Fixing The Fearful Avoidant Attachment - A Man's Guide

All right, gentlemen, here we are. It is time. We are finally going to be talking about the thing that I got dozens and dozens and dozens of messages from you about. DMs on YouTube, DMs on Instagram, like emails about. So many of you asked for this. So here it is. We are going to be talking about a Man's guide to Fearful Avoidant Attachment and how to move to a secure, healthy attachment. I didn't realize that this was such a big thing, but when I did the avoidant one and the anxious one, so many of you guys were like, waiting for this. Where is this? Like, when are you going to do this? So here we go. First off, let's start with what is the fearful avoidant? What is it right out the gates? This is also known as the disorganized attachment. Disorganized attachment. And it's called disorganized for a number of reasons, which we're going to get into. But really, the fearful avoidant can be characterized by a few things. Number one is, is a good amount of anxiety, high levels of anxiousness, high levels of fearful thinking, and secondly, the. The high levels of avoidant behaviors. So it's kind of a combination of the anxious and avoidant. However, it's not as simple as just like smashing those two together and thinking that, you know what it is, all right? It's a little bit more complicated than just somebody that's avoidant and has anxiety. Generally speaking, the fearful avoidant and for the. For the exercise of this video, for the intention of this video, I'm going to just call it fearful avoidant, not disorganized attachment, because that can get a little bit confusing.

At the core of the fearful avoidant is a really deep desire for intimacy. The misconception of the fearful avoidant is that they don't want intimacy or that they're afraid of it. That's wrong. At the heart and core of. Of the fearful avoidant is actually somebody who deeply wants intimacy and closeness.

But they feel very unlovable underneath all of that desire. And there's also a pretty significant distrust of other people who would accept them and support them. So that's kind of the duality, that's kind of the polarization of the internal experience of a fearful avoidance. Like, I want closeness, I want intimacy. It's something that I desperately crave for. But either. And it's not usually one or the other, it's usually a mix of the two. It's the mix of, like, I don't actually feel lovable or some part of me doesn't feel lovable, it feels broken, it feels wrong, it doesn't feel good enough. And on the other side it's. And I don't trust people who try and support me or who want to support me or who actually accept who I am. And that's going to make a lot more sense in a little bit when I break down. What actually creates the fearful avoidance. Because remember, with a lot of these attachment styles, with all of these attachment styles that I've been talking about, in order to move to a more secure, healthy place, you actually have to, have to have to understand what has built the attachment style in the first place. You cannot get around it. If you do not understand what developed that attachment style in the first place, you will not be able to move towards a more healthy, secure attachment. It's just almost, almost an impossibility. So we're gonna go through that. But first I want to give you a little bit more detail in an information about what the fearful avoidant is and how it can kind of show up. So fearful avoidance, this attachment style is kind of characterized by this interplay, right, of fear, of dependence, right? I'm afraid, but I'm dependent on you and yet I'm avoidant of real connection with you. And that can look a number of different ways. Usually when you think about somebody that has been labeled as having like commitment issues, sometimes, not always, but sometimes those men are the guys that have this fearful avoidant attachment style and it shows up as commitment issues because that man wants to get close, but then bails out or creates intimacy and closeness and then backs away or you know, is kind of one foot in, one foot out in the relationship where, you know, maybe, you know, if you're listening to this and you are a fearful avoidant person, you're like, I think this might be my attachment style is probably going to feel internally like there's constantly this contrast or this conflicting intention inside of you where you, you really want to be close to somebody. But there's these hurdles and these blocks that are in the way that seem to be preventing you of doing that. And it might be a big self worth thing. You may be like, I'm not really, I don't really feel worthy. Or when you start to build that closeness and connection, all of a sudden there's anxiousness that starts to come up. But for a lot of guys, what this looks like is getting into a relationship and wanting the relationship. And then when it starts to progress and there starts to become more sort of Levels of seriousness. There is a hesitancy of really being in the relationship. And so he's constantly questioning, is this the right relationship for me? Should I really be in this relationship? You know, am I going to get screwed over by her? You know, am I going to get, is she going to screw me over at some point? Can I really trust her? Is she really the one? And there's this constant sort of fear monger that's going on internally for the fearful avoidance. So the individuals with this attachment style often experience this conflicting feeling about the intimacy and the relationship that they have, even if on one side they seem and sound very, very sure of it. And this is very sort of hallmark for the, the avoid, the fearful avoidant. It's like there's a part of me that really knows that this is the right thing or that I really love this person, like I genuinely want to be with them. But then there this conflicting what if, like what if she did this? Or what if it's not right? Or what if it doesn't work? Or what if I'm not enough? And so on the one hand they really crave that closeness. They yearn for it. They want the connection, they want the security that comes from the intimate relationships. But on the other hand, there's this deep seated fear of rejection, of abandonment, of getting hurt emotionally or screwed over financially. And that fear, whatever that fear looks like and manifests, you know, looks like within you, that fear leads them to avoid letting other people too close or if they feel like closeness has happened, it can oftentimes lead to a lot of hyper vigilance, a lot of anxiety internally and then a good amount of like pushing away. And that pushing away can come through creating conflict, creating arguments, not texting back, you know, all the sort of like classic avoidant behaviors. Now the big thing that I want to just highlight is that this is not like some malicious behavior because for the person on the receiving end of a fearful avoidant, it can be quite disorienting, right? And when you, when you listen and talk to people who are dating a fearful avoidant or have married a fearful avoidant, which absolutely happens, right? It's not like fearful avoidance don't get into long term relationships relationships, because remember, in fact, I would almost postulate that fearful avoidance have a higher likelihood of getting into long term relationships than just classic pure avoidance. Because the classic pure avoidance are, are the ones that want to create a lot of separation space. And there's an internal narrative and story of like I am better off on my own Or I can only trust me, some version of that. Whereas with the fearful avoidant, there's this really deep yearning and craving for relationship and so a lot of fearful avoidance. They are desperately trying to get into a relationship, or they are already in a long term relationship, but there's always this conflict happening inside of them. So this attachment style didn't start with you. Right. It's not like there's something fundamentally broken and wrong in you. In you or with you. This attachment style arises from early experiences in childhood with primary caregivers who were inconsistent or unavailable and unpredictable in being able to meet your needs, in being able to be emotionally stable. They were inconsistent in their responsiveness to you. So like, maybe you would talk to them and they just wouldn't even respond or acknowledge your existence. You may have grown up in an environment where.

