#157 3 Things You'll Notice in Your First Healthy Relationship
In this episode, we’re exploring three key things you’ll likely notice when you experience your first truly healthy relationship. While healthy relationships are often idealised, they still come with their own challenges.
In this episode, we’re exploring three key things you’ll likely notice when you experience your first truly healthy relationship. While healthy relationships are often idealised, they still come with their own challenges.
We’ll discuss how they invite vulnerability, reveal where we may have been hiding behind dysfunction, and show us that even secure partners can be imperfect. Finally, we’ll talk about how conflict in a healthy relationship doesn’t disappear, but it feels safer and more productive.
Key Points Covered:
Vulnerability: When you're in a healthy dynamic, the absence of chaos can feel unfamiliar, and it may expose areas where you’ve avoided vulnerability by leaning on old, dysfunctional patterns.
Imperfection in Secure Partners: It’s easy to idealise secure partners as perfect, but it’s important to remember that they, too, are human. The difference is in how they respond to their imperfections and how you both handle those inevitable moments of frustration.
Safe Conflict: You’ll realise that disagreements can be handled with mutual respect and a sense of safety, where both partners feel heard and valued, even in moments of tension.
Entering Your First Healthy Relationship: What to Expect
Entering into a healthy relationship for the first time can feel like uncharted territory, especially if past experiences have been marred by dysfunction, high conflict, and insecurity. Yet, as you grow more secure within yourself and cultivate self-awareness, new patterns and challenges will inevitably arise.
Understanding what to expect can help you navigate this new landscape with grace and resilience. Here are three key things you might notice in your first healthy relationship or as you and your partner evolve together into a more secure, healthy dynamic.
Vulnerability: There's Nowhere to Hide
Healthy relationships bring a level of emotional intimacy and vulnerability that can be surprising, even confronting. In relationships marked by insecurity or dysfunction, there’s often a lot of blame and finger-pointing. It’s easy to attribute problems to your partner's behaviour, side-stepping your own areas where growth and honesty are needed.
When stepping into a healthy relationship, all those distractions melt away. You might find yourself feeling exposed in ways you weren't prepared for. This is particularly true if past relationships have seen you as the pursuer, always chasing after someone else's elusive commitment. Being with someone who is fully available and committed can mirror back your own fears or hesitations, illuminating the ways you may have been avoiding vulnerability.
The good news is that this level of openness can foster deeper, more authentic connections. But be prepared: it’s uncomfortable at first. Recognising that this discomfort is a natural part of building a genuine, intimate relationship can make this transition smoother.
Imperfections: Accepting the Whole Person
Even the most secure, wonderful partner is an imperfect human. In a healthy relationship, you might find that even the kindest and most empathetic partner can still disappoint you, have bad habits, or irritate you from time to time.
Many people hold onto an idealistic view that finding a secure partner will eliminate all relational challenges. While a healthy partner may offer kindness, reliability, and empathy, they are still human. They might forget things, act irritable, or have quirks that can be annoying. The idea of never settling might sound appealing, but real relationships require compromise.
Instead of designing a partner in your mind, focus on core values and traits that are non-negotiable, and prepare to be flexible about the smaller details. Embracing this messy, real-world version of love leads to a more grounded and resilient relationship.
Conflicts: Healthy Relationships Have Them Too
Conflict is inevitable in any relationship, including the healthiest ones. The key difference in a secure relationship lies in how conflicts are approached, managed, and ultimately repaired. Insecure relationships often make conflict feel existentially threatening, as every argument might seem like it could end the relationship. This high-stakes environment leads to conflict avoidance and unresolved tension.
In a healthy relationship, conflicts can be addressed safely and respectfully. Disagreements can be aired and frustrations expressed without fear of the relationship crumbling. Skillful conflict resolution and genuine attempts at repair can even strengthen connections. Being able to share concerns and have them validated and handled with care revolutionises our imprint of relational safety.
Healthy relationships allow for tension and anger to coexist with an underlying sense of security. The relationship's foundation remains firm, even during rough patches. Embracing this reality reduces the fear around conflict and fosters a more open, honest connection between partners.
Embracing the Journey
Embarking on your first healthy relationship journey can be both exciting and daunting. Remember these points: vulnerability is a sign of depth, imperfections are to be expected, and conflict is normal but can be managed constructively. These elements are not signs of failure but rather indicators of a living, evolving connection between two real people.
As you navigate this path, keep in mind that the strength of a relationship isn't measured by the absence of problems but by the commitment to face and resolve them together. This perspective shift can bring a sense of peace and confidence as you build and nurture a thriving, secure relationship.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Have you ever found yourself hiding aspects of yourself in past relationships? What did that look like for you, and how did it affect the relationship?
Do you have any fears or anxieties around being vulnerable in a relationship? How do you think a healthy relationship might challenge those fears?
Reflect on your ideal partner. Are there any unrealistic standards that you might be holding onto? How can you embrace the imperfections in a real partner?
Think about a time when you experienced conflict in a relationship. How was it handled? How might conflict look different in a healthy, secure relationship?
