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When your birthday arrives and your dismissive avoidant partner barely notices, it's easy to think they just don't care. But what's really happening beneath that silence isn't usually a lack of love and care, but more of a clash between emotional wiring and self protection. In the next few minutes, we are going to do a deep dive into the psychology behind why dismissive avoidance seem indifferent often on days that matter most and what to do to approach the situation. Because I'm not saying it's okay that it happens, you know, I. If you were hurt by this, that's okay. You deserve to feel that way. You're entitled, especially if you're a birthday person, to have your feelings around it. But how should you approach this in a healthy way? And what's the middle ground? So we're going to cover five major reasons that this plays a role. We'll talk a little bit about the neuroscience behind this and what's actually happening at the brain level that may lead to some of these outcomes. And we'll talk a little bit about how to approach this in the best way possible so that you are guarding your heart. We'll looking out for yourself and seeing if this is something that improves upon in a relationship or not. So here's number one of five, emotional intimacy. And most of you know this if you've watched this channel for a while, feels unsafe even when it's positive. You see dismissive avoidance themselves rarely had big emotional celebrations for their own birthdays growing up. And if they did, it usually caused some discomfort. Okay? So dismissive avoidance, because they usually had a childhood where there was emotional neglect, then even if there were events that seem to represent not having somebody you know be neglected, but instead if they were in the spotlight. So let me hash this out for a second. Let's say you grew up, you were dismissive, avoidant, okay? And you did not have parents or family members who are attuned to your emotional needs. So what this means is that you felt this emotional disconnect essentially. Okay? And due to that emotional disconnect that you were feeling from these different individuals growing up, you learned, I have to suppress my emotions just to feel okay. And so you did. And then if there's themes that happen like once a year where you get a birthday party and everybody sings Happy birthday to you and stares at you, that might be highly uncomfortable to a dismissive avoidant. So they are actively either disliking birthday celebrations the most because they feel uncomfortable, or they literally were wired. Maybe they grew up without birthday celebrations or with very minimal effort and energy put into those things, because they also had dismissive, avoidant parents or parents who are really busy or emotionally unavailable for any of those types of reasons or cases, they've learned that birthday celebrations are either meaningless or uncomfortable. So because they believe that that then causes them to not be that interested in making them a big theme for you, okay. Doesn't mean that this is okay. I'm not saying, you know, for those of you that are big birthday people, I'm not sitting here saying that they should just be this way and it's fine, we're going to talk about what to do at the end, I promise you. But this just essentially means that moments that require emotional closeness, such as birthdays or anniversaries, actually trigger that fear of dependency or discomfort. And it's not that they don't want their partner to feel special, it's that they actually have negative emotional associations to some of these things. And so they have minimized how important these things are in their own mind and in their own life. And so of course, you know, if you think that stubbing your toe isn't a big deal and somebody stubs their toe and you have a high pain tolerance, you're gonna be like, oh, hope you're okay, but you're not gonna think much about it. What we tend to think and perceive is what we tend to project onto others. Where if somebody is very sensitive to stubbing their toe, it could be a different story. Okay, Kind of a silly analogy, but hopefully it paints the picture too. Dismissive avoidants often feel a sense of learned helplessness around these things. A lot of times if they have a partner who loves birthdays. But there's somebody who literally doesn't have any experience celebrating birthdays or planning a party or an event, they often just get into a space of feeling learned helplessness, which essentially means they feel helpless about what to do. And when dismissive avoidance feel learned helplessness, they shut down. That's how they cope with it almost 100 of the time. So they actually just kind of freeze and retreat. And so if they're feeling like, oh, like I can tell this person wants a birthday party, but I don't know what that looks like or who to plan it with. I've never planned stuff like this. There goes go to coping mechanism is often to diminish, you know, what that means to somebody rather than to take the initiative to be a self starter and be like, let me do some research on how birthday parties are fun for people. And what that would look like. There are some exceptions to this rule, but the