You know, you would ask for something and sometimes you would get a nice response, and sometimes you would ask for the same thing and you would get a blow up. So for a lot of people that have grown up in environments where maybe there was alcoholism or addiction, you, maybe you had a parent that had mental health disorder, right? That like, they were bipolar and so there was these big mood swings that, that made it so that you couldn't rely on as a child on a consistent, a consistent enough response. And again, when I'm saying consistent enough response, if you're a parent out there, you don't have to be perfect with this, right? It's not like, oh, if I'm not perfectly consistent with my child, I'm gonna, you know, screw up their attachment style. No, what research has actually found is that if you get it right, like 33, 34% of the time, and you are consistently responding to your child's needs in a grounded, consistent way, that child can begin to assimilate some understanding of, oh, when I ask for an apple, mom or dad gives me an apple, or they say no, but they say no in a safe way. It's very rare that I ask for the apple and mom and dad blow up, or they just all out ignore me, or they just say like, no, go to your room and don't talk to me. That's the case for a lot of fearful avoidance though, is that there's such an inconsistency in the environment that you grew up in that it became very hard to like plug in emotionally, energetically and relationally. And so over time, what that does is it produces an anxiety internally because it doesn't feel like you can trust plugging into that person. And then when you start to get close, there's a fear of, like, something's going to blow up, right? I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. And when you talk to a fearful avoidant and you really start to get into their childhood, this is at the sort of, like, epicenter of their experience is this duality of I really wanted closeness. And closeness was very inconsistent. I either didn't know what I was going to get because somebody was emotionally volatile, or what I got was. Was just so few and far between that I didn't know how to trust it or that person. There was just nothing there to plug into. So all of that behavior in childhood can lead to a good amount of confusion and uncertainty in terms of the reliability and the safety of very close intimate relationships. Okay? And I want you to mark those two pieces. The reliability and the safety of really close intimate relationships. Because for the fearful avoidant, there's a big question mark around the safety of a relationship, and there's a big question mark around the reliability or the trustworthiness of a relationship. And so a lot of fearful avoidance are going to struggle with trust. They are going to have difficulty expressing their needs and emotions, like, really strong difficulty. They're going to have a lot of resistance towards actually letting that be known. Because their needs and their wants or their needs and their desires were often the things that they were punished for growing up, or, you know, they were yelled at for growing up, or, you know, they just consistently learned like these, my needs don't matter, my emotions don't matter. And so all of those things kind of get parked to the side for a fearful avoidant. And oftentimes, and this is the big difference with the fearful avoidant, that kind of is different from the anxious attachment or the avoidant attachment. The fearful attachment is going to oscillate back and forth. They're going like a pendulum between seeking closeness and pushing others away. Seeking closeness and pushing others away. And oftentimes the pushing others away is a defense mechanism. Right? So if you're watching this and you're feel fearful, avoidant, none of this is to shame you, right? All of this is to just give you insight and information on how that attachment style was sort of birthed, for lack of a better term. Now, what is the fearful avoidant look like in a relationship? And I'm going to go on here in a moment to just talk about what actually, like, give some very concrete examples of, like, here's what creates the fearful avoidant, but what it can look like in A relationship. What the fearful avoidant can look like in a relationship is you might be highly emotional. If you're a fearful avoidant, your emotions might be really heightened and you might be very emotional in the sense that you might be very anxious or you might have a lot of anger and you might act out, you might feel things super intensely and, and sort of swing through the spectrum of the. Your emotions, right? You're like happy one minute and then 10 minutes later you're pissed off at your partner and then 10min later you're really sad and feeling disconnected. And then 10 minutes later you're like, everything's okay again. And so there's sort of this volatility of high emotions. And oftentimes because of the unpredictability that you experienced in childhood, it's very common that relationally you as a fearful avoidant are very unpredictable. And it's sometimes common that fearful avoidance will attract anxious partners for this reason because sometimes that activates that person's, that anxious attachments wound right where they're like, oh my gosh, you know, like what's going on and what's happening now? And, and I don't know what I'm going to get. And that unpredictability can feed their anxiety. Now that's not always the, the, the common pairing, but it's something that I've seen a lot of the time. Fearful avoidance are also going to, they're going to be a little bit more sensitive when it comes to rejection, even if it's just signs of rejection, even it's just the possibility or the potentiality of rejection. And they're also going to be very, very attuned to any kind of abandonment. And again, that is because of their childhood and what they experienced growing up. It's very common that they are hypervigilant and hypersensitive to those things because that's what they experience, right? They are used to being on the lookout for are you unsafe? Can I trust you? And are you going to abandon me? Some combination of those. So let's talk about the foundational pillars of what actually builds a fearful avoidance. What are some very concrete things that build the fearful avoidant attachment style? So one of the first things that we absolutely need to talk about is the inconsistent caregiving. So if you were a child that grew up in a household where caregiving was very inconsistent, that could have been your parents or your primary caregiver was sporadically there, right? Maybe they were out a lot and it might not even have been malicious, right? Maybe they Just had to work a lot. They had a kind of on call job where they just had to up and leave sometimes and they left you with random friends, next door, neighbors, family members. That type of experience can be very jarring, inconsistent caregiving. Generally speaking, people that enter into any type of foster care system, it's quite common that they have a fearful, avoidant attachment style because there's an inconsistency depending on when they've gone through the foster care system. But it's very common that, you know, they get, they get bounced around between different homes and they're not there for very long. And so there's an inconsistency in terms of what to expect. And