Do you find yourself blaming past partners for issues in the relationship? How can you take responsibility for your own role in past conflicts?
What are some of the core traits and values you are looking for in a partner? Are you prepared to compromise on some of the less important aspects?
Do you have a history of pushing for commitment in relationships? How might being with someone who is equally committed bring up new challenges for you?
How do you usually handle disagreements or conflicts? In what ways can you approach conflict more constructively in a future healthy relationship?
Reflect on any previous experiences where conflict felt like a threat to the relationship. How can you build a sense of safety in future conflicts?
How do you think a truly supportive and validating partner might change the way you view yourself and your relationship patterns?
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Check out my couples course, Secure Together (& save $200 with the code SECURE)
Save $150 on my Higher Love break-up course with the code PHOENIX
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
[00:00:29]:
In today's episode, we are talking about 3 things that you'll notice when you enter your first healthy relationship. So this is one for those of you who have maybe been in a string of not so healthy relationships, the way you've had a lot of dysfunctional patterns, maybe high conflict, a lot of insecurity. And as you do this work of becoming more secure within yourself and building self awareness around your own patterns, learning tools to build healthier relationships and more secure relationships, which is what we're hopefully all aiming for here. And then you enter a new relationship. You'll probably notice a new set of challenges or encounter things that you maybe didn't expect to. I think a lot of us have the misconception that we'll do this work and then we'll enter a healthy relationship with a secure partner and all of that stuff will be behind us.
[00:01:31]:
We'll never have to, you know, come up against those relational challenges again. When really the truth is that we are confronted with different challenges. And hopefully, we are meeting those challenges with the benefit of our enhanced capacity and new tools. And so we're able to alchemize whatever those challenges are with a greater level of maturity. But nevertheless, I think a lot of people are surprised and maybe caught off guard by the fact that secure relationships can bring up different things and can hold a mirror up to us in different ways. And so I'm gonna be sharing today 3 things that you might notice in your first healthy relationship. And even as I'm talking now, I suppose you might even notice this within the same relationship if you've done a lot of work together and you kind of enter a new era of the same relationship as can happen, I think we can have many different versions of a relationship over time with the same partner as we grow and evolve, whether that's joint work or individual work. So you may notice some of these things if you're already in a relationship, but you've been doing some of that work.
[00:02:40]:
So this will hopefully have a little bit of something for everyone. And if you're not in a relationship at the moment, maybe it'll put you on notice for things that you might come up against in the future after you've been doing this work and you enter a healthier relationship. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Before I dive into that, just a quick announcement. I am really excited to share that I am running another retreat. So for those of you who've been around a while, you might remember that I ran a retreat in Italy mid last year, which was really wonderful. And we have just booked in to do another one in Australia this time in Byron Bay, which is a beautiful coastal town. Some of you may have heard of it.
[00:03:22]:
Many of you may not have, but with a quick Google search, you'll see that it's absolutely idyllic and we booked an incredible property there. The retreat is going to be in May next year, 2025. And we've got a waitlist going for people who want to express interest in that. We're just finalizing all of the details, but it will be 3 nights in May 20, 25. And so if you want to be first to hear about that and we will have an early bird special for the initial period after we've announced it, the link is in the show notes to join that wait list where you can head to my website, and that should be relatively easy to find. So I would love to see people from this community at the retreat and, if that's something that you've maybe always wanted to do or that piques your interest, definitely, pop your name down on the wait list because obviously by virtue of the format of spaces will be very limited. Okay. So let's dive into this conversation around things that you might notice in your first healthy relationship.
[00:04:20]:
Now the first one is that there's nowhere to hide. So healthy relationships can be really vulnerable. And I think that a lot of us might be surprised by this because we maybe idealize what it means to be vulnerable in relationships. And if you've been in relationships in the past or maybe you're in a relationship at the moment where there feels like there's a lack of emotional intimacy, you might say, and maybe you complain to your partner or to your friends or to yourself, that there's no depth and there's no emotional intimacy. And, and that's something that you really yearn for. But you might find that when you get it, it actually frightens you a bit. And I think this is something that I've seen time and time again, is clients and students of mine will get into a relationship with someone who is, for example, really committed and wants to move forward with the relationship. And if you've always been the person who, you know, pushes a relationship forward against someone else's resistance and you've got someone who's really, you know, maybe has a fear of commitment or doesn't want to talk about the future, and you spend so much time and energy trying to get that from them, you might really be confronted with your own fear of commitment.
[00:05:33]:
For example, if you're in relationship with someone who is totally available and wants to talk about the future and wants to move the relationship forward. So that's just one example. But what you might see is that the things that you've been blaming someone else about or complaining about those points of resistance or someone else's unavailability, you might suddenly be shown all of the ways in which you were invulnerable or unavailable. Because I think there's there's a lot of hiding that happens in dysfunctional insecure dynamics, and it's really, really easy to blame the other person for everything that's wrong with the relationship. And we often do that from a place that we really deeply believe it. That if they just changed x y zed thing, then our relationship would be fine. And as as true as that can feel, it's very rarely the truth. It's very rarely the whole picture.
