Search Results for: Avoidant

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…

Learn More

Are You the Pursuer or the Distancer in Your Relationship?

…from others and disparage those who do. In this case we may have formed an avoidant attachment pattern as a kid, which can evolve into a dismissive attachment in our adult relationships. In a relationship, we may have the tendency to emotionally distance ourselves from our partner. We may seek out isolation or be pseudo-independent. We may be overly focused on ourselves and meeting our own needs. Our partner may see us as emotionally unavailable….

Learn More

The Sweet Spot: Relief from the Fear of Death through Mindfulness

…t washes her mind and body with calm. In the United States, we are a death-avoidant culture; we don’t like to talk about death. Perhaps this pervasive avoidance of the subject sets the stage for us to feel alone and alienated when death’s inevitability creeps into our minds. Whether we are religious and we believe in an afterlife or not, death still looms out there as an unknown. It is the ultimate abrogation of control, and losing control is scar…

Learn More

Where Our Relationship Patterns Come From

…pe these internal working models. For example, many people grow up with an avoidant attachment to a parent. They may not have felt they could get their needs met easily by that parent, and therefore, adapted to become more self-contained and self-sufficient. As adults, they carry this model with them. They may not think people will be there for them, so they rely on themselves and resist trusting or getting too close. On the other hand, many peopl…

Learn More

Tips to Turn Your Relationship Around and Get it Heading in the Right Direction

…on from their first one. What Mick learnt was that he had been passive and avoidant, he had found it hard to be open and honest and didn’t like the person he’d become. What Barb learnt was that the more she tried to get Mick to open up, the worse he felt, the more she demanded, the more he withdrew. By challenging their pursuer-distancer dynamic they were able to make the dynamic the enemy, not each other. Barb stopped chasing Mick and put some en…

Learn More
Violence, youth violence, PTSD

7 Ways to Stop Violence at Every Age

…cent. Getting Attention Give kids attention, never give them the silent or avoidant treatment. Adolescents acting up need more attention, not less. In juvenile correction facilities, they’ve found that solitary confinement is the worst thing for a teen who is behaving badly. Depriving a kid in need of services and contact hurts them; their behavior indicates they need more adult contact. By isolating them, when their acting out is to seek attentio…

Learn More

Dr. Christine Courtois on the Critical Inner Voice and Psych-Ache: VIDEO

…d the person needs to get into. Of course, most of these patients are very avoidant and they would like to stay away from that because it’s very painful to them and it’s – and it may be what keeps them stuck in a rut of not ever being able to resolve anything. Not ever being able to differentiate and being chronically suicidal. And I think that that’s where the concept of “psych ache” and “psychic pain” and how much it hurts to have a parent or so…

Learn More

How To Bully Proof Your Children by Building Their Resilience

…vents: When a traumatic event occurs, we shouldn’t help our kids engage in avoidant behavior by steering clear of anything that reminds them of the occurrence. Never avoid talking about painful events. One of the challenges in stopping bullying is that many children fail to disclose incidents of abuse. When we encourage our kids to talk about bad things that happen to them, we help them make sense out of these experiences. Memories that are not ma…

Learn More

Understanding Our Style of Relating When Triggered

…too intrusive or unavailable, your attachment style might be “anxious” or “avoidant” as a child and termed “preoccupied” or “dismissive” as an adult. People with a dismissive style have a withdrawing quality that implies the lack of trust that anyone will be there for them; they do it themselves, it’s not that big a deal anyway. This person has hard time forming and keeping relationships. Dismissive style relies on the thinking brain and logic. Pe…

Learn More

Making Sense of Your Past by Daniel Siegel, M.D.

…d on the facts of their early childhood, they would be expected to have an avoidant, ambivalent, or disorganized attachment as children and an incoherent life narrative as adults. But if they had a relationship with a person who was genuinely attuned to them— a relative, a neighbor, a teacher, a counselor— something about that connection helped them build an inner experience of wholeness or gave them the space to reflect on their lives in ways tha…

Learn More