The anxious-avoidant attachment style is often due to trauma that includes physical abuse, chaotic or scary environments, and/or inconsistent care. This can help explain why they are both attracted to and fearful of closeness.
Avoidant attachment develops when an infant or young child has a parent or caregiver who is consistently emotionally unavailable or unresponsive to their needs. Infants with an avoidant attachment style may also have faced repeated discouragement from crying or expressing outward emotion.
Emotional avoidance is a common reaction to trauma. In fact, emotional avoidance is part of the avoidance cluster of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, serving as a way for people with PTSD to escape painful or difficult emotions.
Disorganized/disoriented attachment, also referred to as fearful-avoidant attachment, stems from intense fear, often as a result of childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse. Adults with this style of insecure attachment tend to feel they don't deserve love or closeness in a relationship.
Attachment trauma may occur in the form of a basic interpersonal neglect (omission trauma) or in the form of physical, mental or sexual abuse (commission trauma). In many cases, both trauma types are combined. Attachment trauma often leads to a “disoriented- disorganized” attachment.
Parents are more likely to show these behaviors if they are very young or inexperienced, or have a mental illness. Children can also develop avoidant attachment styles due to adoption or parents' illness, divorce, or death.
Avoidant attachment style is an insecure attachment style. Avoidantly attached people generally have a dismissive attitude towards close relationships*. They are often uncomfortable with intimacy and may seem emotionally distant. They may also have difficulty trusting others and may be hesitant to get too close.
Abuse at the hands of someone with an avoidant personality disorder often includes psychological and emotional abuse. Don't be afraid to reach out for help, pursue support groups for loved ones, seek your own therapy, separate, or leave the relationship completely.
Avoidant Personality Disorder Causes and Risk Factors
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.
Anxious attachment is associated with dependent, histrionic, and borderline disorders, whereas avoidant attachment is associated with schizoid and avoidant disorders.
You feel you can't bring your emotions or your real self into your relationships because you fear you'll be dismissed, minimized, shamed, or abandoned. Further compounding the pain and confusion you feel while in a relationship, you tend to dismiss and control your own feelings.
People with an avoidant attachment style may have had parents who made them feel neglected. This attachment style can also develop if parents were emotionally unavailable or withdrawn. People with avoidant attachment styles might have difficulty asking for help or expressing emotion.
People may show avoidance behaviors in a relationship for many reasons. They often date back to a person's early relationship dynamics and attachment style. Avoidant attachment may come from having strict, emotionally distant, neglectful, or dismissive caregivers.
A person with an avoidant attachment style is going to crave the feeling of being loved and supported, just like anyone else. The key difference is that they'll also feel a compulsion to distance themselves from those they're getting close to.
These attachment styles are transferred to adult romantic relationships. Avoidants are not all narcissists but they do have an ability to detach emotionally from the relationship which triggers an “anxious” person's attachment anxiety.
An avoidant person, with no one else to blame, may resort to narcissism (a falsely elevated sense of self), introversion (unaccountable to others), or perfectionism (rigidly accountable to self). The narcissist elevates self at the expense of others, believing self to be superior.
A dismissive-avoidant person cannot form supportive relationships. They are not comfortable providing support to friends or romantic partners and they feel less obligated to do so. Their view of those who seek support is that they are dependent, weak, emotionally unstable, and immature.
Parents of children with an avoidant attachment tend to be emotionally unavailable or unresponsive to them a good deal of the time. They disregard or ignore their children's needs, and can be especially rejecting when their child is hurt or sick.
Avoidant personality disorder usually isn't diagnosed in people younger than 18 years of age like many other personality disorders, as there should be evidence that these patterns of behavior are enduring and inflexible and don't readily fade with time.
Avoidant personality disorder is not usually diagnosed in individuals younger than 18 years; however, most patients report an onset in childhood or adolescence, and many report continued social anxiety throughout their lives.
Attachment trauma is considered to be a traumatic experience an infant or child has when a primary caregiver does not or cannot provide adequate care, affection, and comfort. When the caregiver ignores a baby's distress, for instance, this can be a traumatic experience.
Attachment disorders are nearly always a symptom of C-PTSD. C-PTSD oftentimes looks like this: attachment issues and relationship struggles, intimacy issues, flashbacks, mood swings, anxiety, depression, addiction issues, eating disorders, personality disorder traits.
This is known as Fearful- Avoidant attachment and can be a factor in victims feeling unwilling to leave their abusive partner as well as being abusive themselves (Dutton et al., 1994). risk of entering an intimate relationship with an abusive partner in adulthood.