vast majority of time they're going to be the exceptions and not the rule. And if you look, it's actually really interesting. So a 2016 study by Dr. Wagger at the University of Colorado found that emotional suppression alters hippocampal prefrontal connectivity, impairing the recall of emotionally charged memory. So a lot of the hippocampal regions of the brain have to do with memory, literally. And so there's a suppression that's taking place here. On top of that, in 2018, Dr. Helen Fisher's neuroimaging research showed that people with avoidant tendencies actually exhibit decreased ventral striatum activity, the region in the brain most linked to joy, reward and anticipation when exposed to affectionate gestures. You can think of a birthday party as being an affectionate gesture, right? It's coming from this affectionate place. It's, you know, trying to do something special and kind of loving. And so you can actually see that there's a suppression around these things to begin with, which I find to be really interesting. And last but not least, in terms of neuroscience, and then we'll get into the next three points. A 2021 study by Dr. Herbst demonstrated that chronic detachment actually correlates with reduced mirror neuron activation, which means avoidance. Feel less empathy in the moment, even if they care underneath and may come back to feeling about it and sort of recognizing their actions and the impact of them after. A lot of mirror neurons are linked to how we empathize, how we show up, how we feel around different situations. And all of these studies, I think, collectively show that the avoidant brain literally filters out emotional signals to protect itself from overwhelm. And that happens in terms of how we remember emotional things for dismissive avoidance, how you approach them, whether or not you're more likely to partake in affectionate gestures. I mean, all of these things are showing up there under those pretenses. If you want to do a deep dive into healing your attachment style, you can get free access to our attachment healing bootcamp. It's a nine day program by your attachment style tracks your progress. You can go through literally all of the course recommendations in order in your program, your workbooks, everything's built in there for you to heal, to become secure in the shortest period of time possible. Because we tackle rewiring the subconscious mind, which is the most important thing that you need to do for healing. And along with this free access, um, for a limited time, you actually get to Keep for Free for Life as a gift, the attachment styles and sex course going all into patterns, themes, dynamics in regards to all attachment styles. And that will be a part of the learning the process if you want to dig into it. Um, and again, it comes for free for Life as a gift with the program. So check it out if you want to go do a deeper dive in the link down below. So I'm going to tell you three more important things here. Point number three of five. Dismissive avoidance. Often minimize or forget your birthday because they often think that emotional neediness or the need to be feeling special, they. They often think it's a bit of a weakness. And it's not that they're necessarily judging it so much like, oh, you want to have a birthday party, you're weak. They'll more judge it through the lens of like, oh, I don't need those things. And I don't know if we should need those things. Sort of like a neutral negative. And this is coming from so many conversations I've had with dismissive, avoidant clients over the years. Like, it's almost always this kind of output when I would ask a dismissive, avoidant. So, you know, what are you seeing here? And I worked with probably less dismissive avoidant clients overall than anxious and fearful avoidance when I was running my practice. But still, like, this is thousands of conversations. So you'd see that somebody, they think that somebody needing attention or affection could lead to disappointment. And so they often dismiss special occasions because they sort of associate emotional recognition with vulnerability and then vulnerability with, with danger emotionally. Okay, so that's where then they kind of project that onto you. And they often think, oh, maybe it's healthier for them to grow out of it, or maybe they don't need that, really. And so they'll minimize somebody else's needs without consciously recognizing that they're doing it. And obviously without consciously recognizing that we shouldn't be dictating what other people's needs are in a relationship. Right? That's up to them. And of course, a huge one, probably one of the biggest ones, a five, four or five here is they fear expectation, dismissive avoidance, feel engulfed. They feel trapped by expectation. So again, all these sort of mechanics are playing out in their brain and in their conditioning at once where they'll start to think, oh, you're going to expect these things of me if I start planning them, and then I'm gonna have to do them every year. And then if I make a mistake, you're gonna be mad at me. And Criticize and shame me. And they have this whole. Just like every insecure attachment style goes down the rabbit hole when they get triggered. You know, fearful