so they can never really acclimatize to that. So as an example, another type of inconsistency is inconsistent emotional caregiving. Right. As I was talking about before. So your parent might show affection and attentiveness in one instant and be completely emotionally unavailable and dismissive in the next because of something that's going on in their own life that has nothing to do with you. And so you learn to associate the intimacy with uncertainty, right, or uncertainty with intimacy. And what you come to learn is that you can't expect somebody to be consistent with their love, with their affection, with their physical connection. And this develops this kind of fear of I don't know what's going to happen next. And so instead of being able to trust somebody to show me consistent love, I'm going to just reject it altogether. Because me rejecting your inconsistency or me rejecting you wholeheartedly is just easier than me risking giving you a chance to give me consistent love and affection. So any type of inconsistency, again, physical inconsistency, punishment oriented inconsistency, right? Like if you just didn't know when you were to get punished or what that punishment would look like, and sometimes you didn't even know why you were getting punished. It was just like, like random and out of the blue. That can be inconsistent caregiving as well. Inconsistent emotional connection is a big, big, big one. And then inconsistent time spent. So again, if you just didn't know like when your parent was going to be around or your caregiver is going to be there for you, that can lead to a type of fear and anxiousness and avoidance of having a really sort of ongoing, connected, consistent relationship. Next is the obvious one, which is trauma and abuse. Like I said earlier on, it's very common for the fearful avoidant to have experienced some type of trauma or abuse in their Childhood, whether that's growing up with a caregiver who was an addict, whether that was growing up with a parent who was maybe physically abusive or emotionally abusive, or being in an environment where there was sexual abuse present, all of those things can create a type of, like what's called hyperactivation internally, where your nervous system is just like always on high alert. Your nervous system and your body and your mind are really hyper vigilant to the environment that you're in. And so you're constantly scanning for, am I safe, am I safe, am I safe? Is my environment safe? Is this person safe? Are they going to leave me, are they going to hurt me, are they going to abandon me, are they going to reject me, Are they going to abuse me? And there can be a really strong type of hyper vigilance that shows up as a result of this and that. Again, that hyper vigilance that I'm talking about, it's usually a byproduct of some type of trauma and abuse that was experienced either at the hands of the caregivers or in proximity to them, right? A babysitter, et cetera. So if you experience that physical, emotional or sexual abuse from a caregiver or somebody within the family, that can lead to this deep seated sense of mistrust that can sometimes come out sideways in an adult relationship. You might not even have good reason to mistrust the person that you're with, but you find yourself constantly looking for data or evidence as to why that person is trying to fuck you over or screw you over, or looking for data and evidence in terms of why that person might leave you or how they might harm you, or even kind of blowing out proportionally some of the harm or the wrongdoings that have happened in the relationship. Next is caregiver neglect. So number three, in terms of what builds the fearful avoidant is neglect. And so if you grew up in an environment where your caregiver was fairly consistently absent, whether they were emotionally absent, whether they were physically absent, or whether they were just neglecting your needs, that can cause you as a child to try and engage a parent without some success, right? Where maybe you tried to ask for your needs and they just, just, you know, they didn't listen to you. I've, I've talked to a lot of guys where, you know, they asked to be moved in school because they're getting really severely bullied and their parents just ignore them all together and kind of tell them to tough it out. That can be a type of neglect where you're Saying I'm being harmed, I'm really not okay, and you're not taken seriously. That can be a type of neglect. So there's a bunch of different forms of neglect. I've also worked with men where, you know, their parents were working a lot and you know, at the age of like 7 or 8 years old, they were left at home alone after school to sort of fend for themselves. And that type of neglect for a child is quite frightening because when you're that small, your nervous system needs other people for regulation and safety. And so your body just doesn't get the proper co regulation or the proper safety and security to know like, I'm okay, if something happens, I'm all right. Whereas for a kid that experiences that type of neglect, it's like, man, if something happens, I'm screwed. Like, I don't know if I'm going to be okay. Next is the inconsistency that comes along with a parent who has mental health issues or some type of substance abuse. So children of addicts, children who have parents who are mentally unwell, again, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, maybe like multiple personalities or, you know, whatever, what have you. Right. We don't need to like laundry list it out. Are oftentimes going to grow up in an environment where there's pretty severe inconsistency. You know, for example, if you're growing up in an environment where there is an addict in the household and that addict is your primary parent, or even if they're not your primary parent, there's going to be a marked difference between who that person is when they're sober and who that person is when they're drunk and, or who that person is when they're sober and who that person is when they're using. Much like with, you know, growing up in an environment where there's a parent who has schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or, you know, any type of like narcissistic personality disorder, you're never going to know what version of them you're going to get. And so what happens for a kid is that there's no predictability whatsoever. And a child, one of the primary needs that is unspoken of any child in any environment is some level of consistent predictability. Again, it doesn't have to be absolute, but there has to be some level of predictable emotional consistency. And I see this in my son right now. My son is 3 years old and this is actually a perfect example. And he is right now going through a phase as a three year old trying to figure out like where I stand on A regular basis. And so sometimes he'll ask me, he'll say, dada happy. And I'll say, yeah, I'm very happy. And he's like, oh, okay. And then other times he'll say, data angry. And I'll say, no, daddy not angry. Or I'll say, yes, Daddy's angry. You know, if I actually am angry or pissed off about something. And so what he's doing in his own way is he is analyzing his external environment and he's trying to get a sense of does my external environment match what I think is actually happening? Right. Because kids, they're very tuned into