#219: How a Fear of Rejection Keeps Us From What We Want Most
Rejection is something most of us instinctively avoid. It can stir up fear, shame, embarrassment, and deep discomfort—and on a very human level, that makes sense. We’re wired to seek connection and belonging, so being rejected can feel threatening to our sense of safety and worth. But for many people, especially those with anxious attachment patterns, the fear of rejection goes far beyond a normal aversion. It becomes a guiding force—quietly shaping decisions, behaviors, and relationships in ways that actually block the very things we want most: love, connection, intimacy, and fulfillment. This is the cruel irony of rejection fear. In trying so hard to avoid it, we often guarantee the outcome we’re most afraid of.
Rejection is something most of us instinctively avoid. It can stir up fear, shame, embarrassment, and deep discomfort—and on a very human level, that makes sense. We’re wired to seek connection and belonging, so being rejected can feel threatening to our sense of safety and worth.
But for many people, especially those with anxious attachment patterns, the fear of rejection goes far beyond a normal aversion. It becomes a guiding force—quietly shaping decisions, behaviors, and relationships in ways that actually block the very things we want most: love, connection, intimacy, and fulfillment.
This is the cruel irony of rejection fear. In trying so hard to avoid it, we often guarantee the outcome we’re most afraid of.
Fear of Rejection Isn’t Just a Dating Thing
While rejection is often most visible in dating—where it can feel like we’re auditioning for someone’s love, attention, and approval—it doesn’t stop once a relationship is established. Nor is it limited to romantic contexts.
A fear of rejection can show up in:
dating and early relationships
long-term partnerships
friendships
work and career opportunities
social situations and self-expression
You might notice it when you hesitate to apply for an opportunity, afraid of what it would mean if you didn’t get it. Or when you avoid opening up to a friend because you’re scared they won’t reciprocate. Or when you silence your needs in a relationship, fearing that expressing them could push someone away.
In all of these moments, the underlying question is the same:
What if I put myself out there and it confirms that I’m not enough?
How Rejection Fear Shapes Your Behavior
At its core, fear of rejection creates risk aversion. We avoid vulnerability, honesty, and self-advocacy because they carry the possibility of disappointment.
Instead of asking for what we want, we might:
overgive and hope someone “gets the hint”
bite our tongue to keep the peace
stay small to avoid rocking the boat
avoid initiating connection altogether
preemptively withdraw before we can be rejected
And while these strategies may feel protective in the moment, they come at a cost. They prevent us from being truly seen, known, and responded to.
Ironically, the very behaviors we use to avoid rejection often create it—leaving our needs unmet and reinforcing the belief that we don’t matter.
The Link Between Rejection Fear and Self-Worth
For many people, rejection doesn’t just hurt—it feels devastating. That’s because it isn’t experienced as a single moment or interaction. It feels like confirmation of something much deeper.
At the heart of rejection sensitivity is often a rejection of self.
If you already carry beliefs like:
I’m not good enough
I’m too much
I’m asking for too much
I’m unlovable or unwanted
…then rejection doesn’t feel neutral or situational. It feels like proof.
This is especially common for people with anxious attachment, where unworthiness and rejection fears are tightly intertwined. When someone pulls away or can’t meet a need, it doesn’t just sting—it mirrors the painful stories you already tell yourself.
So rather than risking exposure, many people stay in control: improving, proving, performing, and striving behind the scenes—hoping to earn worth without ever testing it.
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Avoidance
Here’s where fear of rejection becomes especially problematic.
You don’t express the need →
the need goes unmet →
you feel hurt and unseen →
you internalize it as rejection →
your fear of rejection deepens →
you become even less likely to speak up next time
And the cycle repeats.
Over time, you get smaller and quieter while resentment and loneliness grow. The connection you want feels further and further away—not because it’s impossible, but because fear is keeping you from reaching for it.
How to Start Shifting a Deep Fear of Rejection
There’s no single switch you can flip to “get over” rejection. But there are a few powerful starting points.
1. Build Self-Worth From the Inside
When you genuinely like and respect yourself, rejection loses some of its sting. It stops feeling like a referendum on your value.
This doesn’t require loving everything about yourself. It’s about developing a steady inner relationship where you can say:
I see my value. I trust myself. I know I bring something to the table.
As self-worth strengthens, you become less likely to interpret every disappointment as personal failure.
2. Reframe What Rejection Actually Means
Someone not choosing you isn’t the same as rejecting you as a human being. Often, it’s about capacity, timing, compatibility, or preference—not your worth.
You don’t like everyone. You can’t meet everyone’s needs. And that doesn’t make you cruel or deficient—it makes you human.
When you zoom out and normalize this reality, rejection becomes less loaded and less self-centered.
3. Let Your Nervous System Learn Through Experience
Mindset work is powerful—but it has limits. Your nervous system learns through experience, not logic.
To truly shift a fear of rejection, you eventually have to take the risk:
say the thing
ask for the need
express the desire
apply for the opportunity
initiate the connection
Only then can your system register:
I survived this. I didn’t collapse. Another outcome is possible.
Without action, old stories remain unchallenged.
Rejection Isn’t the Enemy—Avoidance Is
The goal isn’t to eliminate rejection or pretend it doesn’t hurt. The goal is to stop letting fear dictate your life.
When you avoid vulnerability to stay safe, you also avoid intimacy, growth, and connection.
And for many people, what they want most isn’t perfection or certainty—it’s to be seen, known, and met.
That only happens when we risk being real.
If you struggle with rejection sensitivity, remember:
This isn’t a character flaw. It’s a protective pattern—one that made sense once, but may no longer serve you.
