"Disorganized attachment style is said to be the most difficult of the three insecure attachment styles to treat or change," Feuerman says. But it's important to know that your attachment style can shift over time — you can develop a secure attachment style by changing the way you act and think.
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.
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.
More recently, Hudson and colleagues demonstrated that people can intentionally change their attachment style to become less anxious or less avoidant by setting a goal to do so and essentially “faking it till they make it," though whether that change is lasting remains an open question.
However, a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that people can actually start to change their attachment style over time and feel better about their relationships—and it might not be as hard as we think.
Avoidant partners behave in ways that make them feel safe, often stemming from childhood. While these behaviors are hard-wired, change and compromise are possible with time, patience, and support.
That said, most people will feel complete with their work after 1-2 years of weekly therapy to change your attachment style. Even after therapy, you will likely need to work to understand and adjust your behaviors in relationships throughout your lifetime.
The anxiously attached person craves more connection and closeness and feels triggered by the avoidant person pulling away. Meanwhile the avoidant person feels triggered by the anxious person's desire for closeness because they themselves value their independence and freedom and fear being consumed.
Avoidant partners may fail to acknowledge your feelings or rarely express their own emotions. They may not know how to handle emotional conversations or issues. If you have an emotional response, they may tell you it makes no sense or try to reason you out of your feelings.
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.
According to psychologists, people with avoidant attachment styles are individuals uncomfortable with intimacy and are therefore more likely to multiply sexual encounters and cheat.
The results indicated that anxious and avoidant attachment styles significantly predicted both history of divorce and single versus partnered relationship status.
Anxious-avoidant attachment types (also known as the “fearful or disorganized type”) bring together the worst of both worlds. 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.
Fearful avoidant attachment is one of four adult attachment styles. Those with this insecure style of attachment have a strong desire for close relationships, but distrust others and fear intimacy. This leads people with a fearful-avoidant attachment to avoid the very relationships they crave.
They may seem emotionally distant and unstable, but their love can be genuine. In general, love avoidant people often become closer to love addicts. It is simply like the opposite attracts. While one person craves love, another is hesitant!
Studies have found that avoidant attachers are less likely to date or seek relationships. In other words, they are more prone to having smaller social circles and, thus, may stay single for longer periods of time. Avoidant attachers are thus more susceptible to social loneliness and isolation.
As a result of turning off their emotions, avoidant attachers are not likely to over-reflect on why a relationship didn't work out. Yet, interestingly, this reaction means that avoidant attachers may struggle to move on from previous relationships as quickly as they could if they had dealt with their emotions head-on.
Gaslighting is a form of abuse used by love avoidants instilling the love addict's extreme sense of anxiety. And confusion to the point they no longer trust their own memory, perception, or judgment. The techniques love avoidants use in gaslighting are similar to those used in brainwashing, interrogation, and torture.
Once again, people with a dismissive avoidant style showed that they did care about relationships. Dismissive avoidant students reported higher self-esteem and positive mood than non-dismissives—but only when told that surgency predicts future interpersonal success.
At which point, the avoidant party undergoes a complete seachange. Their greatest fear, that of being engulfed in love, disappears at a stroke and reveals something that is normally utterly submerged in their character: a fear of being abandoned.
Avoidants are not “emotionally empty” and they do not hate love. Instead, they are afraid of being close to someone and want to avoid getting hurt. Being open to another person makes you vulnerable, and an avoidant person is scared of being rejected, abandoned, or hurt by trusting someone else.
Love Avoidants recognize and are attracted to the Love Addict's strong fear of being left because Love Avoidants know that all they have to do to trigger their partner's fear is threaten to leave.
The truth is, we've found that most exes who are avoidant will usually not reach out to an ex on their own accord because it usually triggers two things within them; A feeling of trauma and vulnerability that they aren't comfortable with.
The Traits of Avoidant Attachment In Adulthood
Essentially, they choose the flight mode of the fight or flight response. However, this isn't to suggest that someone with an avoidant attachment style doesn't crave love – they do. They've just been taught from an early age that the people they love will disappoint them.
This study suggests trauma experienced by a caregiver or a child can change attachment style. Trauma in early childhood and experienced later in life can contribute to a change in an individual's attachment style.