[00:06:29]:
And it allows us to, I suppose, sidestep taking responsibility for the ways in which we are not being honest, not being vulnerable, maybe we're not in integrity. So it often blocks us from our own authenticity. And so when you're in a relationship where all of those things that you've been complaining about, all of those things you've been blaming someone else for suddenly aren't there, and there's nothing kind of distracting avoidance side coming up if you are someone who's typically being more anxious. And I think that can be a very interesting, very illuminating kind of role reversal to be all of a sudden afraid of vulnerability and find a lot of resistance to that within yourself. And so seeing those anxieties arise for you in a healthy relationship, I think can catch some people off guard and make you question whether it's the right relationship because you're so accustomed to being the pursuer, so accustomed to the chase, if that's historically been your role, that that that's a really comfortable place to to put all of your energy if that's what you've always done. Whereas receiving or even just something that's more balanced can feel a little bit disorienting if that's not been the role that you've historically occupied in your relationship. So prepare yourself for that. Prepare yourself for a level of vulnerability that you have probably never experienced when you get into your first healthy relationship.
[00:08:08]:
And, you you know, all of the things that come with that, there's a beautiful opportunity to deepen in genuine authentic connection with someone, but there is no way to hide there. And as I said, I think a lot of us maybe don't appreciate the extent to which we have been able to hide in dysfunction and blame in our relationships when we've largely been in insecure dynamics. Okay. The second thing that you might notice in your first healthy relationship is that even the most secure, wonderful partner will be an imperfect human. Okay? And so you might realize that you have certain idealistic conceptions of what it means to be in a secure relationship that maybe are not realistic. And a secure partner who is kind and reliable and trustworthy and empathetic and validating all of these things that you have yearned for for such a long time, that same person might disappoint you from time to time. They might be forgetful or they might have a temper or they might be irritable and, you know, they might annoy you. They might have habits that you find a little grating.
[00:09:19]:
And all of that is really normal. But it might again throw you a little if you've had this story that when I finally get into a secure relationship, then everything will be great. And I won't have to worry anymore. I won't have to have doubts. I won't have to have fears. I won't have to have insecurities. All of that stuff's not just going to fall away and evaporate, because you found the perfect person. So much of that is within us.
[00:09:45]:
And the reality is that even a great person will have downsides to them. There is no perfect partner who has every single trait we've ever wanted, but none of the ones that we don't. And so I think that we come to realize in a healthy relationship that there are compromises. I've said before, I think the advice to never settle, which floats around on social media a lot, I don't think that that really captures the reality of relationship and the messiness of it all. And I think the better advice is be very clear about what you're looking for in terms of kind of core traits and values, and then get ready to compromise around the edges. Because you're not designing some person from the ground up. You are entering relationship with a real person with all of their upsides and downsides and their history and their quirks and their annoying habits. And that's part of committed relationship is that you are signing up for all of that.
[00:10:46]:
And so it can be quite humbling, I think, to realize that you are going to be entering a relationship and potentially making a commitment to a whole person. And that that whole person will annoy you from time to time will frustrate you will upset. You will anger you. And that's all part of it. And so we might have our illusions shattered a little in a healthy relationship around the fact that it's still imperfect despite being, you know, healthy and secure. And that leads me nicely into the third point, which is healthy relationships can still involve conflict. And indeed, they generally will involve conflict. I have said before, I think it's more of a red flag if couples never have conflict than if they have a healthy amount of conflict.
[00:11:32]:
And obviously, there's caveats to that around the way that conflict is approached and managed and repaired. But you will still have disagreements. You'll still have bad days. You'll still have tension. You'll still have rupture. But the real shift that you'll see in your first healthy relationship is that conflict can be had safely and can be repaired skillfully in a way that actually enhances your connection and brings you closer rather than being this really scary thing that feels like a threat to the relationship. And if you are someone with insecure attachment patterns, and that's been the general tone and experience of your relationships to date, you may never have experienced conflict in a way that doesn't feel like it existentially threatens the relationship. Right? A lot of us will have that imprint that every fight feels like it could be the last one, the one that tips us over the edge.
[00:12:27]:
And when that is the tone of your, you know, conflict patterns in your relationship, it's very, very hard for conflicts who ever feel safe because it feels so high stakes. Right? If every fight feels like it could be the end of the relationship, then you'll probably find yourself having a lot of stress around conflict and probably being quite conflict avoidant because everything is being weighed against the possibility of the relationship ending. And so we end up letting a lot of things go that probably do need to be talked about because it's just not worth that magnitude of rupture. So when you find yourself in a healthy relationship for the first time, you will hopefully be pleasantly surprised by the fact that you can talk about things and it doesn't have to snowball into this really big, ugly, disconnected fight with attacking and blame and defensiveness and stonewalling and all of those things that a lot of us know really well. And I think that it's incredibly healing to be able to share something that's bothering you and have it received and handled with care and responded to in a validating way. Those sorts of experiences can really fundamentally shift our imprint around relationships and the emotional safety that comes from that is so conducive to greater intimacy and connection in the relationship more broadly. So that is something that you will learn when you enter your first healthy relationship. Yes, there will be conflict.