With self-worth, compassion, and courageous action, it can shift.
And on the other side of that fear is the very thing you’ve been protecting yourself from wanting too much.
You might also like…
[00:00:00]:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking all about rejection and how a fear of rejection, which I think is something many of us struggle with, can actually keep us from what we want most. And that can feel like a bit of a cruel irony, but I think it's a really important one to dig into. A lot of us will associate rejection with dating and while it can certainly show up there and is maybe most obvious and most acute there, because we feel like we're sort of auditioning for someone's love and attitude, attention and approval, I actually think that the fear of rejection goes far deeper than that and has branches into many different areas of life. And probably if you're someone who really struggles with a fear of rejection, I'm sure it reaches into every area of life whether you realise it or not. And certainly I think it follows us into romantic relationships. Even when we're in a committed relationship, the fear of rejection can persist and it can really shape how we show up, whether we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, whether we take risks.
[00:01:03]:
And all of that can really determine whether we get what we want and what we need. And so we're going to be exploring that today, how and where it shows up and possibly some unexpected ways or ways that you haven't really connected the dots that your fear of rejection is driving that, how it interfaces with other fears that are really common for folks with anxious attachment patterns. And how you might start reframing this fear and creating more safety internally so that you're not so, so hyper vigilant all the time, so that you're not anticipating rejection everywhere you look, so that you can stop internalising everyone else's behaviour as being about you. And so that you can start taking even baby steps towards more of what you want through being more vulnerable and really putting yourself out there. Because as we'll talk about today, it really can be a self fulfilling prophecy that we don't go after what we want because we're so scared that we might fail or that we might be rejected and then lo and behold, we don't get what we want. So the outcome is almost guaranteed in not going after the thing. Before we get into today's episode, a reminder for anyone who has maybe missed it in the past couple of weeks that my 28 day secure self challenge is coming back in January. We'll be kicking off on the 12th of January runs for 28 days, go figure.
[00:02:18]:
And it's all about building self worth. So we go through four pillars of Self worth, self compassion, self regulation, self advocacy and self trust and we spend a week on each. There will be daily audio lessons, a pop up community, a couple of live calls with me. It's a really, really great one, kind of short and sweet, really doable and always gets beautiful feedback. I've run it four times now, I think. So if you're interested in joining the Secure Self Challenge, I would absolutely love to have you. And you can find the link to join in the show notes or by heading directly to my website. Second quick announcement.
[00:02:52]:
I actually can't believe that I haven't shared this on the podcast yet, but I created a new free resource probably a month or more ago now. I've shared it on Instagram a lot, but I created a new resource called the Anxious Attachment pep talks and they are around three minutes each and there are six of them and it's totally free. You download it and pep talks are things like what to do when your partner's in a bad mood, or when you're stuck in jealousy in comparison, or when you sense that someone's pulling away from you and you're spiralling and it's basically me in your ears saying, look, here's what's happening, here's what you need to do about it. And it's a bit of a pattern interrupt. So these have already been downloaded well over a thousand times and again, I've gotten really beautiful feedback. So if you're interested in getting access to the Anxious Attachment pep talks, and my intention for these is that I can add to it along the way in response to people's requests and feedback. So it can be a bit of a living library of pep talks from me for those moments when you're really in the thick of it and you just need something to cut through all of the noise. The link to download those pep talks is also in the show notes and can also be found on my website.
[00:03:57]:
So go cheque those out, they're a great resource. Okay, so let's talk about the fear of rejection and how being ruled by this fear actually keeps us from the things that we want most. Now I think it's really important to acknowledge at the outset that nobody really likes rejection, or if they do, they are certainly outliers. It is very normal, human natural to feel hurt by rejection, to shy away from it, that it might bring us into contact with fear, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, all sorts of uncomfortable feelings that we are evolutionarily wired to stay away from. And so I think a kind of normal, natural level of aversion towards rejection is not something that we need to pathologize or make ourselves wrong for. And at the same time, I think we can acknowledge that for many of us, it goes beyond what we might call a normal amount of rejection sensitivity or aversion. And it crosses over into really holding us back from the things that we want. It feels crippling, it feels overwhelming.
[00:04:59]:
It feels like we couldn't possibly do something if there's any risk of rejection attached to it. So whether that's in dating, and we're absolutely terrified of being rejected by someone, and if the person that we went on two dates with were to say that actually they're not feeling a spark, we'd go into a total spiral and meltdown and we'd feel terrible about ourselves. Or we're scared to put ourselves forward for an opportunity at work because if we were to not get it, that would be such a blow to our sense of self and self esteem and self worth. Or even in friendships. I think we can shy away from maybe opening ourselves up to friends or trying to build friendship. That can feel really vulnerable, expressing that we'd like to spend more time with someone or inviting people to things. We can be so afraid of them saying no, or maybe not wanting the friendship in the same way that we do. We can fear that people don't really like us.
[00:05:53]:
And all of that can lead us to hold back from pursuing what we really desire for ourselves, because we're so afraid of what might happen if we were to not get it. The other big one when it comes to rejection is in relationships themselves. And as I said in the intro introduction, I think we can treat rejection as a dating thing and then think that it ceases to apply in relationships once they're established. But I think that rejection can be very present in relationships. For example, every time that you bite your tongue rather than expressing a need or desire. Or maybe you don't reach out for connection or intimacy, or you don't speak up for what you want. So much of that is grounded in this fear of what if this isn't received in the way that I'm hoping? What if the person doesn't respond the way I want them to? What will that mean about me? And so I just freeze up. I shy away from it, and I prefer not to take the risk rather than to risk rejection or disappointment because that feels too painful.