their external environment because their life depends on it, their safety, their well being, their life depends on what's happening with their primary caregivers and their home environment. And so by him doing this, he's kind of like, oh yeah, okay, I think you're happy. I'm going to ask you if you're happy. Okay, yeah, you're happy. I think you might be angry. So I'm going to ask you if you're angry. Oh, oh, you're not angry. Okay, good. I can kind of track that. Or yes, you are angry. That's what I thought. Okay, cool. So as kids we need some type of emotional consistency or at least to know with some predictability where our caregivers stand. And if we can't predict that, that is wildly disorienting as a child, not only cognitively, but for your nervous system it is really disorienting. And so what happens is that your nervous system can never find a real homeostasis that is grounded. And so what happens for a child that grows up in an inconsistent household where you have a caregiver who's maybe schizophrenic or bipolar or NPD, is that their behavior is so erratic that you can never predict it. And what happens in a child's nervous system is that their nervous system is almost always in a very heightened stress state. Right. They're in a more what's called sympathetic dominant state. That's a very technical term. But in a non technical way, all that really means is that your nervous system stays in a very heightened stressed state and it can't really come down because that is what then keeps you safe if you're in this very heightened state. I don't know what to predict. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how mom's going to react or dad is going to react because they're sober right now or like, oh, they started drinking, they're like five beers in or I just saw the needle or I just saw the joint or whatever it is. Then you can be on high alert to go and protect yourself, which is either remove yourself from the situation, fight back, you know, go and hide, go over to a friend's house. And so that environment, as you can tell, and you know, if you're listening to this, I hope that you just take a deep breath in and take a deep breath out and just tune in with your own body as I was talking about that, because that might have created some intensity inside of you as you think about the childhood that you, that you went through. So I just want to acknowledge that. But that environment produces a nervous system that can't quite settle because it cannot co regulate in a safe and trustworthy way with somebody else's nervous system. Right. Our bodies are literally designed to regulate with other people. You know, when my son is throwing a tantrum or he's upset about something, the more grounded and calm I am, the easier it is for him to co regulate. Now he'll still throw his tantrum, he'll still do his thing. It doesn't mean he's going to like snap out of it immediately, but it allows him to see and feel where the baseline is for regulation and so he can spiral up into a tantrum. And if I hold that grounding and that energetic, like I'm okay, I'm fine, you do your thing, he can return back to that grounded state quite, quite quickly. But if what a child learns to expect is a parent or a caregiver whose emotional state is all over the place and they never know what to expect, then they can't practice that key, key attribute that we all need, which is co regulation. So enough on that topic. Next is parentification. This is when a child is put into a reverse role where they are expected to take care of their parent, take care of their emotional needs, take care of their physical needs, take care of, to sort of like really be their caregiver. And this responsibility as a child because that is that weight and that burden is too much for a child to handle, right? If you're 8 years old or 12 years old and your parents get divorced and you hear the like age old phrase of like, you know, you're the man of the house now, your mom is your responsibility, that type of stuff, while it's well meaning for an eight year old, that is an impossible task and responsibility because they can't conceptualize what they actually need to do. And this is super important. And I want. I wish I could tell this to everybody in the world. When that type of burden is placed on a child, what ends up happening in so many men that I've worked with is that they then become adults who feel like they're never getting it right. Never getting it right. And not only that, but they feel like no matter how much they do, it's never enough. Well, of course not. Right. Because you were put in this situation as a child where you were told to do something impossible, right? You're literally told, do something impossible. Take care of your mother. You're the man of the house now. And what ends up happening for some young boys. And again, we're talking about men specifically, but what happens for a lot of young boys is that they then try and fulfill that role, right? They try and help mom. They try and rescue her, they try and keep her safe. They try and, you know, help to parent the other siblings if there are. If there are other siblings. I've seen young boys in this role who tried to help mom pay the bills, you know, at like 10 years old, balance the checkbook, like, really excessive stuff. And so while that might sound like it's breeding and building responsibility, what it's actually doing is putting that boy, putting you as a child, if this is you, into a situation that is impossible for you to fulfill on. And so what happens is when you get into adult relationships, that same sense follows you. That same experience of I'm going to have to do something impossible carries itself into your adult relationships. And what does that look like and sound like normally? It sounds like, well, what ends up happening is that we project that onto our partner. And so for a lot of guys that have experienced this type of parentification and being put in this impossible role is they end up saying things to their partner like, it's impossible to get things right with you. I can never meet your needs. Or some iteration of that where that feeling and experience. And maybe they don't say it outright. Maybe it's like an internal conversation, right? Maybe you find yourself saying internally, like, I can just never freaking get things right and it's impossible to meet her needs, or it's impossible to make this relationship work. I should just leave. I should just bounce. That can carry itself with you into your adult relationships. So that's parentification. And then the last one is exposure to heightened levels of conflict. So this is the last piece that builds the fearful avoidant if you grew up in an environment where there are very high levels of conflict and you know, whether you saw and witnessed domestic abuse, right. You saw your dad beating up your mom, your mom, you know, beating up your dad, or both of them beating up each other. You, you heard physical or sexual violence, you heard verbal or emotional abuse. You, you were, you went through some type of very high conflict divorce where the parents are fighting all the time or fighting over you. This can really instill a fear of emotional closeness. And so what can get imprinted on your body, on your nervous system is a kind of like, well, relationships aren't safe or relationships are violent or.