[00:13:59]:
Don't expect that you are going to be able to skip out on conflict altogether. But it can be done in a way that is safe and feels safe. Even in the moment you can be having conflict and tension or you can be angry, you can be frustrated, and still feel this really strong foundation of safety in the relationship, and that's a very powerful thing. Okay. So those were three things that you may experience in your first healthy relationship. Just to recap, that is that there's nowhere to hide and secure relationships are really vulnerable and actually show us all of the places that we've been avoiding or denying or maybe not taking responsibility for our stuff. The second one was that even secure, healthy, amazing partners are going to annoy us from time to time. They are imperfect, messy humans like the rest of us.
[00:14:52]:
And 3, that secure relationships will have conflicts just like any other. But the difference is your ability to have conflict in a safe way and repair skillfully. So I hope that that's been helpful, has given you something to think about, whether you're in that space at the moment, or it's something that you might encounter in the future. Hopefully that's put you on notice of what you might expect in your first healthy relationship. If you've enjoyed this episode, so grateful for those of you who leave a review or rating. Also, if you're someone who watches YouTube, I confess I'm not someone who watches very much YouTube, but I know a lot of people do. I'm trying to grow my YouTube channel at the moment. So if you care to jump on over to YouTube and subscribe, share, if you feel so inclined to all of the podcast episodes are being uploaded in video there, so you can explore those as well as some other videos that are only on YouTube. That would be a huge help to me as a way to support my work in the show. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks guys.
[00:15:58]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
attachment styles, secure relationships, healthy relationships, insecurity, relationship patterns, self-awareness, self-improvement, emotional intimacy, vulnerability, fear of commitment, relationship challenges, dysfunctional relationships, personal growth, relational dynamics, conflict resolution, emotional safety, mature relationships, secure partners, relationship advice, practical tools, relationship coach, relational challenges, retreat in Italy, Byron Bay retreat, authentic connection, relationship conflict, relationship repair, relationship maturity, relationship guide, building healthy relationships, secure attachment.
#155 Fearful Avoidant and Anxious Attachment: Key Similarities & Differences
In today's episode, we're diving into fearful avoidant (AKA disorganised) attachment and how it differs from anxious attachment. We’ll explore how both types are driven by a fear of abandonment and intense emotions, yet differ in their approaches to intimacy, conflict resolution, and communication. Whether you identify with one of these attachment styles or are in a relationship with someone who does, this episode will give you valuable insights into the dynamics at play and how to navigate them for healthier connections.
In today's episode, we're diving into fearful avoidant (AKA disorganised) attachment and how it differs from anxious attachment.
We’ll explore how both types are driven by a fear of abandonment and intense emotions, yet differ in their approaches to intimacy, conflict resolution, and communication.
Whether you identify with one of these attachment styles or are in a relationship with someone who does, this episode will give you valuable insights into the dynamics at play and how to navigate them for healthier connections.
Fearful Avoidant and Anxious Attachment: Key Similarities & Differences
Understanding attachment styles is crucial for anyone looking to improve their relationships and gain insight into their emotional responses. Two attachment styles often discussed together are anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment. While they share some similarities, there are also significant differences that impact relationship dynamics and coping strategies.
High Anxiety About Relationships
A common thread between anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment is the high level of anxiety experienced in relationships. For both, relationships often do not feel safe. This anxiety can manifest differently, though. Anxiously attached individuals tend to feel preoccupied with their relationships, continually seeking reassurance and closeness to soothe their anxiety. Fearful avoidants, on the other hand, experience similar anxiety but may internalise it more, leading to erratic behaviours—sometimes drawing close to their partner and other times pushing them away.
Fears of Abandonment and Rejection
Both attachment styles harbour deep fears of abandonment and rejection. For anxiously attached individuals, this fear drives them to over-function in relationships, always striving to maintain closeness and avoid rejection. Fearful avoidants, however, might adopt an “I’ll leave you before you leave me” mentality, ending relationships pre-emptively to avoid the anticipated pain of abandonment. This self-protective strategy is a stark contrast to the anxious attachment’s drive to preserve relationships at nearly any cost.
Struggles with Voicing Needs and Setting Boundaries
A significant challenge that both styles share is difficulty in voicing needs and setting boundaries. Anxiously attached individuals often fall into people-pleasing and approval-seeking behaviours, avoiding conflict in an attempt to secure their partner’s affection. They might quietly resent unmet needs but continue giving and compromising. Fearful avoidants also struggle here, but their approach is slightly different. They might initially also over-give, but their resentment can explode into anger, causing them to view their partner as an adversary. This can lead to dramatic confrontations or sudden decisions to end the relationship, highlighting their fear of betrayal.
Emotional Regulation Difficulties
Emotional regulation is another area where these attachment styles demonstrate both similarity and difference. Both exhibit difficulty managing their emotions, experiencing extreme ups and downs. Anxiously attached individuals often look to their partners to regulate their emotions, feeling out of control when they perceive any threat to the relationship. This can create a sense of urgency to fix any issues immediately. Fearful avoidants, while also struggling with emotional regulation, direct their fear more towards perceived personal threats. This can result in fierce anger and volatility, driven by a deep sense of personal danger, which differs from the anxious attachment's relational focus.