[00:06:55]:
So, as you can see, this has a lot of applications. It shows up in a lot of places. And I think the common thread in amongst all of that is risk aversion coupled with the tendency to internalise other people's behaviour or choices or desires as being a function of our worth or a comment on our values. So if a friend is not available or too busy, it's because they don't like us. Or if we don't get the promotion we were hoping for at work, it's because we're not smart enough, or no one values our contributions. Or you know, in dating, if that person doesn't want to go on a second or third date, it's because we're unattractive or they thought that we were weird or awkward or we said too much in the date. And in relationships, if someone can't meet our needs, it's because our needs are wrong and so we just have to bury them. Note the tendency there to make every everything about us and our deficiencies and our not enoughness rather than just seeing that as a fact of life, that sometimes we get what we want and other times we don't.
[00:07:55]:
That doesn't have to mean anything about us. And also recognising that other people's willingness and capacity is not for us to control or manage or be responsible for. The other really important piece when it comes to the fear of rejection is that, and I've spoken about this before, I think at the heart of a fear of rejection is a deep, deep rejection of self and a deep self criticism, a deep sense of unworthiness and not enoughness. And in this way I think there is a real interplay and interconnectedness between the rejection wound and the unworthiness wound. And for anxiously attached people, people with that pattern, that makes a lot of sense because they tend to go hand in hand for us, we feel like we're not enough, we feel like we have to prove, we feel like we have to tiptoe. And we tend to be so self critical and so hard on ourselves, we tend to feel so unworth worthy. That rejection is not just something that happens relationally. It feels like it's holding a mirror up.
[00:08:54]:
It's a confirmation of our worst fears. That we are in fact not good enough, not attractive enough, not likeable. That people don't want to meet our needs, maybe that we're asking too much, we're too sensitive. All of those things tend to be beliefs that we already hold about ourselves. And so the rejection piece is less about what this person thinks of me and more about. They have become the confirmation of what my greatest fears about myself are or what I already think of me. And that's the piece that we often want to avoid or want to hide from is our own inner dialogue and finding external confirmation of that. So instead of putting all of that out there, putting it out in the open and risking having all of that exposed in a way that feels so tender and vulnerable, we just keep working and trying and pushing, improving and doing all of the things behind the scenes, hoping that we'll earn our worth in that way without ever having to sort of test it, or without ever having to release control or put ourselves out there in a way that feels so vulnerable because we just don't really want to face the possibility of someone else mirroring back to us the very, very painful storeys that we're already harbouring about ourselves.
[00:10:07]:
And I think it's so important here to really recognise how much of a self fulfilling prophecy that is, how much of a loop we get stuck in there. We're so afraid of rejection so we don' voice the need and instead we maybe just burn ourselves out in over giving and prioritising everyone and hoping that they take a hint, but they don't. And so the need goes unmet and we feel hurt and rejected and that leads us to feel even worse about ourselves and even more vulnerable and more sensitive to rejection. And so we're even less likely to take the risk, to open ourselves up to voice the need because we're now even more convinced that someone's not going to meet us there or that they don't care about us. And so we get small, smaller and smaller at the same time as we get more and more hurt and more and more resentful and it just spirals into a really unhelpful, unhealthy place where that fear of rejection and that risk aversion around vulnerability is keeping us from the thing that we most desire for ourselves, which is to be seen and to be known and to be responded to, to feel that sense of attunement, to have someone show up for us and say, like, yes, you matter to me, your needs matter to me and I'm here for you. Realise that we might be blocking that in really real ways because we are so terrified that someone won't be able to meet us there. And yet our behaviour is actually creating confirmation of that storey that is keeping us stuck. So what do we do about all this and how do we start shifting this big, deep, old, for many of us, pattern around rejection? I think there are a few pieces.
[00:12:00]:
There's some mindset stuff, there's some nervous system stuff and I think there's just some getting out there and ripping the band aid off kind of stuff. Almost desensitising ourselves to rejection. I do think that focusing on building self worth, I probably sound like a broken record because it's my solution to everything. But I do think that it is a solution to a lot of these things because the more comfortable we are in ourselves and we can say like, I like who I am, maybe I'm not totally in love with myself, but I like who I am and I'm comfortable in who I am, I see my value, I think I'm a good person and I think I bring things to the table. I trust that people like me, all of those things. That allows us to soften some of those deeply self rejecting, self critical storeys which in turn makes us less likely to interpret those storeys everywhere. It's sort of like if you're really self conscious about something in your appearance and if you look at a photo, your eyes go there straight away even though no one else would notice it. The same is true, I think when we're so hyper attuned to our perceived deficiencies, we see them everywhere and we assume that everyone else sees them everywhere and that they're the reason for everything.
[00:13:08]:
So I think the more that we build a solid foundation within ourselves where we're like, you know what? I'm okay with who I am, I like myself, I am proud of how I show up up, then those really painful storeys start to fall away and the sensitivity to rejection feels much less acute because we're less likely to take everyone's behaviour personally as confirmation of our deep seated feelings of unworthiness because those just have less power over us. I think another key piece is recognising that if someone doesn't want to go on a date with you or doesn't want to be close friends with you or someone in a relationship can't or won't meet meet needs that feel really important to you. That's not a rejection of you as a person. It is a function of their differing preferences or capacity. Right? In the same way that we can't do everything and be everything to everyone and we don't like every single person ever. And that doesn't mean anything other than like we've all got limited bandwidth and we've all got our own preferences. And of course like there can be a bit of a sting there and it can feel a bit personal, but just reminding ourselves that I don't have to make this all about me, I don't have to take this very, very personally. I don't want to go on a date with everyone.
