Dismissive Avoidant Attachment
Whew! Welcome back to our continued journey through insecure attachment. Last time we explored the anxious-preoccupied attachment style. This includes your needy and clingy partners who tend to look for signs of rejection. These are the people who may emotionally smother their partner in order to counter those real or perceived signs of rejection. So, what are the other ways that one can be insecurely attached?
There are two other largely accepted ways that one can be insecurely attached. The remaining are both avoidant in contrast to the previous post’s anxious. Today we’re going to explore the Dismissive Avoidant Style.
The hallmark of the Dismissive Avoidant attachment style is an inflated, positive view of the self coupled with a negative view of others. These are the people who don’t “need” other people and view themselves as self-reliant to an extreme. How did they become this way? Before we get into that, let me add the disclaimer here that so many things can impact your attachment! You may have been securely attached as a child but through trauma and life events become insecurely attached, but for our purposes we’re going to speak in terms of the most typical. For those who have a dismissive avoidant attachment style, most typically, as a baby and young child, had a primary caregiver who was unavailable to them. This may have occurred either emotionally or physically, showing as either being emotionally withdrawn or physically absent when the child was distressed.
As adults, those who are dismissively-avoidant attached tend to actively avoid relationships. They find that others are not necessary and desire a great deal of independence. They tend to hold those that are trying to get close to them at arm’s length and do not prioritize closely connected, intimate relationships. When people who have this attachment style find themselves in relationships, they tend to dismiss strong feelings including their own. How aware are those that have this attachment style of their conceptualization of the world? It depends, sometimes they fully avoid close relationships, or, alternatively, they actively seek out emotionally open partners to help fill their own void, but then shut down when they are faced with strong emotions.
As you might suspect this can be problematic especially when they are partnered with either a securely attached partner or, more-so, an anxious-preoccupied partner. It develops a pulling away in a relationship that can be damaging or problematic in a relationship in an equal though opposite way as the anxiously-preoccupied attached person developing a pushing and smothering in a relationship.
For the individual, they can become securely attached through the experience of therapy and an increase in experiences where they find that relationships with others have worth. For the couple where one or both partners have a dismissive avoidant attachment style, couples therapy with a therapist that does Emotionally Focused Therapy can be very helpful to shift your interactional cycle and attachment style to something that is healthier and works better for your dynamic. If you’re in the NYC area and this sounds like something you’re interested in, give me a call and let’s talk!
We have one more post to explore the final insecure attachment style and then we’re going to dig into the impact of interactions and ways to shift those! Stay tuned!