Low Self-Worth and Shame
Low self-worth and shame are core wounds for both anxiously attached and fearful avoidants, but they manage these feelings differently. Anxiously attached people try to compensate for their low self-worth by seeking validation from their partners. They believe that if they can get their partner to love them deeply, it will resolve their feelings of inadequacy. Conversely, fearful avoidant individuals often avoid intimacy to shield themselves from confronting their shame. They might push people away, adhere to a narrative that they're better off alone, or leave relationships to avoid getting hurt.
Navigating Personal Development
Despite these challenges, individuals with both attachment styles are often driven to seek personal development. The feeling of being broken or not good enough can motivate them to explore self-help resources and look for ways to understand themselves better. For anxiously attached individuals, this journey often emphasises finding security in relationships. Fearful avoidants, while also seeking to understand themselves, may focus more on protective mechanisms and building internal resilience.
Understanding the Differences
While there are clear overlaps, the differences in how these attachment styles handle anxiety, fear, and self-worth can significantly impact their behaviours in relationships. Anxiously attached individuals cling to closeness and relationship security, often to the point of self-neglect. Fearful avoidants, in contrast, might sabotage closeness and push people away to self-protect. These strategies can lead to misunderstandings and complicated relationship dynamics, often leaving both parties feeling hurt and confused.
Conclusion
The similarities and differences between anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment offer valuable insights into relational behaviours and emotional coping strategies. Understanding these nuances can help individuals recognise their patterns, navigate their emotional responses better, and work towards healthier relationship dynamics. Recognising these patterns is the first step towards making informed changes that lead to more secure and fulfilling interpersonal connections.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
How do you tend to cope with anxiety in your relationships? Do you find yourself leaning towards seeking closeness or pushing people away?
Reflect on a scenario when you felt deeply hurt or rejected in a relationship. How did you respond to those feelings of abandonment or rejection? Did your response align more with anxious attachment or fearful avoidant attachment strategies?
Are there instances where you've found it particularly challenging to voice your needs or set boundaries? How did this impact your relationship and your personal well-being?
Think about a time when you experienced extreme emotions within a relationship. How did you manage these emotions, and what effect did they have on your relationship dynamic?
Reflect on your self-worth and any underlying feelings of shame you might carry. How have these feelings influenced your behaviour in relationships, and what strategies do you use to cope with these emotions?
Have you ever found yourself over-functioning in a relationship to avoid feelings of abandonment? How has this affected your sense of self and your relational dynamics?
Consider a time when you may have distanced yourself from someone out of fear of being hurt or exposed. How did this affect the relationship and your emotional well-being?
Reflect on your journey of personal development. What drives you to seek understanding of yourself, and how has this journey influenced your attachment style and relationships?
How do you perceive and deal with threats to your emotional safety in relationships? Do you notice any patterns that align with anxious or fearful avoidant attachment?
In what ways do you either yearn for validation from your partner or push them away to protect your self-image? How do these behaviours connect to your deeper fears and insecurities?
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Join the waitlist for Healing Anxious Attachment
Check out my couples course, Secure Together (& save $200 with the code SECURE)
Save $150 on my Higher Love break-up course with the code PHOENIX
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
[00:00:29]:
In today's episode, I am going to be talking all about some key similarities and differences between the anxious attachment style and the fearful avoidant or disorganized attachment style. Now, I get possibly more requests about fearful avoidant attachment than anything else, which is saying something given that, a, I get a lot of requests about a lot of things, and, b, that the vast majority of my audience falls into the bucket of anxious attachment. But it is really one of those areas that seems to be maybe underdeveloped in online literature and content around attachment theory, and an area that I know a lot of people have an interest in and really identify with aspects of the fearful avoidant or disorganized attachment style. And I'm really looking for resources specific to, attachment style, and I'm really looking for resources specific to that attachment style, because it can kind of get sidelined a little in favor of anxious and avoidant attachment being the 2 dominant insecure attachment styles. And I think that's in part because it's thought to only represent around 5% of the population, so it's obviously the smallest category, although I am a little skeptical as to those statistics. But nevertheless, I am heeding the call in this episode today, offering some insights into the ways in which anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment differ. I did do an episode ages ago, probably 2 years ago, about dismissive avoidant and fearful avoidant attachment and the ways in which those two differ.
[00:01:57]:
So if you're interested in kind of that side of the street, you can search for fearful avoidant attachment in the podcast, and you should be able to find that old episode as well. Okay. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Before I dive into that, an announcement, today is the day Healing Anxious Attachment is open for registration for the 8th round of the program. If you were already on the wait list, be sure to check your emails for the link. And if you didn't make it onto the wait list but you are keen to get in on the early bird pricing, you can still join that list by submitting your email on my website. That should be all relatively easy to find. But, yeah, I would love to see you inside the program.
