Have you ever asked yourself why you struggle to seek the help and care of others even though your brain is about to pop out of your head because of stress, anxiety, depression, or any other mental or emotional problems? Or why do you struggle to build long-lasting emotional connections? Or why do you struggle to create emotional bonds with others?

Have you ever asked yourself why you avoid emotional attachments like you are avoiding the plague? I commonly hear the general response, “Because I don’t want to get hurt.”

However, experience and uncountable academic studies have shown me when someone is running to the hills, away from any type or form of emotional connections, emotional commitments, or emotions in general, often there are some other underlying issues–either consciously or unconsciously–somehow forcing you to avoid those emotional connections, even when you have feelings for the person.

Emotional Avoidant Attachment

Avoidant attachment is a form of insecure emotional attachment where a person is less likely to seek or provide emotional proximity to another person, including parent, partner, siblings, family, friends, or any close caregivers, due to a formed emotional separation or disconnection, and an elemental underlying fear of future separation.

People dealing with avoidant emotional attachment tend to avoid emotional intimacy and emotional closeness. They also avoid exposing or showing emotional vulnerability and emotional bonding.

Avoidant attachment can start during childhood when the parents or primary caretakers don’t show emotional care or responsiveness toward the child. They might provide their children with their basic needs but prevent any form of emotional attachment due to many reasons, like, for example, mental health problems, or emotional distress caused by a divorce, a separation, economic struggles, long-term illnesses, or any other life-problems

Unfortunately, emotional avoidance not only prevents you from creating emotional connections but also disregards your own emotional struggles and emotional needs with the purpose of maintaining the “external peace and harmoniousness” in an effort to keep a person close by, even if your mind, brain, and heart are going through hurricane type five.

Research has shown that, According to attachment theory, the biologically rooted, innate attachment behavioral system motivates humans to seek the closeness of significant others in times of threat and distress. Your personality, the quality of the interactions, your love language, and your proximity-seeking styles will depend on your perception and your capacity to process emotional information.

People with an avoidant attachment style use emotional deactivation strategies to prevent any stimulus that triggers emotional attachments. With time, they learn to internalize their emotions and keep them hidden because of either conscious or unconscious belief that they will never be able to create an emotional connection with any person because of fear that such a person might leave, and once again, they will be left with an emotional void, and in emotional distress.

Emotional insecurities, emotional anxiety, lack of emotional support, and lack of emotional openness are only a few characteristics of emotional avoidant attachment:

Anxiety is characterized by hyper-activating strategies to maintain closeness with the caregiver, while avoidance is characterized by the deactivation of the attachment system.

One way of dealing with avoidance attachment is by applying emotional regulation techniques. Academic studies have suggested that “an individual’s emotional processing of avoidant attachment is closely related to their attention bias.” For example, a person avoiding any emotional attachment will try to divert the positive or negative triggers that evoke emotional closeness because they will feel threatened by their emotions.

Academic studies show that “avoidant individuals have negative representations of attachment figures, which are considered threatening when closeness and support are needed,” deviating their attention from any positive or negative emotional triggers. People with an avoidant attachment will use emotional deactivation techniques when faced with emotional triggers or stimuli. They are always vigilant to your emotional cues so they can avoid them.

Avoidant individuals exhibit a dual-process response style involving an enhanced, early response to emotional stimuli followed by disengagement and avoidance of attention at a controlled level of processing. It is believed that this rapid and effortless perception of social–emotional information allows avoidant individuals to react promptly to threats and initiate appropriate avoidant behaviors.

Avoidant individuals have low emotional care consistency and attention bias. They have a maladaptive use of emotional regulation to apply self-control to their emotions, preventing emotional share by applying emotional deactivation, which they can trigger at any moment. Furthermore, studies have shown that, “specific emotional- regulation strategies related to attachment avoidance” can be activated at any moment by individuals with avoidant attachment style.

One of the most important points we must understand is that emotionally avoidant individuals use emotional bias and automatic emotional vigilance and almost automatically can activate or deactivate emotional disconnection or emotional deactivations to prevent any type of emotional attachment, regardless of the person. Those include almost instantly “shifting their attention away from attachment-related stimuli” because of the automatic brain responses needed for emotional recognition.

Other studies have suggested a binary emotion-regulation strategy employed by avoidant individuals: hyper-vigilance in the initial automatic phase of perception, and inhibition of emotion in later phases.

This specific deactivation process may stem from the negative representation of others who experienced constant rejection by caregivers during childhood. “At the unconscious level, these negative experiences make them think of themselves as unworthy of love, which leads to their early vigilance towards socio-emotional signals.

Avoidant individuals have developed difficulties in seeking care. Avoidant individuals implement attentional disengagement from attachment-related stimuli with a broader attentional field around the attachment figure.

Here is what you need to know to help you with your avoidance attachment:

1. Start by identifying your thoughts, emotional bias, and behavioral patterns.
2. Look deep inside yourself and try to understand why and when it is happening.
3. Try to find the problem causing you to avoid the attachment and start building self-confidence.
4. Be patient and nonjudgmental with yourself.
5. Start reprograming your brain one thought at a time and start by applying low levels of attachments.
6. Find that one safe place in your mind and create a safe emotional atmosphere.
7. Practice mindfulness, yoga, or any other practice that will relieve your mind from self-provoked attachment turmoil.
8. Try to understand your emotional barriers and practice journaling.
9. Never force your emotions and feelings, and give yourself a break when needed.
10. Avoid feeling guilty and soften your emotional communication with others:
11. Practice emotional regulation:
    • Self-awareness
    • Self-regard
    • Self-actualization
    • Flexibility
    • Stress tolerance
    • Emotional expression
    • Assertiveness and
    • Adaptability

Dr. Faltas

Reference

Uccula, A., Mercante, B., Barone, L., & Enrico, P. (2023). Adult Avoidant Attachment, Attention Bias, and Emotional Regulation Patterns: An Eye-Tracking Study. Behavioral Sciences (2076-328X), 13(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13010011