your cup emotionally and to meet your needs and show up for them, if that wasn't there for you in a one to one connection from a caregiver, then you don't have very much in your cup to then pour into other people. And if you combine that with these ideas that, oh, my emotions are unsafe, part of me shameful or bad or weak, you know, these ideas that DA's sort of collect through conditioning about these aspects of self, then what ends up happening is you get into a position where you don't feel like you can even go there. You can't even go to look at the cup, let alone pour into it, which translates into what people have to give for others. And the reality is, as cliche as it sounds, what we show up for in the relationship to ourselves is what we have an abundance of that we can then distribute to the relationships outside of ourselves. And this goes for all things. For anxious, preoccupied, for example, you know, if they have a lot of ability to give their, their emotional connection needs met to themselves, then they, that translates into the emotional connection needs met they have with others. So all of these things really reflects like the way this individual treats themselves as well. So our next one is number six, Dismissive avoidance often feel misunderstood. Now, one of the most important things that I've learned over the years about dismissive avoidance is that they usually chronically feel misunderstood and struggle to even open themselves up. They kind of have this like, why bother concept around trying to express themselves, and it's because they're not communicating their needs. Now we know, right? We know that dismissive avoidance are often in relationships with people who have more emotions to give, right? We know that they're usually in relationships with fearful avoidance who are over givers at times, or aps who are also over givers, even securely attached people at times who have a lot more of that abundance to give. That doesn't mean because you're with a giving partner, that the giving partner mind reads all of the things that you need at all times. So dismissive avoidance tend to feel misunderstood and feel like people are misinterpreting their actions or criticizing them for things that they aren't intending to do, or shaming them for things that they didn't mean to do. And largely, this problem gets solved when dismissive avoidants learn to communicate what their needs are, what their boundaries are, what their intentions were, why they did what they did. And in order to do that, dismissive avoidance have to first work through that fear of vulnerability. Because in translating that, you have to be seen and known. But what I really want to get across here is that DAs tend to have this big I am misunderstood core wound and they often will shy away from communication when in fact that communication would help you get your needs met, that would help you feel seen and known in a healthy way. And if you say to somebody, look, let's say you're dating an anxious, preoccupied person as a da, and you say to your partner, look, I really care about you and the relationship. I feel like we're in a great spot. My emotional bandwidth is used up this week. I am tapped out. And I really need Friday night just to spend time with myself to recharge. And then we'll hang out Saturday instead, or I'll see you on Sunday. If you could give context and open up a little bit and share and be transparent, it would actually help your partner be like, oh, okay, there isn't a problem, we're okay. It wouldn't trigger the partner's core wounds. And then what you would see is that partner would have a much better time understanding and making space for your needs. But instead, what often happens is DA's just withdraw. Then they fear conflict. They want to cancel plans anytime to themselves. They won't communicate with context and openness and transparency. And those things will be misread as, oh, you don't care. You didn't even care to show up. And really what's happening a lot of the time is the DA feels kind of like guilt. Guilty, but doesn't want to communicate, doesn't want the conflict, withdraws instead to avoid the whole thing. And there's just a much easier way through opening up a little bit more and communicating your why number seven, dismiss. Avoidance. Tend to believe that everybody is responsible for themselves. Now, this is true halfway right. We are responsible for our own feelings, our own needs, or our own boundaries. We do have to know these things about ourselves in order to communicate them with others so we can be seen and known and understood. However, what happens all the time is that we don't see healthy interdependence. Interdependence is the middle. You can think of it as being between codependency, which is the AP leaning, the anxious side of the attachment continuum, and independence, like hyper independence or even counter dependency on this far side of the attachment spectrum. Now, healthy communication and healthy relating means I am, yes, responsible for my own feelings, my own core wounds, but I'm also allowed to share with you what my needs are. And healthy relating means we take each other's needs and wounds into consideration. So, for example, I know for my husband, for example, sensitivities that he has to things and what I do naturally because we've shared about these Things many times is I know sensitivities that he has in certain areas of his life. And I know to just avoid those things or to look out for those things, or to have his back in those areas of his life, something's going to come up for him and vice versa. And that's because we've shared those things with one another. And so what ends up happening is when we can communicate and share, we can support each other better. It doesn't mean like, oh, because he has a sensitivity, I'm never going to support him and care about him. And he only can deal with that on his own. That's. That's not how it works, right? When we love, when we bond, when we attach, we can look out for those things in others. We can be there for them in certain ways. And at the same time we can know that, hey, ultimately we each have to fix any internal core wounds. Only we can do that reprogramming. But it doesn't mean that if somebody has a wound of feeling rejected, for example, that I'm not gonna, if I have, you know, something to communicate and this isn't my husband's core wound, but let's just say that it's around rejection and I have to communicate something that's like constructive feedback for the relationship. I might start off by saying, hey, I. I feel like we're in a great place overall. I really care about you. I wanna share something with you and sort of preface it so