Yeah, even, even the men that I've worked with who have grown up in those types of environments, what can happen is I'm not going to be anything like him. And so they become the antithesis or the opposition of the offender, right. Of the person who was really conflict oriented. And what that can do is create a good amount of internal anxiousness because you're very disconnected from your anger. Like some guys will actually just entirely disassociate from any type of anger or hostility within them. And when you do that as a man, that's not real. Right? You definitely still have anger in you, but because you've disconnected from it so strongly, what ends up happening is that anytime that anger starts to show up in the relationship, you see that as a hostile threat. And so you pull away from the relationship, you pull away from the partnership instead of saying, hey, I'm angry, or hey, I'm upset that you did that or said that. So, so those are all the main pieces. Hopefully I went into them in a, in a deep enough way. If you have questions, pop them in below on YouTube or follow up with me on Instagram. Now I'm going to talk a little bit about what does the fearful avoidant look like in a relationship. And then we're going to close out with some very direct, tactical things that you can do to start to heal this fearful avoidant dynamic and start to move, move very quickly actually, towards a more secure attachment style. But first, what does it look like in a relationship? Looks like a few things. One is a very strong need for control and oftentimes security. And so you might find yourself, if you're the fearful avoidant, needing to be control, in control of all the decisions as a means of self protection and safety. You know, you might find yourself ending any type of conversation as, as soon as you have a sense that you're unsafe, or it might lead to rejection, it might lead to abandonment. That type of control is what I'm talking about. There is going to be a high level of difficulty trusting other people. So it's going to be hard for you to trust your partner, trust what they're saying, trust their intentions. You're going to struggle to trust that they mean well, that they. That they have your intentions in mind. That's going to feel a little bit like an impossibility. There's going to be a limited sense of safety within yourself. So a lot of fearful avoidance, how they present in a relationship or how they feel in a relationship is almost always like something is wrong. That's very common for the fearful avoidance, like. Like there is something always wrong with them or for them in the relationship. Because again, that hypervigilance. And again, it's not something that they're doing maliciously, right? If you're watching this and you're like, I'm the fearful of. I'm not saying you're doing that maliciously. I'm saying that's a security mechanism baked into you, That's a protective mechanism that is trying to keep you safe by constantly seeing what's wrong or what's not working or evidence of why you can't get close. And so a lot of your consciousness, a lot of your awareness, actually relational awareness, has been put on and spotlighted onto possible threats, what's not working, things that need to be fixed, reasons why you can't get too close, reasons why you shouldn't trust. So all of that comes up and starts to build a limited sense of safety. Next, another sign is wanting that close relationship, but being afraid to actually be close. So you might find yourself, you know, planning dates and then sabotaging them, right? Starting an argument on the date or not showing up or late or, you know, doing something that you know is going to cause conflict. Just to reaffirm, again, not consciously, but unconsciously to reaffirm that there's space between the two of you. Next is what. What it looks like, the fearful of what it looks like in relationships is difficulty regulating emotions. Now, this is a big one, and it's a big one because when you look at what builds and creates the fearful avoidance, a lot of it is volatility, and a lot of it is specifically emotional volatility or emotional vacancy or the oscillation between those two, right? Volatility, vacancy, volatility, vacancy. And so the fearful avoidant is going to have some. Some intense emotions internally, but they're going to have trouble regulating those emotions and communicating them in an effective way. Next is a negative view of other people, very common for the Fearful avoidant to have pretty negative outlooks on almost everybody.

There's a really high level of judgment and I chuckle because I get it. I've worked with so many fearful avoidant men that it's like I get where it comes from. Part of this negative view of other people is like, if I don't like you, then you can't get close to me. Right? That's at the heart and soul of it. I actually have a friend of mine that I went to school with, that I grew up with. That is your classic fearful avoidant. He hates everybody. Like we have a running joke that he has two friends in the world and if both of us died, he would just not know anybody because he hates everybody. And it's honestly questionable sometimes as to whether or not he likes me. But, but that's changed a lot over the years as he's worked on developing a healthy attachment style. And just so you know, he's married, he has two kids, our relationship and our friendship has gotten exponentially better over the years as he started to dig into some of these pieces. So I'm saying all that because there's hope, but that one I got to get a kick out of. Right? Like one of the, one of the hallmark signs of the fearful avoidance, just like a really deep hate or you know, negativity towards other people, constantly judging them and criticizing them. Next is a belief that they will be disappointed and let down by others. They might not say that, right? If you're the fearful avoidant, you might not say that out loud, but internally you're just waiting. You're like, you're waiting for that person to disappoint you, you and let you down. Next is a need to protect yourself against rejection. Rejection of your needs, your wants, your desires. So sometimes that will be, you know, not even bothering to let people know. Other times it'll be letting them know and then bracing for impact. And then anytime that they say anything that isn't exactly what you think you want to hear. You know, there's the emotional volatility. Fearful avoidance can also have high people pleasing tendencies. A lot of hyper vigilance, like I was talking about before, it can, it can be hard for some fearful avoidance to actually maintain friendships because of everything that we've been talking about in an intimate relationship also goes for a friendship. You can have difficulty concentrating because you have this anxiousness going on. I, I've, I've worked with a lot of fearful avoidant men who self identified as having adhd and then as they worked on their fearful avoidant tendencies and actually found a more secure attachment. They found that their levels of concentration actually skyrocketed, that they could focus much easier. And the reason for that is that they weren't in this hyper vigilant, stressed out, anxious state on a regular basis. Because for a lot of fearful avoidance, remember your internal state is very high stress, very high anxiety, lots of loneliness and isolation, right? Because you're pulling away. And then the last thing I'm going to say, and this is a really big one that we're going to talk about in terms of healing the fearful avoidant is a struggle to self soothe. Now I use that word very specifically, you might not like it, you know, it might not be super manly, but the capacity to self soothe, the capacity to regulate your emotions, the ability to feel and something intense, an anger, an embarrassment, a disappointment of frustration and be able to soothe yourself back down.