[00:14:28]:
I don't want to be best friends with everyone. I can't meet everyone's needs. Some things will work for me, others won't. I think it allows us to make that all a bit more neutral and a bit less putting ourselves at the centre of it and making it mean something about who we are. So when we can kind of zoom out from that and get a bit more comfortable with like, well, yeah, of course that's true. Right. Of course I'm not for everyone and everyone's not for that. Can feel a bit less like a personal failing if whatever the thing is doesn't work out the way that you were hoping.
[00:15:01]:
And I think last but not least, as I said, there is an element of actually just getting into the arena, of ripping the band aid off, of taking the risk, because we can like, do all of the mindset work in the world, but for our nervous system we actually need to show it that rejection can be safe, that we can experience something like that and not die. And as with so many things, when we never run the experiment, we never get to, to disprove the storey. So if you are so locked in this frozen state of I could never possibly say those words or express that thing to my partner or ask for this or tell them about this fear, then you never get to experience the healing that might come from that actually going better than you thought it would. And you only ever get to hold onto the storey as it is because you're never giving yourself the opportunity to disprove it and for another storey to emerge. So our nervous system really learns through show rather than tell, which is why the mindset work can only go so far. We actually do have to take action. We have to have the experiences that then register in our system as, oh, another way is possible and this is what that could feel like. So I hope that that's given you something to think about.
[00:16:13]:
If you're someone who struggles with rejection, as I'm sure probably 95% of people listening are recognising, that oftentimes it's a self worth problem and we are projecting out our worst fears and our most painful beliefs about our own shortcomings. And we're perceiving them everywhere through every rejection, big and small. We assume that that's the reason and so it just collects evidence in favour of all of that. And realising that as we start to shift those storeys and build self worth and become someone that we really like and are proud of being that all of that tends to solve itself much of the time because that little loop is less active and we can sort of step out of that self fulfilling prophecy. Reminding yourself that rejection is not a personal failing, it's just sometimes compatibility thing, it's a personal preference thing, it's a capacity thing. None of that has to be about you and your worth and your value. That's just life being life and people being people. And again, I think as we become more comfortable in ourselves, we can sort of take that with a grain of salt and not be overly self centred or dramatic about it.
[00:17:18]:
We can sort of let it wash over us, water off a duck's back rather than spiralling into an emotional heap or meltdown over it. And last but not least, you really do have to get out there and take risk risks and disprove these old storeys and old patterns through action rather than just thinking positive thoughts, because that's really where the change happens. So, sending you lots of love. Hope it's been helpful and that it's been a good reminder of all of the ways that our fear can actually directly block us from the thing that we want most, which for many of us is love, connection and a felt sense of safety in our relationship. So, sending you lots of love and I look forward to seeing you again next time.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
fear of rejection, anxious attachment, self worth, vulnerability, romantic relationships, dating, rejection sensitivity, self-fulfilling prophecy, self compassion, self regulation, self advocacy, self trust, Secure Self Challenge, personal growth, inner dialogue, self criticism, unworthiness, emotional resilience, friendships, needs in relationships, fear of failure, risk aversion, self acceptance, mindset, nervous system regulation, pattern interrupt, intimacy, people pleasing, self improvement, rejection in friendships
#218: Why You're Attracted to Unavailable People
If you’ve ever found yourself drawn—almost magnetically—to partners who are inconsistent, hot-and-cold, evasive, or allergic to emotional intimacy, you’re far from alone. So many people find themselves repeatedly entering relationships with emotionally unavailable partners, even though those dynamics leave them feeling anxious, activated, and constantly questioning where they stand. And yet, as much as we can intellectually insist I don’t want this, some deeper part of us continues choosing it. Let’s dig into five major reasons you may be repeating this cycle.
If you’ve ever found yourself drawn—almost magnetically—to partners who are inconsistent, hot-and-cold, evasive, or allergic to emotional intimacy, you’re far from alone. So many people find themselves repeatedly entering relationships with emotionally unavailable partners, even though those dynamics leave them feeling anxious, activated, and constantly questioning where they stand.
And yet, as much as we can intellectually insist I don’t want this, some deeper part of us continues choosing it.
That’s what today’s post is about: the subconscious forces that pull us toward emotional unavailability, even when the conscious mind swears we want something different.
Instead of asking, “Why do I keep attracting these people?”, it’s far more empowering—and far more accurate—to ask:
“What is it within me that feels drawn to them?”
Understanding this shift gives you back your agency. It lets you see the pattern clearly instead of feeling victimized by it. And it opens the door to choosing differently.
Let’s dig into five major reasons you may be repeating this cycle.
1. You Struggle With Low Self-Worth—and “Earning Love” Feels Familiar
If you grew up internalizing the belief that love must be earned—by being pleasing, high-achieving, accommodating, self-sacrificing, or “easy”—you may unconsciously gravitate toward partners who withhold love or affection.
Why?
Because winning over someone who isn’t fully choosing you can feel like proof of your worth.
This doesn’t mean you want to suffer.
It means your nervous system is familiar with the pattern of:
working hard for love
performing to be chosen
proving yourself worthy
interpreting inconsistency as a challenge to overcome
And when something feels familiar—even if painful—your system labels it as “safe.”
This is how an underfunctioning or withholding partner becomes unintentionally attractive: your subconscious believes that if you can finally win them over, you’ll finally feel good enough.