that it's better received by somebody because we understand them. Right? And so healthy interdependence means, yes, we are responsible for our own feelings and needs, but we can also communicate them to others and have them be considerate of us at the same time. And dismissive avoidance tend to be really polarized in the fact that they think that no, we don't do that. We don't even. That's not even required from relationships. And again, this sounds like it's mean that somebody would even think that. But the reality is this is what was modeled to dismissive avoidance. This was their trauma. This is how they were taught to relate to other people because they were given this type of modeling and connection from their parents or caregivers growing up. And we often talk about how dismissive avoidance, breadcrumb in relationships, they were breadcrumbed in their childhood. That's. So this is how they know how to love, right? Number eight, they tend to really want a relationship that is simple, harmonious, and basically low effort. And again, this starts to heal and change as they become more and more securely attached, but they tend to want to avoid all the conflict, drama, pain, struggle, all that kind of stuff, because they don't know how to work through conflicts because it hasn't been modeled to them. So if you imagine that you're programming your subconscious mind's lens that it sees an actor interacts with the world through. If you imagine that your programming says, I can't work through conflict, really opening up is bad and shameful and weak. And you know, I don't want to feel my feelings under any circumstances because I've done that as a child and that didn't go well for me. And that's your programming, right? That's your individual reality. It doesn't necessarily mean it's like the objective reality, but your subjective programming. That's what you believe, that's what you know. You're sure of it. Then of course, you want a relationship that's low effort because you need to relate without dealing with all that stuff, right? So it has to be simple and easy. Again, these things change as dismissive avoidance learn to become more securely attached. They stop fearing those things and they learn how these strategies to deal with conflict, to work through their emotions, to regulate themselves, and then this whole thing shifts. But at the time when this is just that, that person's natural programming, it translates into the relationship. And you'll often find as a result that dismissive avoidance will flaw find as a subconscious strategy for self protection. And we'll see. This goes into number nine here. Dismissive avoidance may lose feelings suddenly in relationship. And what happens is DAs are always operating in their feelings minus their fears. When there's a low attachment, like in the dating stage, those early days of a relationship, those fears don't really get activated the more there is attachment. Now our subconscious mind goes, okay, what do I know about attachment? The last time I really attached this vulnerably. So basically, on a side note, we tend to use our adult romantic relationships to replace our caregiver relationships with our parents. So the subconscious mind, which is basically operating as like a giant filing cabinet of information, goes and says, oh, attachment, I'm attaching, I'm bonding, I'm opening up as that relationship progresses. And that turns into the dismissive avoidant going, oh my gosh, attachment is scary. And so the more attachment is there, the more DAs are operating in their feelings. And then those fears start to rise up and it's almost like the subconscious opens the filing cabinet and goes, what do we know about attachment? Oh my gosh, it's scary. Vulnerability doesn't feel good, conflict feels really bad and all those fears come up. And so DAs are constantly in this feeling minus fear space. If those fears are too strong or high, if the DA has too many fears that are unresolved there, it will lead them to a point where they end up losing feelings, suddenly flaw finding in their partner, like as a subconscious strategy to feel protected, like nitpick little things as a way to justify pushing the person away. And their subconscious mind basically feels all this stored fear and does what it can to create space and to push somebody away, to stay safe, to be okay. And this brings me to number 10. They can also struggle with this core belief. It's not really a core belief, but it's related to a core belief where they believe that like I'm not good enough or the higher level belief is I'm not capable of giving other people what they need. And often again they think like, I'm just not capable, I don't know how to do this stuff. And you have to remember, if you have very low modeling for emotional connection and you haven't been taught healthily or properly or consistently how to healthily, emotionally relate to others and how to give and receive and how to do a lot of these, these things that a lot of other attachment cells feel naturally come to them, then you're going to feel like it's an unknown. So when people are like, why did you do this? Why didn't you do this? How could you forget about this thing? A lot of times DA's and I've had countless conversations with these clients over the years, have said things to me like, I just think I'm not cut out for relationships, I'm not wired for them. I just, I don't think I'm capable of this like other people are. And this is just the meaning the mind will give to the situation when it doesn't know that there are solutions, when it doesn't know, hey, I can do a little exposure work on vulnerability. I can do a little reconditioning of my core wounds and I can learn healthy communication tools to work through conflicts. And if I remove these core wounds through reprogramming of weak, shameful, unsafe, I am not capable, I'm not good enough. These, I misunderstood. If I just do some reprogramming, which is easy to do, and then I learn healthy communication about my needs and to work through conflict, then right there like, wow, like relationships got so much easier. And it's not that somebody's not capable, it's that when they don't have the tools and they don't know what the tools would be and it's like an unknown unknown, then it makes it really, really tricky. So I do want to say it is absolutely possible to change, to become secure, to have healthy, attached relationships. And those are 10 of the major signs you might be dismissive, avoidant. So this can also be for partners of DAs who are wondering to see if their partner is dismissive, avoidant. And hopefully this makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed this. And thank you for watching.