When you chase someone, they run. Aaron Doughty uses a dog analogy to explain how anxious people lean in seeking validation while avoidant people pull away for safety, both trying to control their emotional needs.
If you think of the energy of chasing, think about it like anything else that's gonna play along with you. If you have a dog and you go and you chase the dog, what happens? The dog naturally runs from you because that's the game you're playing. You're chasing it and it's like the path of least resistance is to have fun and to run away. So what happens is based on the energy dynamic that we're in, people, they're not dogs, but they are responding to the energy we're putting out. So what happens is if we're putting out the energy of chasing someone else, there's an energy also of naturally feeling feeling like the next thing to do is to go the other direction or to run away. Now, very often when you think of this in the form of the attachment styles of anxious or avoidant, where the anxious is leaning in for love and the way they get their needs met is by leaning in and craving it, and then the avoidant who keeps it at an arm's length and doesn't trust it— so what happens is it's like it's on the other side of the spectrum. These are both methods being used to control getting their needs met or to feel safe. For the avoidant, it's like once it becomes overwhelming, I'm gonna push it away, and this is where it feels safe. And then for the anxious, it feels more familiar to lean in, to crave into who do I need to be in order to get that validation, approval, or whatever that is.