[00:02:36]:
It really is, in my mind, very worthwhile. Of course, I'm biased. I recognize that. But the 2,000 plus students who've been through the program in the past 2 years can also attest to its value. And so if you're someone who struggles with anxious attachment and you are ready to really commit to making a change and gifting that to yourself, I'd highly recommend that you check it out, and join us now that registration is open. Okay. So let's dive into this conversation around key similarities and differences between anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment. Now I do wanna say at the outset that this is far from being an exhaustive list.
[00:03:11]:
You know, I sat down and brainstormed 5 and stopped there because it was getting long and unwieldy, and I think it'll be a long episode anyway. But I could have easily kept going because, obviously, this stuff is multifaceted. And, you know, I also wanna say at the outset, be wary of labels and generalizations. Now that might sound a little bit, I don't know, hypocritical given that I am speaking about a body of work that has labels and categorizations as a key part of its framework. But I suppose more so a reminder that you don't need to fit into a box. So you might listen to this and go, oh, I see that aspect of myself here, but I'm more aligned with that attachment style over there. I have so many people saying to me, like, is it possible for me to be this? And really, anything's possible. Right? You know what your experience is, so don't feel like you need to decipher yourself, and make yourself make sense, in the context of any given framework.
[00:04:10]:
Rather, we're just looking to understand I've said this before, you might have heard me frame it in this way, how have I learned to keep myself safe in relationships? What are the strategies that I have learned to respond to the relational environment that I find myself in? Okay. That's really all we're talking about with attachment styles. It just so happens that most of the time, people will have a fairly consistent set of strategies that fall into a broad style or pattern. But if you feel like you mix and match and maybe is different in one relationship to the next or one area of life compared to another, none of that is something that you need to solve for. It's all just about recognizing the patterns that we see in our own lives, figuring out how they might be inhibiting us from experiencing the kind of relationships that we want, and learning ways that feel more adapted to where we want to go. Okay. So the first similarity between anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment is that they both experience high anxiety about their relationships. So that might seem fairly obvious, but, really, that is core to anxious attachment, obviously, that there's a lot of preoccupation with the relationship and a lot of, kind of, stress and anxiety around the relationship, and so too is that the case for fearful avoidance.
[00:05:26]:
So while it might not look exactly the same way, and there may be some more internalized anxiety among fearful avoidant attachment, both attachment styles will experience a lot of anxiety around relationships in a general sense that relationships are not safe. The origin story of fearful avoidant versus anxious attachment can be quite different, but there is this common thread of not being able to trust in the safety of relationships, and therefore experiencing a lot of anxiety around relationships, intimate relationships in particular, this sense of something bad's gonna happen. I can't really rest in this space of the relationship. Now where they differ from each other in this respect is that most of the time, anxiously attached people will deal with that anxiety that they experience around their relationship by trying to get as close as possible. Right? They're trying to eliminate any distance, any gap, any uncertainty. They try and pull their partner close and keep them there. It's very much a control strategy in terms of how can I soothe this anxiety that I feel? And for the anxiously attached person, control comes with proximity and closeness. For the fearful avoidant attached person, what you might see is more of a either hot and cold strategy.
[00:06:36]:
So maybe I deal with my anxiety by pulling you close sometimes and pushing you away other times, or it might be, more consistent distancing strategies. They might lean more towards that avoidant end of the spectrum in, you know, I experience so much anxiety, but the way that I deal with that anxiety is through pushing away, through isolation, through avoidance. Right? You'll not see that very often among anxiously attached people, that they deal with their anxiety by pushing someone away, and to the extent that they do push someone away, it's usually a test to see if that person will pull them back. You know, I say to you, I can't do this anymore, only so that you beg me to stay, and that's really what I'm hoping for. Whereas the fearful avoidant, if they're pushing someone away and saying, I can't do this anymore, they might really mean it in that moment because that is their self protective strategy is to push the other person away. Okay. The second similarity between fearful avoidant and anxious attachment is that both attachment styles will share some core wounds, and in particular, fears around abandonment and rejection. So this is very much at the heart of anxious attachment.
[00:07:39]:
You will have heard me speak about that before, this fear of abandonment, that the person we love is maybe going to leave us literally, as in leave the relationship, or just not be there for us when we need them, so we're going to feel kind of emotionally abandoned or dropped. This is also common among fearful avoidant attachment, although maybe it might be less front and center. And what's really key here is that, again, the way that they process that fear or work with that fear for anxiously attached people, the fear of abandonment leads us to over function, work overtime to try and, you know, do everything humanly possible to prevent that abandonment from happening. So again, really trying to keep our partner close. Whereas the fearful avoidant attached person might have such a profound fear of being left, being not good enough, being rejected, that they're much more inclined to adopt a I'm gonna leave you before you can leave me kind of strategy. So they might end the relationship because they're so convinced that if my partner sees who I really am, then they're gonna leave me anyway. So I might as well do that first and maintain this sense of control over the situation and avoid the pain of rejection, the pain of loss, and so they're more likely to process that fear through distancing, through, you know, I'll beat you to it kind of thing. That's very unlikely to happen among anxiously attached people, who, as we've talked about, very rarely initiate the end of a relationship.
