← The Thais Gibson Podcast
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Fearful avoidance are so confusing for so many people because they have really polarizing sides to them. The super warm side, but this ability to be cold, this need for depth, but this need for independence and freedom. And in today's video, I'm going to break down so that it's no longer confusing. Everything that fearful avoidance actually find attractive and are usually pining after in a relationship like the things that really light them up so that you finally have some understanding. And if you're the fearful avoidant, watching this, this might actually help you better understand yourself. Now I say this about every single version of these videos about how to connect with whichever attachment style, whether it's FA ap, da. And it really has to do with the fact that when we are connecting, the job is not ever for you if you're the loved one of any attachment style, to do backflips and run through an obstacle course and turn yourself into something you're not in order to connect with them, that the best thing you can do is educate yourself and get clear and learn about how to best connect with somebody of a different attachment style. And then see like from the material you're learning how you can best see yourself wanting to fit into different needs that they have and show up for those things while taking yourself and your needs into consideration. For example, if one of the big needs for a fearful avoidant is growth and fearful avoidance really value growing together in a relationship. If you hate growth and like just theoretically, of course, if you hate growth and you just want stability and security and growing too much is something that, that feels super uncomfortable. Don't become something that goes against yourself. If you realize that growth is something that doesn't really float your boat. And instead, you know, emotional connection is and emotional depth is. And that's another one of their needs. Meet the needs that you see yourself feeling excited to meet. Double down on those things and take yourself and your boundaries and your needs into consideration in the process. And every relationship, each person is supposed to be a hundred percent accountable for their 50% of the relationship. It shouldn't ever be that you just meet the other person's needs without also communicating your own. So I just wanted to put that all out there. First and foremost, you can think of your needs in a relationship as the components of a relationship that allow it to sustain itself. So just like the body has specific needs to survive, you know, it has to drink water, you know, it has to breathe air. Like we have these like a lifeblood kind of needs for survival, a relationship in its own way also has things that have to sustain it, right? So the, the fearful avoidant attachment style has these really strong needs. And if these needs are not met and if they're withdrawn instead, then generally it's kind of like, like a human being without air, like without oxygen, like it's very difficult to sustain. When we think of a relationship as a whole, it's almost like its own like organism, right. It's like there's these sort of like giving and receiving of needs and that's so much of how the relationship stays alive and thriving and empowered. And as soon as one half of the relationship doesn't have their needs met, it's almost like you're like choking the oxygen from the person, right? It's like it really makes it difficult to stay in that space of thriving. And we're not going to just talk about how to meet the needs, but also sort of not just the needs, but how to meet the needs as well. So the first need that's really important to a fearful avoidant is emotional depth. They really value like emotional depth. And the really interesting part for like how the fearful avoidant best receives this is first through somebody opening up. So fearful avoidance essentially have been conditioned to a certain degree into kind of these like one way connection relationships. Because in so much of their upbringing, if they grew up around chaos, sometimes the only way they really felt like they got love is when they were there for or supporting their parents or their caregivers in their chaos. And sometimes the variation of this is like supporting the siblings. Like sometimes we like the eldest sibling of a large family and that sibling supporting all the other siblings. And so like the fearful warden tends to get rewarded or attuned to or acknowledge or approved of when they are in support of other people. Which makes fearful avoidance like really good at like drawing information out of people and getting people to connect deeply with them and to share with them. And that's something that fearful avoidance generally like and value. But you know, it's also so important if you're the loved one of a fearful avoidant, to ask deep questions to the fearful avoidant so that the fearful one will open up to you as well, Even if that takes a little more time and you have to be a little more patient and consistent. It is, is definitely something the fearful avoidant needs and it's something that will again like kind of represent the lifeblood of the relationship, like allow it to sustain itself. And these aren't in any particular order. The second major one is trust. Fearful avoidance may have a Big subconscious comfort zone of not trusting. But to be perfectly honest, a relationship with a fearful avoidant will not make it beyond the power struggle stage of a relationship if there isn't a very strong baseline of trust. And trust has a lot to do with things like context, transparency, consistency, congruency. Like if I say, hey, I'll see you at 5 o' clock every day and I say I want to come by your house at 5 o' clock and every day I never come by at five o', clock, you