2. Your Childhood Template Was Inconsistent or Unpredictable
For many people with anxious attachment patterns, their early environment included some version of:
emotional unpredictability
inconsistency in caregiving
a parent who was attuned sometimes and unavailable at other times
chaos, withdrawal, or emotional volatility
This primes your nervous system to feel activated—and often most alive—in relationships where you don’t know where you stand.
The template becomes:
“I feel closeness, then distance. I panic, then I work harder to bring them back. This is what love feels like.”
And because your system never learned to feel safe in calm, steady connection, emotional unavailability can feel weirdly… right.
Not because it’s healthy—but because it’s familiar.
We don’t chase what’s good for us.
We chase what we recognize.
3. You Have a Saviour Complex (or a High Tolerance for “Potential”)
If you’re someone who is deeply empathetic, sensitive, intuitive, and emotionally attuned, you might see into someone more clearly than they see into themselves.
You may find yourself thinking:
“I see their wounds.”
“I understand why they are the way they are.”
“If I love them enough, they’ll eventually open up.”
“I can make them feel safe enough to change.”
This makes you vulnerable to relationships built on potential rather than reality.
There’s nothing wrong with believing in someone.
The problem emerges when:
you ignore the present in favor of the fantasy
you become responsible for their healing
you hope your love will redeem them
you emotionally over-function while they under-function
you cling to crumbs because they hint at what could be
Sometimes, the “saviour” dynamic is just codependency wearing a noble costume.
4. Intermittent Reinforcement Is Neurochemically Addictive
This one is big.
Emotional unavailability creates a pattern of intermittent reinforcement—where affection, connection, and responsiveness come unpredictably. Some days they’re all in. Other days they disappear or withdraw.
This is the same psychological mechanism behind gambling and social media addiction.
Your body becomes hooked on:
anticipation
adrenaline
anxiety
the dopamine spike when they finally respond
A stable, consistent, emotionally available partner doesn’t create that chemical rollercoaster—and therefore might feel less intense, even though the connection is far healthier.
Sometimes what we call “chemistry” is actually our nervous system being in survival mode.
5. You May Be Emotionally Unavailable Too
This reason can be confronting—but it’s also liberating.
Most people imagine emotional unavailability as avoidant, aloof, commitment-phobic behavior. But anxious attachment also contains its own form of emotional unavailability.
You might:
struggle to sit with your own emotions
rely heavily on others to regulate your internal state
fear vulnerability unless you’re in control
ruminate about feelings without truly feeling them
over-focus on others while being disconnected from yourself
panic when someone gets too close too consistently
Many anxiously attached protest behaviors—people-pleasing, chasing, clinging, overcommunicating, catastrophizing—are actually defenses against true emotional presence.
So while you may desperately crave closeness, the kind of closeness a truly available partner offers might feel overwhelming or even frightening.
Sometimes we chase the unavailable because it allows us to avoid the intimacy we aren’t ready for ourselves.
The Takeaway: This Pattern Isn’t Your Destiny
If these insights feel confronting, remember:
This isn’t about blame.
It’s about empowerment.
Seeing your role in the pattern isn’t about shaming yourself—it’s about reclaiming your agency.
When you understand:
what draws you in
what feels familiar
what need is being met
what fear is being avoided
what wound is being reenacted
…you can finally choose something different.
You don’t have to stay in relationships that trigger your nervous system, reinforce your wounds, or keep you small.
You can unlearn these patterns.
You can build self-worth.
You can create inner safety.
You can choose people who choose you.
It takes intentional work—but it’s absolutely possible.
You might also like…
[00:00:00]:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about why it is that you might find yourself attracted to or attracting, and we'll talk about that distinction, emotionally unavailable partners. So for a lot of people, you will relate to this experience of finding yourself time and time again in dynamics that have a similar look and feel to them with partners who are sometimes there, sometimes not. Maybe they open up a bit and then they pull away and you find yourself so attracted to and attached to these people, notwithstanding the fact that those dynamics can also drive you crazy and leave you feeling really triggered, really activated and really anxious. And yet, as much as we can consciously, cognitively say we don't want that, there's a part of us that obviously does want that, or at least feels comfortable or safe in that because we keep coming up against it. Now, I've covered aspects of this before on the podcast. If you go Back to episode 204 on why you keep repeating the same relationship patterns, aspects of that will be covered today.
[00:01:11]:
But I want to really dig into specifically five reasons why it is that you might be drawn to emotionally unavailable people, even though that's the opposite of what you say you want. And of course there can be some frustration in that when we keep experiencing things that feel so counter to what we desire. And yet, of course, that is so much of this work is understanding the subconscious drivers of our relationship patterns, our behaviours, our choices, the people that we are attracted to. And as you may have heard me say before, whenever people come to me and say, I don't know why I keep attracting these kinds of people, I'm always very quick to redirect the question inwards and get people to reflect on what is it within me that is drawn to those people and those dynamics. Because of course it does take two to tango. And it's one thing if it's just a one off, an isolated event. But having worked with thousands of people on this, it's very rare that our relationship patterns are isolated events. Of course that's why they're patterns.