To down regulate, to regulate your emotions back down to a more calm, grounded level of homeostasis is something that all that all fearful avoidance will struggle with greatly. It is one of the biggest sort of hallmarks of the fearful avoidant is a really tough time self soothing or self regulating or whatever term you want to use, whatever term fits best for you. So this dysregulation and this real struggle to regulate and calm the nervous system is sort of at the epicenter of the fearful avoidant. Because part of them wants to get close and co regulate in a relationship, but that seems like a threat. And so they're constantly in this dance of move forward towards connection and retreat back towards anxiety and isolation, move forward towards connection, retreat back towards anxiety and isolation. And so part of the dance that the fearful avoidant needs to learn is this duality. So let's move into how do you heal your fearful avoidant attachment? How do you heal your fearful avoidant attachment and move towards secure attachment.

At the core of this healing? I'm going to try and make this as simple as humanly possible because sometimes I see this information on the Internet and I watch it and I'm like, this doesn't effing help anybody. Like this is not clear to me what I should be doing to, to heal this part of me or to move towards, you know, a better outcome. So I'm going to try and make this as simple as possible. At the core of healing your fearful avoidant attachment is a dual nature of being afraid of connecting to an attachment and feeling anxious internally with whatever your experience is. And so there is a simultaneous process that needs to unfold two things need to happen in your life ongoing, over time, okay? And those two things are very, very simple, but they're going to be super freaking challenging for you to implement. Number one is a very strict regiment of self soothing. You are going to need to develop an infrastructure internally. Methods, rituals, behaviors, you know, daily habits that are helping you to soothe your internal system. Because every fearful avoidant that I have ever worked with in my life and I've talked to many experts in this field, it's not just me, it's like mentors that help have 40 plus years working with people, everybody says the same thing. The fearful avoidant is really struggling because they're struggling to regulate internally. So you have to start to learn how to self soothe. And I'm going to talk more about that in a moment. That's part one. So part one is learn how to self soothe. Part two is learning how to consistently stay connected and trust your relationship. Consistently stay connected and build trust in the relationship. That's the second big piece because again, the duality of the fearful avoidant is I do not feel safe in myself, I can't regulate myself, but I also don't feel safe with you. I don't trust you. I don't trust you to be consistent, to care about my needs, to care about my wants or my desires, to care about my well being. And so that's the duality I need to soothe me, stay connected to you, soothe me, stay connected to you, Soothe me, stay connected to you. That's the dance that the fearful avoidant needs to commit to. That's the mission that you as the fearful avoidant need to commit to for probably a good seven to nine months minimum. And it's going to be a consistent process of you daily having self soothing practices, self regulation practices, and then building trust in the person that you're with. And if you're not in a relationship, you can start to build that trust with a friend, with somebody in your life, right? With a family member. You don't have to do this work per se in a relationship, but it can be helpful to do that. So this dual nature of the fearful avoidant is being able to move to that secure attachment by the simultaneous process of self soothing, finding safety within and building trust in another. Finding safety in a relationship. So safety internally, safety in a relationship, Soothing internally, staying connected and building trust. Now I'm going to give you some more tactical steps because that you probably heard that and you're like, okay, that's the mission. That's still a little Vague how? What does that look like on a daily basis? So let's break this down. Number one, this is the big, big step that I think everybody should start with is understand the origins of your specific fearful avoidant attachment. Understand your origins. That is so important because it's going to shed light on how your anxious and avoidant behaviors are coming out in your relationship. And you can do a couple things, right? You can start to look at what patterns am I aware of that lead to my anxiousness and disconnection in my relationship. I like to use the term interruptions in terms of our childhood. So what interruptions happened in my childhood that caused anxiousness and avoidance? Right? And again, as I went through that list of inconsistent caregiving, trauma and abuse, parental neglect, parental inconsistency, mental health issues or substance abuse issues, parentification, which one of those stood out? Right? So have a think back to your childhood and ask yourself which one of the building blocks of the fearful avoidant really stood out to me? You know, were you the person that that was really parentified? Did you see a ton of conflict just constantly? Did you grow up with a parent who was an addict or had mental health issues like start to just get into the origins of your fearful avoidant attachment, and that's going to help you exponentially. Number two, and this is where we're going to start to dig into some more tacticals. Learn to regulate and self soothe. Truth. Okay, how do you do that? The simple and sort of easy and direct answer is that your breath is the modulation dial, the modular modulating dial between the stressed part of your nervous system when you're feeling really anxious, when you are wanting to shut down, when you're, you know, raging between that part of your system and your parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system or your grounded, calm, rest and digest part of your nervous system. So you can think of those two things as a seesaw. They're not disconnected, they're part of the same system. You're parasympathetic and your sympathetic, right? Your stress and your rest and digest. And so the more anxious you feel, the more stressed out you feel, the more you're trying to pull away. When we self soothe, we need to use the breath. So there's a couple things that you can do. Number one, practice meditation. You might hate it. You might not think that that's going to help, like, how's that going to help my attachment style? But what it's going to do is help you to build a sense of safety internally so you can find A specific meditation practice. And if you work with good meditation teachers, they can help you build and develop a practice specifically around developing a sense of safety and security internally. Now I'm going to give you some direction on that because I think that it might be helpful. A couple things are important if you start to use things like box breath breathing in for four, holding for four, exhaling for four, holding for four, inhale for four. It's just a four, four, four, four. Box breath is a regulation tool that you can deploy on a daily basis. And what I would suggest to you, if you're a fearful avoidant, is that you practice this box breathing at regular intervals throughout the day. So maybe you do it once in the morning, you do it once at lunch, it only takes five minutes, you do it once after you're done work, and you do it once before you're gonna have a conversation with your girlfriend or your wife, right? So you, you choose a tool and you implement it multiple times a day. Okay? Box breathing can be very helpful. A meditation practice where if, again, if you're working with a really good therapist or coach that understands all of this stuff, they're going to be able to help you start to develop a deep sense of security within your own body. A lot of the guys that I've worked with, the reason why they say they can't meditate is that they have a nervous system that is so amped up, so jacked up, that as soon as they close their eyes and they start to breathe, all that they are present to is this like buzz in their body. You know, where they're like, I feel like my whole body is vibrating or like I feel this huge amount of buzz and like vibrating in my head and it like makes me feel dizzy or I like feel out of control or some iteration of that. So work with somebody that can help you to develop a sense of safety and security in your own body. Okay? If you are a fearful avoidant, it's not going to be enough to just meditate and use breath work. You are going to have to work with somebody that is going to know how to help you feel safe in your body again, energetically and physically. Because for the fearful avoidant, again, they do not feel safe internally. And really great coaching and really great therapy in this way is helping. Like, how would I say this if I was going to work with you and you were a fearful avoidant? Part of my work is allowing you to, to almost like dial into my nervous system so that you can begin to co regulate a little Bit so that you can begin to let that anxious, fearful, I don't know if I'm okay. Start to calm and settle into a more grounded orientation that you can then connect with. Take like a somatic screenshot of and take into your daily life. So box breathing meditation.

