In this interview, TAIZ explains how the three insecure attachment styles—anxious, dismissive‑avoidant, and fearful‑avoidant—shape people’s sexual behavior and workplace leadership. Anxious individuals often lack sexual boundaries, people‑please, and use sex for reassurance, sometimes engaging earlier than they feel ready. Dismissive‑avoidants show two opposite patterns: a slow, safety‑seeking approach that requires emotional connection, or a hyper‑stimulating, disconnected approach that uses sex to feel something when they are numb. Fearful‑avoidants also polarize, oscillating between hypersexuality and extreme disengagement, using sex as a test of connection. The conversation then shifts to how these attachment patterns surface at work. Dismissive‑avoidant leaders tend to expect autonomy, ignore emotional needs, and work with “blinders” on. Anxious employees thrive when they receive inclusion, validation, and mentorship. Fearful‑avoidant workers display all‑or‑nothing engagement, needing novelty and growth to avoid boredom. TAIZ argues that recognizing each style’s core needs allows leaders to tailor communication, feedback, and task design, turning attachment awareness into a practical tool for healthier team dynamics.
Chapters
A lot of times, you know, we'll see like dismissive avoidants, because they like to really get things done and hunker down, and they tend to be quite independent and autonomous, they kind of tend to expect everybody else to be independent and autonomous and, and not really need to like be mindful of people's feelings or sensitivities, things like that, because often they're like, this is work, and they can sort of have the blinders on that way to get things done and be really problem-solving.
So, Taiz, I'm so excited to chat with you today. I want to kind of take us down, uh, attachment style or attachment theory and sex. I'm curious about that. And then I also want to go into attachment theory and leaders. Because, you know, like I've seen in partnerships, because lots of times partnerships and business and stuff fall apart because I think, like, we always focus on romantic relationships, and that's obviously the paramount area. But I think when I'm working with people, I also notice, hey, if I'm— as I'm reading your book, I'm thinking through the lens of CEO or something too of like, ah, hey, if this person feels unheard and their attachment style is dismissive avoidant or fearful, like we're going to have some issues if I'm unhealed and they're unhealed or whatever. So, um, feel free, whichever one you want to choose first. Attachment.
Okay. Let's start. We'll start with attachment styles and sex and then we'll go into like leadership and all, cause to your overarching point, like attachment styles show up in so many aspects of our lives, right? These, it's ultimately our attachment style more than anything is the relationship we have to ourselves. So, um, there's so much on the topic of attachment styles and sex, but I would say that you can see different patterns and themes based on individuals. So interestingly enough, if you start with anxious attachment styles, like their personality of their attachment style will carry out into that. So sometimes they will not have boundaries around sex or around things related to sex. Sometimes they will people-please and they won't share or communicate what their own needs are in relationship to sex. And sometimes they'll use sex as a tool to gain reassurance or validation and be less present in like the experience of sex and more present with like the outcome of sex as a means to achieve certainty or connection. So, you know, a very often like example you'll see for anxiously attached individuals is sometimes they— and I want to say this very clearly because it can be taken the wrong way— but sometimes anxiously attached individuals won't be ready to have sex with somebody in a relationship because it's early. But if they feel pressure, they may end up like sort of going down that path a little bit earlier. And obviously I'm I'm not saying that that's the person's fault, especially if there's like a negative situation like assault or, you know, that's like its own category. And somebody can also be violating somebody's boundaries. But I've actually done a lot of work with clients back when I had my practice around sexual boundaries, because sometimes people would be like, oh, I do things that I actually don't feel like doing because a greater part of me wants the reassurance and wants to make sure that I don't get abandoned than is actually listening to my own sexual preferences. And needs. And so that's like a lot of the anxious attachment patterning. And obviously, as they get better at boundaries and communication and reprogramming those core wounds of abandonment, that relationship to sex will change and become much more secure and stable. Then we have dismissive avoidant. Dismissive avoidants tend to go one of two kind of extremes around sex. One path will be that they can be so in their head that they actually like take a long time to be able to be present around sex, and they can sometimes really need to feel safe enough with somebody before having sex, and they can be like a little bit slower moving in that space.
I almost feel like I have to feel emotionally connected. Yes, before I'm ready to, you know, go down that.