[00:09:15]:
And oftentimes, if an anxiously attached person does leave a relationship, it might be to go to another relationship. So they they don't often step into the void just because they're unhappy in the relationship. Okay. The next similarity between anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment is both really struggle to voice needs, to set boundaries, to advocate for themselves in a healthy, secure way in relationships. So, again, we've talked about this a lot in the context of anxious attachment on the show. You know, that I'm just gonna try and be easygoing, people pleasing, approval seeking, trying to fit in, trying to be liked. All of that is well established in the context of anxious attachment, and you may see that as well in fearful avoidant attachment to a point. And I think that this is really the key distinction, is that whereas anxiously attached people will just do that indefinitely, over give to the point of burnout, and they just keep going and going and going.
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While they might quietly be resentful and quietly harbor these stories of, it's so unfair, woe is me, victimhood around, my needs aren't being met, and people violate my boundaries, The fearful avoidant person is much more likely to snap, so they give and give and give, and then they might have this big moment where they almost become enraged, and the other person is seen very much as the enemy, as the person who's taking advantage of me. So that person who they've been giving to, who they've been boundaryless in respect of, all of a sudden, they are seen as this kind of villainous character who's out to get me, who is trying to hurt me. And we can really see the fear of betrayal that so many fearful avoidants have coming up there and driving, oftentimes, a really big response to feeling taken advantage of. And that's, again, where there's a bit of a fork in the road between anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment is, you know, the fearful avoidant might have a big blow up and blow up a relationship, and that can be not just romantic relationships, but friendships or work, might have a big falling out with someone because this story of, this person doesn't respect me, they're taking advantage of me', all of those things can feel so big and so true and so threatening to the fearful avoidant, and that tends to trump whatever value the relationship had. That self protection drive tends to trump that. So we can see there that for the anxiously attached person, no matter how resentful they get, there tends to be this override of, the relationship is still my priority. Even if I'm really unhappy in the relationship, even if I do feel like I'm being taken advantage of, I might stay in it and try to persuade and convince and beg and plead with my partner to show up for me to meet my needs, all of those things, but it's likely to be in more of a kind of fawning way rather than a big fight response, which is what we'll typically see with fearful avoidant attachment. Okay.
[00:12:13]:
That leads nicely into number 4, which is both struggle with emotional regulation and can experience really big extreme emotions. So we know that for anxiously attached people, emotional regulation can be very hard, and there's this sense of, you know, I derive my sense of safety from the relationship feeling okay, from my partner being happy with me, and provided that everything's okay there, I can feel relatively calm. But as soon as I perceive a threat related to my partnership, I start to feel very dysregulated, very out of control, and feel this overwhelming sense that I need to do something in order to fix the situation. Right? It's like, oh no, I'm, you know, on the Titanic and hurtling towards an iceberg, and I need to do something urgently, otherwise everything is going to come crashing down, and the panic can ensue there. For the fearful avoidant, it's probably not quite as directly related to a threat to the relationship. It's more likely to be, I'm perceiving a threat to myself, and oftentimes the relationship will be that threat, or your partner will feel like, this person's out to get me, they're going to hurt me, they don't respect me. There's just some sort of danger that I can't put my finger on, and I need to do something. And that can feel very visceral, and again, very urgent, and can drive really extreme emotions.
[00:13:37]:
You'll often find for fearful avoidant attachment that anger very quickly becomes almost rage, and it's like this you know, very, very big emotional response and can feel like a lot of emotional volatility. And certainly, inwardly, that is what a lot of fearful avoidants will describe, that the internal sense of chaos and feeling out of control is really pronounced. So while they share that emotionality, again, and this is a common theme that you'll see in the way that they differ, is that anxiously attached people do tend to have this sense of, like, big emotions, but I'm using my big emotions to try and get through to you. I'm using my big emotions to try to convey to you how much pain I'm in, in the hope that, you know, you'll change your behavior and you'll see me and everything will be fine again. Whereas, for someone with fearful avoidant attachment, the big emotions can just be kind of unbridled expression of fear, rage, overwhelm, whatever it might be. But it's typically not in this sense of I need to express my feelings, but ultimately in a way where I'm still trying to bring you closer. Again, it really might just be, like, a blowout of emotion and a really strong feeling of this person is my enemy. It's not so calculated, almost, in the way that it can be with anxious attachment of, I'm I'm trying to get through you.
[00:14:57]:
I'm still even though I'm so angry at you, you're so upset or inconsolable, I'm still really, like, yearning for you to wrap me up and tell me everything's gonna be okay and that you love me and you understand. It's not like trying to get validation from them. It is really just pure anger, and it's much more driven from this place of feeling personally threatened by the other. That makes sense when we consider the context, the kind of origin story of fearful avoidant attachment, which is typically the people closest to me were also threatening in some way, so there is this real internal struggle around trusting in the person that we love most. Okay. And the 5th and final similarity and difference is that both anxiously attached people and fearful avoidance will typically struggle with low self worth and shame. So a sense of there being something wrong with me, but fearful avoidance in particular will usually have some sort of story, whether it's front of mind or not, that they're broken, that they're bad, that they're defective, there's something wrong with them, and that can obviously drive a lot of behaviors in relationship. We've talked about that a lot on the podcast before.