I like the Wim HOF breathwork. And I'll tell you why. Wim HOF breathwork is phenomenal because it stresses out your system and then forces you to downregulate or calm down, right? So you do 30 to 40 breaths very quickly in and out through the mouth, maybe not super quick, but like at a decent pace. And then you exhale all the air out and you hold your breath at the end of the exhale. And then when you do that, all the panic is gonna come up. At first. For a lot of guys, especially fearful avoidance, all the panic comes up. They're, you know, tune in their anxiety, and all that they're doing is just holding their breath. But what they're feeling internally is, oh, I'm not okay. I'm not okay. I'm not okay. I'm not okay. And you learn to just be like, I'm okay, I'm all right. And it, if you practice that day after day after day, what you'll notice will happen. And this happened for me because when I started doing the breath work, I could only hold my breath for like 30, 40 seconds. It was terrible because when I would close my eyes and hold the breath, my body, the alarm system in my body was just like, it was going off like crazy. And it was saying, breathe. It was saying, I don't like this. It was saying, why the hell are you doing this? But over time, I got to a place where I could hold my breath for two, three plus minutes because my body acclimatized to being in a stress state. And then very quickly down regulating to a calm state, being a stress state, and very quickly down regulating to a calm state. So those are all tools that you can use. There's some other resources that hopefully I'll be putting out soon to help you regulate your body. They'll all be free for you, but stay tuned for those. Find tools that will help you regulate and soothe your nervous system. That's number two. Number three, develop consistent connection with your partner and track your disconnective patterns. Okay, so what does this look like? It looks like a couple things. Number one, you getting very clear on the patterns and the behaviors that you deploy to disconnect from your relationship, from intimacy. Do you start fights? Do you not Text back. Do you ignore what your partner's saying? Do you refuse to give some type of physical intimacy? Do you feel awkward opening up and just being transparent or vulnerable? What are the things that you already know you do that break closeness and connection? Okay, that's a question I want you to journal on. What are the things I already know I do that break closeness and connection? And if you're not sure and you're in a relationship, ask your partner. I'm sure they will tell you, they will help you. So the game here is to replace our disconnective patterns with connective behaviors. Okay? Super simple, hard to do. Okay. To shift our disconnective patterns to connective behaviors. So when you catch yourself picking the argument or you know, not wanting the text back or running the story in your head of like, she's full of crap or I can't trust her or whatever it is that you shift that disconnective pattern that's trying to pull you away from them to a more connection based behavior. Now you can have a bunch of things that you pre script or sort of like preload to help you with staying in connection. You can do a couple of things. My wife and I, I'll give you what we do on a regular basis. When that type of disconnection is happening. One of us will say, let's hug and take a breath, let's hold hands and take a breath. And by doing that, even though your body might be like, get away from this person. I can't deal with this. Or they're going to abandon you, or they're going to reject you, you're creating physical contact and you're taking a breath together. And it shouldn't be just one. Take 20. Okay. There's actually a study done that when you do forehead to forehead and you follow your partner's breath because men have bigger lungs than women, you follow their breath. After about 20 breaths, your heart rate starts to sync up. So your, your beats per minute, your heartbeat per minute will actually start to sync up with their heartbeat per minute. And this puts you in what's called coherence. This is co regulating in a nutshell. That's what I'm describing. All right? So it starts to create this coherence where the two of you are in a similar place, your nervous systems are in a very similar place, your heart rates, your breath rates are in a very similar place. And this can put you back into coherence where any type of conflict can then be worked through in a different way. So practice developing and you can develop a list of things that you're going to commit to that are connective behaviors. So what are my disconnective patterns and what. What connective behaviors and choices do I want to have? Holding hands, taking a few breaths together, maybe telling your partner that you're spiraling out, like just taking ownership over it or saying, hey, you know what? I can tell that I'm disconnecting right now. That can be another way to create connection, just taking ownership over it. Asking for your needs and wants are a big part of it. Asking for physical connection, asking for emotional connection, asking for maybe a date that you want to go on. Those types of things are going to create some consistency between the two of you. Number four, build trust slowly over time. Build trust slowly and over time. I'm going to give you some keys to this because in attachment, there's a very helpful phrase that my good friend Dewey Freeman came up with that I absolutely love and I wish everybody knew. He says that going through a hard time with somebody else in relationship and coming out the other side, okay, is the foundation of secure attachment, right? Going through a hard time in relationship with another and coming out the other side, okay, is the foundation of attachment. Now, a hard time does not mean conflict. A hard time can mean you saying, hey, I would love for you to come sit next to me on the couch for a few minutes, or, hey, I could really use a hug, or, hey, babe.