might trust me in certain ways, but you're not going to trust me to show up at your house at 5 o'. Clock. Because what I say and what I do do not align. And so that's congruency and fearful avoidance are literally lie detectors. They pick up on all the little incongruencies everywhere, whether they mean to or not. So as soon as there's incongruencies, it really, you know, affects the fearful ones capacity to trust. The more congruency is there, the more trust is built and the more the relationship can really sustain over time. Because fearful wouldn't tend to. Even if they don't talk about all the little things they pick up on, they pick up on a lot of stuff very easily. So congruence is really important. Consistency. Like you say that you're going to do something or call back, like try to do that as consistently as possible. Also, if you're like dating a fearful avoidant and then you're available, and then you're really not available, and then you're available, you're really not available. That intermittent reinforcement may draw the fearful in and fearful avoidant initially, but over the long term it will cause them to again feel like they're not trusting. They'll keep pulling away inside until they kind of hit a tipping point and then they'll leave seemingly all of a sudden. But usually there's a lot of like things they weren't just discussing around trust or consistency that were happening first consideration. Like making somebody feel like you're considering them is a massive part of trust as well. Like that you're looking out for their feelings. Like if you're going to cancel a trip that you had planned, like if you're like, oh, I canceled the trip, see you later, you know, you weren't considerate of that person. If you like, hey, unfortunately I really have to cancel this trip, I have this thing going on. How do you feel about that? Can we try to reschedule another time? What else works for you? I'm so sorry. Like if you're considerate of them in the process, okay, like, I trust that you're going to look out for my feelings and I trust that you're going to look out for how your actions rub off on me. And because of that, I'm willing to be more open and vulnerable with you. So consideration is massive. I won't go too far into all this stuff because we could talk for a very long time just about the trust component, but a big need for fearful avoidance is trust presence is also massive. When fear avoidance don't have people present with them, they tend to have like a bit of a wound that gets triggered around feeling like they don't matter. They also again feel like, hey, I. It almost like seems to wear at the trust and at the consideration in relationship to trust and that emotional depth, that thing we talked about earlier. So the more presence is there, the more connected a fearful avoidant will feel. And it's really important. Safety is a huge thing for fearful avoidance. Fearful avoidance, because they have a subconscious comfort zone of chaos, generally do not realize that they are looking for safety safety. But for a relationship to make it beyond the power struggle stage with a fearful avoidant, having somebody who is safe to be around, emotionally safe, especially like consistent, shows up, is stable, is grounded, is reliable. You know, all these things represent safety to the fearful avoidant along with all the trust components we talked about. And that safety is actually one of the only baselines or foundational things that will allow, if you're fluidant, to actually open up over time and to continuously grow with somebody. Fearful avoidance don't usually register that they feel unsafe, but if you look at their coping mechanisms, you're usually like, if you look at when we feel unsafe and when we go into sympathetic nervous system mode, what do we do? We fight. We flight or flee. We freeze or we fawn like F a W n like people please whenever. Fearful avoidance are consistently in those 4F responses. Fight, flight, freeze and fawn. They generally end up in unsustainable circumstances and relationships. In other words, they tend to eventually leave those relationships because they get resentful, they get frustrated, they get overprotective. And if you look at fearful avoidance, they are usually exhibiting an exaggerated version of those four responses because they're spending an inordinate amount of time in sympathetic nervous system mode. So fearful avoidance flee often, right? They threaten to break up all of a sudden or they leave a job suddenly or situations suddenly, or they push people away all of a sudden. That's a flight response. They fight Right. They over defend themselves. They easily perceive, attack and take things personally and they feel the need to over defend themselves. So they fight, they flee. So we have fight, flight, freeze, right? Sometimes your voice go into these like extended freeze responses for long periods of time when or they fought people please until they get resentful, feel like they're taking advantage of and then they get frustrated and then they go into fight response, right? So when there's no safety, there's this like pathway that you are on as if you're flavored or if you're dating, if you're floating where like as much as there could be lots of passion and connection and chemistry and love, if there's no baseline of safety, the relationship is unlikely to sustain. It's unlikely to continuously work. So that safety, even though that's not like some of the things and like one of the other next needs that we're going to talk about is passion. Like fearful avoidance are usually like looking for passion and connection and chemistry and like feeling like there's sparks and all those different things. But if you don't have the safety and you just have the passion, these relationships with a fearful avoidant, they tend to burn hot and burn out fast. So they