[00:16:05]:
So that's a common thread that anxiously attached people and fearful avoidants will share. As a little side note, this is also perhaps what drives both attachment styles to typically be seekers, I would say, of, like, trying to understand themselves. That feeling of brokenness, there's something wrong with me, why is everything so hard for me, can often drive us to look for answers, and so anxiously attached people and fearful avoidants will often be very geared towards personal development and that kind of stuff, because they do have this hunger to understand themselves. Now, where they differ in terms of this low self worth and shame is, I think anxiously attached people, again, common theme here, try to make that feeling go away by trying to get someone to love them and choose them. So, if I can get my partner to really love me, you know, I can be the best partner in the world, and, you know, my partner will think that I'm amazing and will live happily ever after, then I won't have to feel unworthy and unlovable. I won't have to come into contact with that shame because I will have resolved it via getting someone to want me. Right? That tends to be the anxious attachment story, whether it's conscious or not. There's this sense of the way to resolve that wound within me that I am not good enough is to make someone think that I am good enough.
[00:17:27]:
And if I get that validation from them, then maybe I don't have to feel that way anymore. Whereas for the fearful avoidant, I think it's more likely that you'll see someone who struggles with shame and low self worth pushing away anything and anyone that might bring them into contact with that shame. So because the shame is so powerful and so overwhelming, and they're perhaps a little less inclined to attach to people and outsource all of their self worth to what one other person thinks of them, they tend to be a little bit more protective of their self image. That's the the avoidance streak coming in. You might find a fearful avoidant saying things like, I don't want to hurt you, you deserve better than me, or I'm better off alone because all I do is hurt people, I'm so broken, I'm so messed up. It's just best that I don't try in the first place, whereas anxiously attached people pretty much always gonna try and keep trying and keep trying and keep trying, because they do just have such a strong blueprint that, like, love is the answer, relationships are the answer. And no matter how broken they feel with respect to relationships, there is just this very, very strong imperative within them to seek out relationships and to feel comforted by intimate partnerships. Whereas, I think the fearful avoidant is more likely, of course, this isn't going to be true in every single case, but more likely to defend against those feelings of low self worth and shame by blocking intimacy, blocking closeness, whether that's through kind of staying away from relationships, more serious ones, or sabotaging them as they get more serious, more intimate, all of those things, they can just be more of a reluctance to go down a path that would require them to come into contact with that shame and that low self worth. So they may have stronger defenses against that rather than deploying the anxious strategy of just getting someone so close and trying to resolve it through relationship in in a sense of getting someone else to convince me of my worth. Okay. So those were 5 similarities and differences between fearful, avoidant, and anxious attachment. As I said, I feel like I could keep going easily with another 5, maybe I'll have to do a part 2 of this one. Let me know if this has been helpful, and I will certainly consider doing a follow-up or elaborating on these topics because I know, as I said, that there is a lot of interest in it and a lot of appetite for more content on fearful avoidant attachment. So do be sure to let me know if this was helpful. You can send me a message on Instagram.
[00:20:02]:
You can if you're listening on Spotify, you can leave little comments underneath individual episodes. And I should say, if you are someone who identifies maybe partly with anxious attachment, partly with fearful avoidant attachment. I always get questions when I'm launching Healing Anxious Attachment, my program, can you take that program if you're more fearful avoidant? I get that question so much that it's actually in the FAQs on the registration page. In short, I've had a lot of people take healing anxious attachment who either at the outset or, you know, partway through realize that they identify more with fearful avoidant. My honest answer is it's a course for anxiously attached people, and all of the examples are geared towards anxious attachment. But the core tools and practices that I teach in the program are the same ones that I'd be teaching for fearful avoidant attachment. So things like nervous system regulation, things like reprogramming of core beliefs, communication skills, boundaries, all of this stuff is common among the healing process for any insecure attachment style, I would argue. So there's certainly a lot of value still in the program to be gained by someone who maybe identifies more with fearful avoidant attachment, but you may just find that the examples don't fully land with you because they're speaking to the anxious attachment experience.
[00:21:18]:
And as we've talked about today, there are some key points of difference, particularly in how you respond to the fear. So while you might identify with the fear, the way that you, you know, have learned to deal with it might be slightly different. Okay. So thank you so much for joining me. Again, really hope that this has been helpful, and do let me know if it has been. But otherwise, I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks, guys.
[00:21:42]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
On Attachment, attachment styles, relationship coach, Stephanie Rigg, insecure attachment, anxious attachment, fearful avoidant attachment, disorganized attachment, attachment theory, healing anxious attachment, relationships, intimacy, emotional regulation, boundaries, self worth, abandonment, rejection, origin story, personal development, low self worth, shame, nervous system regulation, reprogramming core beliefs, communication skills, people pleasing, core wounds, trust issues, emotional volatility, control strategies, relational anxiety, attachment patterns.