[00:02:19]:
And I think we have to really get honest and curious and own our role in that, even when, as I said, it's not what we say we want. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Some of the pieces that may be going on underneath the surface for us that are driving these ongoing dynamics in our relationships and within ourselves. And the point of all of this is not to shift blame or to shame anyone or to make you feel bad about yourself or to make you feel defeated or deflated or hopeless. It's actually the opposite, because the storey of why does this keep happening to me is a really disempowering one. It's one that doesn't really facilitate change because there's no agency in that storey. Whereas when we can look in really concrete ways at like, oh yeah, this actually makes sense that I feel comfortable with those types of people, or that some part of me is drawn to that, then we can start understanding why. What need is that meeting? What purpose is that serving? What does that allow us to feel or avoid feeling? And we can find healthier ways to get those needs met or tend to those underlying pieces within us so that we don't have to continue swirling around in dysfunctional or unhealthy dynamics that are ultimately not in service of what we truly desire for ourselves.
[00:03:38]:
So that that's what we're going to be talking about today. Before we get into today's episode, a couple of quick announcements. The first being you may have heard me share last week that my Secure Self Challenge is coming back in January. For those who aren't familiar, the Secure Self Challenge is a 28 day challenge all about building self worth. Unlike my courses which are a bit more meaty and content heavy, the challenge is designed to be really doable. I'm actually completely overhauling it and creating all of the materials from scratch for this next round and shifting to short daily lessons. Previously we had a weekly lesson but this time it's going to be like bite sized three to five minute daily audio lessons across four themes, the four pillars of self worth which is really central to what I teach and all of that takes place inside a pop up community. There's a couple of live calls, but the community space itself is always a really great atmosphere, a really positive vibe and lots of people connecting and sharing and cheering each other on.
[00:04:41]:
So if you know that your self worth is an area where you could use a little support and in the new year I think it's always a really nice time to clarify those intentions and be really deliberate about what we're working towards. The Secure Self Challenge kicking off in the second week of January could be a really beautiful container for you to do that and I would love to have you so you can sign up to that via my website. The link is in the show notes and yeah, I would really love to see you there. Second quick announcement is just to remind you that I have a bunch of free resources as well on my website. I realise not everyone is willing or able to invest financially in this kind of support. And that for some that is a luxury. So if that's you, just a reminder that I have a bunch of free resources, free trainings, workshops, meditations, downloads, all of the things that you can find for free on my website. So head to stephanierigg.com to cheque that out if you would like.
[00:05:37]:
Okay, so let's talk about emotional unavailability and why you might be drawn to people exhibit these traits of emotional unavailability. Now, it's probably useful to, at the outset, frame what I mean when I talk about emotional unavailability because I think it is one of those terms that gets tossed around a lot and it's sort of assumed that everyone knows what everyone's talking about when I suspect that isn't really the case because it's not like it's a prescribed term that has some sort of clear dictionary definition. When I talk about emotional unavailability, and certainly for the context of today's discussion, what I'm really talking about is someone who doesn't have the capacity or the willing willingness to show up to a relationship in a way that would allow that relationship to work towards a secure place. So someone who struggles to be vulnerable, who struggles to be honest, who struggles to take responsibility, who maybe lacks the emotional maturity to stay in difficult moments, someone who's maybe a bit of a commitment phobe, but is also maybe not willing to have those conversations, someone who's quite evasive, all of those traits that I think a lot of us will be familiar with, someone who's very, very conflict averse and pulls away from conflict, withdraws. And some of you might be kind of listening to that list and seeing some overlap with avoidant attachment patterns. And certainly I think in the Venn diagram there, there would be overlap for a lot of people with avoidant attachment patterns, although certainly not all. But as we'll talk about today, it's certainly not the exclusive domain of avoidant attachment to be emotionally unavailable. But that's sort of just to give you a bit of a, of what we're talking about here.
[00:07:20]:
When we talk about emotional unavailability. It's that idea of you can't quite reach someone. There's inconsistency, there's a lack of clarity, there's a lack of directness, there's a lack of openness and honesty. And all of that contributes to an overall relationship environment that lacks that sense of trust, steadiness, reliability, a felt sense of like I feel safe here. I know where I stand. I know that I'm valued and I don't have to be playing games or be bracing for something to change or to happen because this feels like a really steady ground to be standing on. So let's get into some of the reasons why you might be drawn to that. Even though I'm sure in hearing that list most people would say like, yeah, no, I don't want that, that's what causes me pain.
[00:08:10]:
Right? Those dynamics are where I suffer. So the first reason that you might be drawn to emotionally unavailable people is that you may struggle with low self esteem and low self worth. And when you struggle with low self esteem and low self worth, it is often the case that proving yourself and earning love or working hard for it or performing or over giving, over functioning, all of those things feel natural and normal to you, that that's just what you know to do in relationships. And so being with someone who withholds or who is highly conditional or who is not particularly generous with their feelings or doesn't express that, that can feel very familiar at the same time as it feels painful. And if that's what we know to do, trying to interpret someone's behaviour, trying to analyse what gets the best response out of them, then that kind of dynamic can feel very comfortable for us, even though it causes us so much anxiety. So if you do have that unworthiness piece, not really feeling good enough, and maybe feel undeserving of someone who fully chooses you, it's almost like we can gravitate towards the person who doesn't fully choose us. And whether we realise it or not, we can have this storey running that getting them to choose us would be the ultimate victory. Right? I've spoken about this before and certainly it was part of my relationship pattern before I did a lot of this work was like, if I can prove myself to them, if I can get them to love me, then I'll feel good about myself with which would be very redeeming for my own sense of low self esteem and low self worth.