Totally, exactly. And that's like, that emotional connection brings a sense of safety a little bit, right? And that safety means, okay, I can kind of let my guard down, I can kind of be present, and then I can actually be in the experience of sex. And that's That's one very clear path dismissive avoidance will take. The other path that we'll see around dismissive avoidance that is pretty much the kind of extreme opposite is that we'll see dismissive avoidance not know how to emotionally connect and use sex as a strategy just to feel some sort of connection. And what you'll tend to see in that kind of category is sex becomes more about stimulation than anything around intimacy, right? Because the experience of sex can be intimate, but it can also not be intimate. So So sometimes we'll see if somebody's so dysregulated and so disconnected from their body and nervous system. It's funny because you'll see— this kind of goes down a rabbit hole for just a moment, but I think you'll appreciate this— is like, if somebody is really disconnected from themselves and they're really in sympathetic, you feel a lot, but a lot of your feelings are extreme by the time you feel them. If you start getting into your body and you're like more present in your experience, You know, the world kind of becomes more beautiful. Like if you're doing a lot of like a meditation, you notice the beautiful flowers on your walk, or you notice the color of the sky, or, and you're like in it and you're in your world. And, and because a big group of dismissive avoidants are so extremely disconnected from that, they kind of use sex as a way to feel. And so in that case, we'll generally see that dismissive avoidants may be like really, you know, sleeping with a lot of people, doing things like that as the other kind of variation of this. Because they're kind of just seeking stimulation and they're trying to feel something in this world of lacking feeling. So we tend to see like polarities there, and the same thing happens with fearful avoidance. So fearful avoidance tend to be in a space around sex where they can either be very hypersexual or very disconnected from sex, where they'll either have such extreme boundaries, as you can see from fearful avoidance, or they'll have that, that side to them where— and not always, but they tend to often have sex more in like relationships with people. But when they do, they'll tend to be in a space where, like, they, similar to the anxious side, can use sex for this, this tool of like, are we connected? Are we good?
Reassurance.
Yeah, when they don't know how to actually be vulnerable and say, I need reassurance, I need to know that we're good. And so again, like, what it can do is it can kind of change the relationship to sex out of— instead of it being about sex and the, like, being present around sex, it's more about like the outcome, the people-pleasing. It becomes this tool for something. And that doesn't mean it's always bad, but it just means that there's room to become a little bit healthier and more secure in that kind of space.
I love that. So good. And let me ask, what about with the leadership side? How does it show up? I mean, great breakdown on the sex side, but I'm curious. I see it happening in leadership. I've now reflecting back after reading your book, I'm like, hey, there's things I could have done differently. In how I navigated business relationships as well. So I'm curious about that.
So there's so much to this because it's like it goes to our personality. So, you know, one of the big things is you'll see these patterns they carry out in the workplace, and we tend to, you know, there's lots of ways of saying this, but we tend to all project from our perception before we're aware, right? So we tend to think, this is what I would need as a fearful avoidant or as a dismissive avoidant or secure person. And so here's what everybody needs. They would need what I would need in this situation. And so a lot of times, you know, we'll see like dismissive avoidants, because they like to really get things done and hunker down, and they tend to be quite independent and autonomous, they kind of tend to expect everybody else to be independent and autonomous and, and not really need to like be mindful of people's feelings or sensitivities, things like that. Because often they're like, this is work, and they can sort of have the blinders on that way to get things done and be really problem-solving. But it's funny because if you take like an anxious attachment style and you really want to make them feel good and, and show up well in the workplace, I mean, they're going to thrive when they feel like they're included, like they're emotionally validated, like they're reassured about the work that they're doing, that they're given positive feedback, and that they have that support and kind of mentorship from somebody. They really need that, like, I have somebody to go to My feelings are seen and heard. My efforts are seen. So, you know, you can take, let's say, a CEO who's a dismissive avoidant, and let's just say, for example, somebody's workplace has a lot of anxious attachment styles. The leadership dynamic that that person might play may be disconnected from a lot of things that the anxious attachment styles need. And then if you look at other pairings there, you would see as well that, you know, fearful avoidants— fearful avoidants tend to be like all or nothing. So like headfirst into things or they don't exist. And so, you know, they can sort of be that way in their workplace relationships, but also with the tasks that they're doing, right? So it can be useful for a fearful avoidant as they become more securely attached to be a little more balanced and not so extreme on either side. And when we start to understand that different attachment styles have different needs, we can, from a leadership role, look at, okay, you know, this person's fearful avoidant, they probably need more novelty, they probably need lots of growth. They probably do not do well with things being too repetitive because they'll get bored and often sabotage. Um, and so, so you, we want to be able to play to strengths and weaknesses of people based on what we understand about needs.