I'd love to go to this place for dinner tonight. That can feel for you as a fearful avoidant. Like a hard time. It might not for the secure, attached person, right? For them, it's like, well, I'm just asking for what I want and need. But for you as the fearful avoidant, the hard time in this case is going to be trusting that you can say what you want and need and come out the other side, okay? Even if you don't get what you want or need in that moment, it's not necessarily about the outcome. It is about the effort of you communicating what you want and need and going through that experience with your partner and coming out the other side, okay? That's what builds and breeds secure attachment, AKA that's what builds and breeds trust between you and your partner. So I want you to think about, what are some of the things that I would normally withhold that I am going to start to bring into my relationship? What are some of the things that I would normally withhold that I'm going to start to bring into the relationship? And then secondly, what are some of the Hard times that I know I need to go through with my partner. They can be conversations, they can be needs, wants, desires. It can even just, just be creating consistent closeness. You know, saying like, hey, every Friday night for the next three months, we're going to go on a date and I am going to do everything in my power to show up and be connected and be loving and be present with you and be invested with you. That can be a hard time, right, for you. As a fearful avoidant, that level of commitment might be like, oh, I'm going to have to show up every Friday and be loving and be present and not be on my phone and dicking around. It's like, like, oh man, that can be stressful. So think about the hard times that you want to go through that are going to create connection. Okay, what hard times can I create that are, that are going to create connection in my relationship and build trust? If you need clarification on that, let me know. The last piece is a very simple one, but again, another hard thing to do, which is challenge and set boundaries with the fear based thoughts that are in your head. So challenge and set boundaries with the fear based thoughts that are inevitably plaguing your mind. All of the fearful, avoidant men that I've worked with, when I really get into the internal dialogue that they are having with themselves, it is, I mean, it breaks my heart a little bit because it's a lot of fear. It's a lot of just like, I'm afraid this is going to happen, happen. I'm afraid she's going to say this. I'm afraid I'm not going to be enough. I'm afraid that it's not going to work out. I'm, you know, it's just a never ending laundry list of fear. And one of the things that, speaking of going through a hard time and coming out the other side, okay, one of the things that is very helpful with confronting our fears is one to just actually set a boundary with them and say, like, enough. Like, I get that that fear is maybe valid, but I'm not listening to you right now. And what can also be very helpful is to act on the fear. Not to act to, to move away from the fear, but act to pierce through the fear. And that can sound like a couple things, right? If you're afraid of intimacy and closeness, maybe you're afraid of, for example, you know, admitting a sexual desire in your relationship, having a conversation with your partner to say, hey, I am very afraid to tell you about something that I want Sexually, in our dynamic, I'm terrified to say that I want this, but are you okay if we have a conversation about something that I've been wanting to explore? Are you all right with that? And your partner's probably going to say yes. And they might say, why are you afraid? And if you want, you can give a little bit of insight into, like, well, generally speaking, my needs have been rejected. Generally speaking, it hasn't been okay for me to ask for what I've wanted or needed. And so I'm afraid to do that in our relationship and then proceed to say what it is that you want or that you need or that you desire, but you're afraid to ask for. So we have to confront some of these fears. If you do not confront some of these fears, you will stay stuck in the fearful avoidant dynamic. It's one of the hard parts of the fearful avoidant is that you. Well, it's. Let me put it this way, it's one of the hard parts, but it's one of the absolute freaking blessings because here's the catch. When you move towards a secure, healthy attachment style as a fearful avoidant, you become a.

You become a boss when it comes to fear. You become a, a very gifted person with understanding people's fear. Because guess what, everybody's afraid. Everybody is afraid of something. Everybody has deep, deep, deep seated fears about some shit in their life. It's just that most people don't talk about it. And for some people, it might not affect them in the way that it affects you. And so by you confronting your fears of closeness, of connection, of consistency, of rejection over and over and over again and developing a bit of like a Teflon, not even armor, but just like a Teflon attitude, you know, and nature towards fear. It's like, all right, I'm afraid again to ask for what I want. I'm afraid again to be, you know, open and vulnerable about what I want to do on our date night or how I want to have sex, or, you know, that I want more physical closeness and connection by you facing those things and sort of staring down your fears face on, head on, you become very adept and very knowledgeable about facing and confronting fears. And if you are with a woman, it will help you really understand her experience in a beautiful and very rich way. Because the reality is that the majority of women are living in a lot of fear a lot of the time. And so it will deepen your relationship exponentially because you will have a very deep understanding of what your partner is usually going through or feeling at a subprime level, at a very primal basic level. So choose some of the relational fears. The question here is what are some of my basic or most terrifying relational fears? What am I afraid of in my relationship that is normally holding me back? And what would it look like for me to confront them? So these are the basic pieces of how you move from fearful avoidant to secure attachment. I hope that you found value in these. Again, the big big piece. I can't stress enough self soothing while building and maintaining trust and connection in another. That duality is going to serve you. If you can just hold that one major piece and you can commit to daily practices where you are self soothing and self regulating and relationally connecting. Self soothing and self regulating and relationally connecting, you will see exponential changes quite quickly. I promise you. Things will start to shift rapidly because you will be giving yourself what you needed did when you were growing up. You will be giving yourself the calm grounding internal space and the consistent relational connection that you are yearning and craving. So thank you so much. Please man it forward if if you enjoyed this video. I know that some of these are more niche, but it seems like you guys are really loving some of these conversations. So please share, share share them. Man it forward to somebody in your life life that you know could benefit from it, that you know would enjoy it. Even if it's just a segment. You know, they don't have to listen to the whole hour even if it's just a segment of this podcast or video. Man it forward. And as always, thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe to whatever channel you are listening on, whether it's YouTube or Spotify or Apple. And don't forget to let me know what you got from this conversation, whether you DM me on Instagram or comment on YouTube below. And thank you so much for tuning in. I look forward to diving into more of these guides and more of these deep dives for you. Talk soon.