[00:09:59]:
So that can be one piece that draws you towards emotionally unavailable people or at least causes you. Once in a relationship or in a connection with someone like that, you may not register their hot and coldness or their withholding of affection or their uncertainty about you. You may not register that as a problem in the sense of a deal breaker or something make you rethink the relationship. You register it instead as like a challenge accepted kind of moment where you dig deeper or try and get closer or try and make them change their mind about you. If they're sitting on the fence, you just want to pull them closer to you, rather than stepping back and going like, well, I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with me, or I don't want to be with someone where I'm feeling anxious all the time. If that's all we've ever known, someone not fully being there for us, or fully showing up or really celebrating us, then that can feel very familiar and not necessarily a problem. Now, related to that, the second reason, if you are someone who grew up in a family system where inconsistency or unreliability or unpredictability were a feature, then emotional unavailability really sits neatly with that kind of template. And it will likely again feel very familiar to your nervous system to be in that mode of anticipatory anxiety of, even if things are good, I'm waiting for them to be bad, and when they're bad, I'm going to work really hard to make them be good again.
[00:11:35]:
And so that idea of being in a heightened state of stress, anxiety, mobilisation in our nervous system, for most of us with anxious attachment patterns, that's just par for the course. That's like a really key piece in our relational blueprint. And as I've spoken about, about before, this doesn't have to mean that you have a really traumatic family system or you had a really dreadful childhood with a lot of challenges. I mean, for some people that will be there and have more obvious expressions, like, for example, one or both parents who struggled with addiction or other big mental health challenges that really took them away from being able to attune to you and show up for you. And that made the home environment very chaotic. But for a lot of us, us, those feelings might be more subtle. It's just a sense of sometimes my caregivers are really attuned and present and other times I can't reach them. And so I feel a lot of separation anxiety, I feel a lot of stress and I'm very oriented towards trying to control the environment so that I don't have to sit with these bad feelings, because I don't know how to hold those bad feelings.
[00:12:48]:
I've never really been taught how to stay with myself through difficult emotions. And so I pour a whole lot of energy into trying to make sure that I have to experience them at all. And for a lot of people with anxious attachment patterns, that takes the form of trying to control other people and trying to preempt other people's needs and take care of everyone else's needs, doing all of that so that we don't have to feel bad because we feel so affected by other people. Now if all of that is part of your storey in one form or another, and as I said, it can take a lot of different shapes translated to adult romantic relationships, emotional unavailability, someone who comes and goes, someone who shows up one day and declares their love for you and then says, actually I can't and I need space. All of that is going to light up your system and feel very familiar at the same time as it feels very painful. And again, if we've only ever known stress, anxiety and pain in relationships, we don't necessarily register that as, as something to walk away from. A lot of us will instinctively move towards the problem and try to control it, try to solve it, rather than moving away from it and realising that maybe that's not the relationship or the partner for us. So if you do have something in your family system around inconsistency, unreliability, unpredictability, then an emotionally unavailable partner who comes and goes or who gives a little, then pulls way back, that's going to feel very familiar to your nervous system system and is likely going to draw you in and make you feel more attached and more invested to trying to stabilise them or keep them on the good side of things, keep them open to you, keep them connected and all of the patterns of shape shifting and people pleasing and over giving and self abandonment, that can be part of that chase.
[00:14:42]:
Okay, the next reason that you might be drawn to emotionally unavailable people is that you may have a bit of a saviour complex and you may be most comfortable when you are in the self appointed role of coach or therapist or caretaker of someone who has either their own stuff going on, mental health challenges, trauma, the emotional unavailability of someone who has a lot of fear of intimacy. If you're someone who's very emotionally attuned, very sensitive, has a lot of love to give and is a great listener, all of those things can prime you to feel like I see this person's pain, even in ways that they maybe don't see their pain and I understand what they need and so if I can just make them feel safe enough to come out of their shell, to heal their wounds, to let go of their demons, they will be redeemed by my love and we will live happily ever after. And so we can really over indent on Hope and potential. We can see these glimmers in people. And while there's something really beautiful in that, in our compassion and our willingness to see someone's humanity, we have to be really careful and really self responsible about also engaging honestly with reality as it is, rather than fixating on hope for some future version of someone that ultimately we don't have control over. And while relationships can be a beautiful place to grow together, making it our mission to change someone or to expand their capacity by force to make them open to us and to make them go to therapy and make them be more vulnerable, I think it's something to really watch for. If you see that within yourself, if you find yourself really holding on to little moments where someone open to you that actually represent a very small fraction of the overall landscape of the relationship, I think we do have to see that for what it is and make sure that we're holding a responsible line there between, yes, allowing for someone to grow and being supportive of that, while not making it our responsibility to make them grow, and ultimately wanting to be pursuing a relationship with someone who today, the version of them today is someone that we want to be with, not just the fantasy of who they could become with, you know, enough influence from us or other people. The fourth reason why you might be drawn to emotion, emotionally unavailable people is that the intermittent reinforcement that you get from someone who shows up sometimes and is really open and loving and warm and you have fun and maybe there's a strong chemistry or sexual attraction and then they disappear.
[00:17:37]:
That intermittent reinforcement is so addictive. That is a really, really powerful way of, of drawing you in and keeping you hooked. Right? This is how gambling machines work. It's how our phones and social media work. This mechanism of more or less hijacking our dopamine response and keeping us hooked on, when will I get the next reward? I don't know. And so it could be in five minutes or it could be in five months, but either way, I'm on the edge of my seat and I'm holding my breath in anticipation for the person who may or may not show up. And when we're in that kind of dynamic, the reward, when it comes, if it comes, feels a thousand times better than the person who is really steady, really reliable and shows up. If someone is always super responsive to your text messages and doesn't give you that adrenaline spike because they're just rock solid and steady and available, that is a very different experience for your nervous system than the dopamine rollercoaster of someone who Maybe starts replying and then, you know, the three dots go away and you don't hear from them for two days.