tend to like, you really connect with them. You really like have the sparks flying and then the fuse goes out. Because the level of resentment that's likely to show up in those relationships over time is so strong. So, so far, I know, I feel like I'm covering a lot. I'm going to try to make this a little shorter too because there's a lot of needs to cover. And honestly, like in the full length webinar, I go so much more into depth about all these things and about all the different versions of these things. So again, you can check it out for free for seven days using the link below. But I'm going to try to go a little quicker through these next ones. Another big one is novelty. And it's interesting too because like the fearful avoidant, they have these like seemingly contradictory parts, right? It's like they want the depth and they need the safety, but they also need the novelty, right? But we're humans, like we are holistic beings. We have multiple aspects of self. So even though the fearful avoidant might want novelty and want safety, it doesn't actually mean that like, oh, you know, they're, they're conflicting. That's not possible. No, no, no. The fearful avoidant absolutely has these seemingly contradictory needs. But as a human being you can enjoy trying things, doing new things, but also need at a baseline level a sense of safety and stability in your life. Like they might seem at a surface level like they, they contradict. But they absolutely are just like parts of our holistic self. They're parts of the big picture. So novelty is really important. Fearful avoidance really need to know that like they can go to a new restaurant with their partner, have new discussions, try new hobbies, test new things. Anything that's too routine will also cause the fearful avoidant to lose interest quite quickly. Again, this doesn't mean that like the fearful avoidance only gonna want to d over time. It means that there's just an important novelty aspect to bring into the relationship. So like trying new things, going to new places, like bringing that in as something you do together as partners in a relationship and unite over is very valuable. The next big one is growth. We were kind of talking about this at the preface of this video. Fearful wouldn't actually have a fear of not growing together. Fearful wouldn't tend to be like acutely aware that if you're not growing together, you're likely to grow apart. And so growth together means like having deeper conversations, being tapped into needs, understanding in a relationship that your needs are going to change over time. Like understanding that hey, what your needs were when we first started dating in the first six months versus what your needs are five years into a relationship, 10 years into a relationship, these are going to change. So growing together also means consistently having conversations to discover each other's needs, interests, beliefs, opinions as you evolve as unique individuals and being able to make space for those things to merge, right? To grow together. Like hey, I might have had these opinions way back and you had these, these opinions and then your opinions change and mine didn't or yours did in minded. And like we still find a way to harmonize over that. We still find a way to like connect over unique similarities and differences. So growth is so important to fearful avoidance. And then freedom is super important to fearful avoidance. Again, it doesn't mean you can't have emotional depth and freedom. You can have like a lot of emotional depth. Maybe you spend two nights a week together dating this person and you are super present, have deep conversations, you're very like close and connected and do all these different, different things. But then maybe also you have, you know, a day that you don't really talk a lot during the week because you're both doing your own thing. Like that's the freedom. And then the next need is independence. And they kind of go hand in hand. And I think we tend to so easily think of things in like these all or nothing segmented ways. Like you either have freedom and independence or you have depth and connection and presence. But like it's not true. You can have the depth, connection and presence throughout most of the week, but then have a date where you have a lot of freedom and independence to yourself. So like these knowing that these things are there is so valuable and so important. And then the last big thing is that fearful avoidance want to feel like they are wanted and appreciated. They want to feel like you want to be with them, that your time matters to them, that you appreciate that you're with them. And it doesn't have to be in this like extreme way. It doesn't have to be in this like, oh wow, I'm so, so lucky all the time. It can be like, like just reassuring that like you appreciate the relationship, you appreciate the time together, you like who the person is that you're dating. And just having that kind of reassurance in a way that makes, you know, the relationship a certain degree of priority in your life. And things along those lines are very important to a fearful avoidant as well. So these are some very valuable things. Again, if you want a much deeper dive for an hour and a half into all the needs and specifically how to meet them and how to communicate about them and then how to bypass core wounds and de escalate in arguments and all the different ways to deeply connect, you can use that link down below to check out the webinar for free. And that's about it for today. So thank you so much for watching. Thank you for being here. Please like share and subscribe to this channel if you're enjoying this content. I literally put out a daily video and you can let me know questions or videos you want to see in the comments below. And yeah, I will see you in tomorrow's video. Thank you for being here.