Fearful-avoidant attachment is a pattern of behavior in relationships that is marked by both high anxiety and high avoidance, wherein a person both craves connection but also fears getting too close to anyone.
Anxious-Avoidant Attachment Style
Anxious-avoidants are not only afraid of intimacy and commitment, but they distrust and lash out emotionally at anyone who tries to get close to them. Anxious-avoidants often spend much of their time alone and miserable, or in abusive or dysfunctional relationships.
Secure attachment often leads to stable, fulfilling connections and healthy boundaries with others. Anxious-Preoccupied: An anxious-preoccupied attachment style may involve high anxiety levels and low avoidance. Anxious-preoccupied attachments can create relationships that lack trust or thrive on a "chase."
Avoidant attachment is an attachment style a child develops when their parent or main caretaker doesn't show care or responsiveness past providing essentials like food and shelter. The child disregards their own struggles and needs in order to maintain peace and keep their caregiver close by.
On the other hand, the avoidant person will be attracted to the anxious person as they provide endless amounts of love, intimacy and warmth, something they perhaps didn't experience growing up.
Fearful-avoidant attachment is a pattern of behavior in relationships that is marked by both high anxiety and high avoidance, wherein a person both craves connection but also fears getting too close to anyone. Also known as disorganized attachment, it's the rarest of the four attachment styles.
Social anxiety disorder (social phobia) involves high levels of anxiety, fear and avoidance of social situations due to feelings of embarrassment, self-consciousness and concern about being judged or viewed negatively by others.
Anxiously attached people tend to be overly preoccupied with their partners and whether they love them back, while avoidants equate intimacy with a loss of independence and deploy distancing strategies.
A person with fearful avoidant attachment may behave in a way that shows they want to be close to a person. However, they may also distance themselves from others. One day, they may be incredibly affectionate and close to someone, then the next they may avoid communication and act cold and dismissive.
Anxious and avoidant relationships are considered unhealthy or insecure attachments. They can often lead to relationships that cause you great anxiety, distress, or emotional pain. Alternatively, you can also form attachments to objects. These attachment objects can play a role in how safe you feel.
Most attachment specialists believe that the disorganized attachment style is the most difficult of the three insecure attachment styles to treat because it incorporates both the anxious and the avoidant styles.
Sadly, this attachment style is often seen in children that have experienced trauma or abuse. The fearful avoidant attachment style occurs in about 7% of the population and typically develops in the first 18 months of life.
Avoidant Personality Disorder Causes and Risk Factors
Having another mental health condition like depression or anxiety. A family history of depression, anxiety, or personality disorders. Childhood abuse, trauma, or neglect. Trauma including suffering an extreme incident of ridicule or rejection in childhood.
The Link Between Avoidance Coping and Anxiety
When people use this strategy to consciously or unconsciously avoid something that causes them anxiety, they usually create a situation where they need to face it more. This outcome can be avoided through active coping but it can be difficult to do at first.
In the worst-case scenario, the chronic clashes between anxious and avoidant partners escalate to the point that the relationship is toxic and destructive. This typically takes the form of verbal and emotional abuse. If it reaches this point, that's how you know when to end the relationship.
If you think you're always letting people down and emotionally closed off you'll keep attracting that type of dynamic. And that's why an anxious attachment and avoidant attachment are so perfect for each other. The relationship allows them to continue thinking those things about themselves.
Avoidant personality disorder
We all have things, places or people we don't like, or which make us anxious. But if these things cause so much anxiety that you struggle to maintain relationships in your life, you may get a diagnosis of avoidant personality disorder (sometimes also called anxious personality disorder).
Individuals high in anxious attachment are more likely to engage in emotional manipulation and other harmful behaviors intended to prevent a partner from leaving the relationship, which in turn is linked to reduced relationship satisfaction, according to new research published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.
Both avoidant and anxious attachment are both insecure types of attachment. Just over 50% of people are securely attached to their partner. The securely attached are the least likely to be unfaithful as they do not worry about their partner straying or the strength of the relationship.