[00:18:52]:
Guess who's going to have you checking your phone like an anxious maniac. And guess what's going to feel so amazing when they reply to you after two or three days? Even if it's like just sending a message saying, hey, sorry, I've been busy, your system is going to be in total overdrive when you get that message, even though it is like a fundamentally underwhelming, disappointing message to receive. So just recognising that those, those patterns of intermittent reinforcement, meaning you don't know when you're going to get the reward, have been studied extensively and it's been well established that that is what makes us most likely to pursue a reward and to be really invested in a reward and to get more of a dopamine response out of the reward when it comes than something that is really reliably fed to us or that is available in a really consistent and predictable way. So your body's neurochemist is wired such that unpredictable relationship dynamics are going to be more addictive and there's really a lot to be said for again, self responsibility. They're seeing it for what it is. Not confusing that with like, oh, love and connection and chemistry and it feels so great. No, you're just experiencing a hit of a drug and weaning yourself way off that and actually refusing to engage so that your system doesn't become so trained to seek that out and to hold out for it and then to make all of this meaning about how great it feels and how amazing you feel when you're with them. There's oftentimes a lot more going on than meets the eye and it has less to do with how amazing they are and more to do with how unpredictable their behaviour is.
[00:20:34]:
And so the anxiety and the anticipation that that creates in you. Okay, and last but not least, the final reason why you might be attracted to emotionally unavailable people. And this one can be a little hard to hear, but you might be be emotionally unavailable yourself. I foreshadowed in the introduction that oftentimes the picture of the emotionally unavailable person we see as being very overlapping with avoidant attachment patterns. So someone who's non committal and who's aloof and who doesn't want to talk about anything and doesn't want to talk about feelings and is very conflict averse and all of those things. And that can certainly be one form of emotional unavailability. But as I like to remind people, a big part of emotional availability is honesty and directness and vulnerability and anxiously attached people can really struggle with those things too. And so there can be aspects of emotional unavailability within us that we don't even realise because we feel so emotional.
[00:21:39]:
We're like, what do you mean? Emotionally unavailable. I cry at the drop of a hat. And I love talking about fear. Feelings, maybe, but talking about feelings in an analytical way, in a ruminating way where we're constantly spinning around in storeys, that's not the same as really being present with our emotions. And oftentimes we're more attuned to other people's emotions than we are to our own. And we really struggle to be self responsible around that. We can struggle to regulate our own emotions. We can feel very panicky and very dependent and very reliant on controlling other people or having them do what we want them to do in order that we can feel okay.
[00:22:22]:
All of these things can be signs of emotional unavailability within us. We can really struggle with receiving. One of the other pieces that I didn't talk about in this episode, but that is also relevant in the pursuit of emotional unavailability, is that we tend to be more comfortable as the giver or the pursuer. And actually, if someone suddenly showed up in the way that we've been begging them to a lot of the time, I think we'd really struggle to know what to do with it. If things that person turned around and suddenly said, okay, tell me about how you're feeling, tell me about your biggest fears. We'd probably be a bit like, oh, hang on, I'm not used to actually being in the spotlight, even though I'm constantly grasping and clutching and begging for you to pay attention to me. Sometimes that pleading role or that complaining or that nitpicking or that reaching is a really comfortable place to be, but that it's in part comfortable because we don't actually expect the other person to turn around and show up. So it allows us to point the finger at them as being the problem.
[00:23:23]:
But suddenly, if the secure person showed up and was fully there and wanted to know us deeply, that might feel very vulnerable and we might feel a bit naked and realise some blind spots in us around our own emotional availability and how hard that can be. So many of the protest behaviours of anxious attachment are the epitome of, of emotional unavailability because they are protective strategies that sit on top of vulnerability and tenderness and true emotional presence and ownership. So just recognising that. And again, none of this is about actually, it's not their fault, it's your fault. It's really just to acknowledge that if we keep coming up against this pattern, we too have work to do. And that's really good news because that means that we aren't powerless. We aren't just victims of other people's terrible behaviour. We're participating participants in our patterns.
[00:24:14]:
And that means that we have agency over them and we can make choices towards something that feels more aligned and something that represents what we deeply desire and not just what we know or what is familiar or comfortable to us. Okay, so I'm going to leave it there because this has gotten pretty long. I hope that has been insightful for you, if a little confronting. I know that some of these, these conversations, particularly when we are having the mirror held up or we're being called out lovingly about the role that we play in our suffering or our misery or what we don't want, I know it can be hard to hear, but I hope that you're able to receive it in the spirit of compassion and curiosity and ultimately empowerment. And that it, if anything, inspires hope in you that another way is possible. But it just requires some unlearning of some old patterns, which is not always easy work, but it's certainly possible. So, sending you lots of love. Thank you.
[00:25:13]:
As always. For those who tune in, listen, leave reviews, comments, I read them all and I'm grateful for you all and your ongoing support. And I'm sending you lots of love. Okay, thanks, guys.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
emotionally unavailable partners, emotional unavailability, attracting unavailable partners, relationship patterns, anxious attachment, low self worth, low self esteem, self worth challenges, overgiving, attachment styles, inconsistent relationships, unreliable partners, childhood family dynamics, nervous system, anticipatory anxiety, saviour complex, caretaker role, coaching in relationships, emotional maturity, vulnerability, honesty in relationships, conflict avoidance, commitment issues, intermittent reinforcement, dopamine response, people pleasing, self abandonment, secure relationships, self responsibility, personal growth