avoidance might see something that's incongruent and become suspicious. And think of all the worst case scenarios. Anxious attachment styles may feel somebody slightly pulling away. Assume that the person's gonna end the relationship. Dismissive avoidance often think things like, wait, you're gonna expect all these things of me, I'm not gonna do them right. I'm gonna mess up, you're gonna criticize me, I'm gonna be shamed. And they'll, they'll sort of go down that rabbit hole things I think that is so important and it's actually a little bit sad. But most importantly, we'll talk about what to do here. Is deep down dismissive of a woman. Just never experience consistent emotional celebration themselves. Their inability to celebrate you often just mirrors how unseen they felt. And this reenactment that's happening, not a rejection. So a lot of times what you'll see is if somebody didn't get celebrated, it's almost like an unknown. They don't even know how to get there. And so there's this unknown there. And have you ever tried to figure something out that you didn't even know where to start? You have any previous modeling or somebody showing that to you? Well, it makes it really hard to even get started on the journey. And that's something that's so common for dismissive avoidance is it just feels out of their depth or out of their wheelhouse. And so it's an un. It's like an unknown unknown. They don't even know that. They don't know how to do this. And so it's just something that just goes out of the periphery. It's not something they register or really click into place fully. And so of course you're going to see that kind of output. Now what do you do if you're on the receiving end of this? Okay, two major things. Number one, you tell this person this is important to you. You tell your partner if this is something that's important to you. If you are a big birthday person, maybe some of you are not big birthday people and you're just watching this video because you're curious. But you tell this person, hey, this is something meaningful to me. I grew up with these celebrations in, in my childhood. I have placed a lot of meaning around them. Just like you have your own unique things that there's meaning for you, or just like we all have things that that make us feel more loved or connected, however you want to phrase it. You tell them and you tell them like vulnerably, this is my truth. And then you give one or two tangible expectations that you have in regards to your birthday. It doesn't have to be that somebody plans a surprise birthday party for you every single something like that. But you can say, hey look, you know, it's really important to me that you know, you plan a dinner date or we do something different than we normally do. And so by giving something clear and tangible, it allows for that person to not have an excuse to make a mistake. Okay. And then you get to watch and vet how they show up. And in a lot of cases when you're very clear, very specific, you tell them your personal relationship to this thing. So they know, okay, this is meaningful to you, even if I don't really understand it. But then you tell them what you would hope for each year and give an example. Then it allows them to get out of learned helplessness, to understand it and empathize with it, to not have to worry that they don't have all of these experiences to pull from. They're like, okay, this is what you're expecting to experience. You made it really clear. And then from there you are most likely to get the best version of this person showing up. If somebody doesn't show up for you, if this is a non negotiable for you in dating or a relationship, that's one thing. You know, I, I will say I, I find that most securely attached people enjoy doing something for their birthday, but it's not a huge thing. So you may want to check in with that too. Like is this something you put too much on a pedestal? Because it's a deeply unmet need that you may want to meet more within yourself as well or have many healthy sources to enrich. Maybe it's coming from a bit of a void. Good place to check in with. But in the case that it's something healthy, be clear, give the person action steps. Hopefully they listen one year and they remember the next year. But it's up to you to vet their behavior and decide what to do from there. Does that mean that you're in the wrong relationship if the person's not showing up, is that actually a more superficial thing and it's just something you'd love? It's a sort of a nice to have for this person. That is always an individual decision that you have to self consider around. Listen to yourself, pay attention to your internal world and see where you're coming from and go from there. So that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed this video. Please like share and subscribe if you don't want to miss any upcoming videos on this channel. All about dismissive avoidance in relationships, healing, fearful avoidance, anxious attachment cells. You know, a lot of these videos are for you if you're anxious because we these are the most inquired topics, topics for anxious and fearful avoidance that we get asked about. But yeah, that's it for today. Hope you enjoy and I'll see you next time.