Search Results for: Avoidant

A Framework for Cultivating Integration

…s actually larger, but its various areas are not uniquely specialized.2 In avoidant attachment, the hypothesis is that the left hemisphere is excessively differentiated and the right is underdifferentiated. Interventions would then be created to promote differentiation first, and then to cultivate linkages. Linkage of the left and right hemispheres happens naturally in most people, so that we can say the brain generally works as an integrated whol…

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Getting the Love You Want

…was emotionally neglectful or unavailable, that may have led us to form an avoidant attachment in which we disconnected from having needs, because it was too painful, frustrating, and shame-inducing to feel them. As adults, we may grow up to feel pseudo-independent, distrusting, or dismissing of others, wary of closeness and intolerant of others having needs. With romantic partners, we may create emotional distance and feel uncomfortable with them…

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Injured, Not Broken: Why It’s So Hard to Know You Have CPTSD

…onal neglect or attachment trauma resulting from disorganized, insecure or avoidant attachment. (Read about attachment styles here.) Those with attachment trauma are often pushed aside because you can’t “see” their trauma — but it IS trauma all the same. It made a child’s foundation in life shaky, and that is CPTSD! Complex trauma survivors are STRONG. As complex trauma survivors grow up, they can often survive anything, because they have figured…

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Are You Addicted to Your Relationship?

…relationship but the rejection. They may have even unconsciously chosen an avoidant person to perpetuate this pattern of seeking and longing. In this way, a person’s attachment pattern can be telling in regard to whether they become preoccupied or addicted to the relationship. For instance, studies have shown that anxious-ambivalent attachment style significantly predicted obsessive love. When someone experienced an anxious attachment pattern as a…

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3 Steps to Sustaining a Loving Relationship

…impact the patterns we form in adulthood. For example, if we developed an avoidant attachment in childhood, as adults, we are likely to have a dismissive attachment pattern. We may misperceive our partner as needy, demanding, or controlling, and have a fear about being consumed or overtaken by emotional closeness in a relationship. If we had an anxious attachment pattern as a child, we are likely to have a preoccupied attachment pattern as an adu…

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Passionate Love: What is the “spark” and how can we keep it alive?

…able to easily interact with others. However, when there is an anxious or avoidant attachment pattern, and a person picks a partner who fits with that maladaptive pattern, they will most likely be choosing someone who isn’t the ideal choice to make them happy.” People sometimes feel a “spark” with someone who fits their early attachment pattern, but long-term, they may struggle to feel close to that person. They may feel flames of passion but lac…

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Deep Sadness Can Deepen Love

…interfere with our natural ability to process this emotion. Like any other avoidant response, steering clear of sad feelings not only increases our anxiety and tension but also exacerbates the intensity of our sadness. When we try to numb ourselves to sadness, we invariably numb ourselves to all of our experiences. In the process of cutting off this one feeling, we necessarily end up blocking all our other feelings. The downside isn’t just that we…

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Why Do We Trigger Each Other in Close Relationships?

…vailable or rejecting of our bids for connection, we most likely formed an avoidant attachment pattern, and learned that to be in touch with our needs was painful, frustrating, and shame inducing. As adults, we’re likely to form a dismissive attachment in which we are emotionally distant from our partner. For instance, we may focus more on our work than our relationship. We may be “pseudo-independent” and see ourselves as just fine on our own. Bec…

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finding love

Finding Love: Empowering Tools to Help You Find the Relationship You Want

…ttachment as children, we may be more likely to feel insecure, anxious, or avoidant in our interpersonal relationships throughout our lives. Understanding our early attachment patterns can offer us incredible insight into the types of relationships and relationship partners we’re drawn to choose and create. It can help explain why we’re so stuck on that one person who just won’t open up and give us what we want or why we lose interest the minute s…

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You Don’t Really Know Yourself

…ationships. These negative responses, in turn, increase our own hostile or avoidant behavior. A vicious circle is established and our distrustful, victimized thinking, even paranoid ideology, gradually become impervious to change. Often we end up recreating the environment that we grew up in, reliving rather than living our lives. The negative self-concept is highly resistant to change because by the time they become adults, most people have incor…

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