Understanding Insecure Attachment: Dismissive Avoidants
The internet's most reviled attachment style
When it comes to understanding our attachment style, we can talk in terms of the evolutionary origins, genetic dispositions, or conditioning/nurture, but it seems most helpful to focus on what we can somewhat objectively observe and reflect on, which is why the focus always comes to what happened to you.
People who have a dismissive avoidant (DA) attachment style generally come from a background of emotional neglect in childhood. This in turn results in a neurobiology that is very much tuned towards keying into information around their own internal worlds and being less tuned in on information about other people's worlds. Having had their emotions dismissed, neglected, or shut down as a child, the dismissive avoidant didn’t have or fundamentally lacked, guidance through the difficult emotional situations they’ve encounter throughout their development. In order to survive those painful situations, dismissive avoidants became conditioned to attune to themselves —there was no one forcing them to develop an understanding of the interconnectedness of the family unit or of close relationships. This means they struggle more with commitment, closeness, and conflict than other insecure attachment styles.
If you've ever wondered why a dismissive avoidant partner does or did things like walk out of the room when you're talking, stare at their phone, or simply tune you out when you are sharing information, it’s because their brains developed differently than yours. They use predictable suppression responses to distract, a primary tool for emotional suppression. It is more than likely that as children, they tended to pour themselves into television or books or other activities that helped them suppress or distract from deep feelings that they did not know how to process, and that still goes on to the present day as a hard set safety protocol. This also explains why most dismissive avoidants are workaholics or hobbyists.
Dismissive avoidants learn to keep themselves safe by distracting, suppressing, and avoiding, so once in a relationship, their biggest need from their partner/within the relationship tends to be peace, harmony, and stability. Given their background of emotional neglect, they avoid vulnerability and genuine intimacy, which feels foreign and unsafe to them. They have a propensity to create too much distance, struggle to prioritize their partner, and struggle to meet their partner’s needs inside of the relationship. This is largely in part because they also don’t even know what they need inside a relationship, and therefore don't express their needs, or otherwise feel they have no needs (other than the right amount of space and independence). They struggle more than any other attachment style with criticism because they don't truly understand their own emotions— why? Again, at least in part because there was no room for their emotions in childhood.
Given their lack of connection to their own emotions, they struggle with other people’s negative emotions, so even just simple emotional expression can be experienced as criticism. They can get really defensive when you just try to express something that's happening in the relationship and how it makes you feel. It’s more than likely that their parents took an avoidant approach to conflict as well, or perhaps there was constant fighting such that they develop a deep hatred and fear of conflict. If there was a disagreement, it may have been that everybody was encouraged to split up and go their own ways until everyone cooled off, and the problems would be left unresolved until everything blew over, at which point they would reunite, acting like nothing happened. So this is how DA’s will be geared to behave in conflict as well. Their blueprint for a relationship really is, “ you go off and do your thing and deal with your feelings, I’ll go off and do my thing and deal with my feelings, and then we can come back together every now and then, but only if it’s peaceful. Then, we can have some fun.” Unfortunately, this is just not a realistic blueprint for how relationships work. Even healthy relationships have conflict; it is a normal part of intimacy. But DA’s often feel like conflict means there's something extremely wrong, and that this environment you’ve created by bringing up your concerns is triggering their nervous system and making them feel unsafe, so you are the problem. This results in their deactivation and avoidant behaviors, and internally, they question whether you are right for them, if you can make them feel so unsafe.
Dismissive Avoidants often have this “I am who I am, and if you don’t like it, leave” type of mentality, and this generally develops after they're in a committed relationship for a while. To them, every time a partner brings up what they feel, or what's going wrong, or a need that they want to have met, the dismissive avoidant feels unfairly criticized and attacked. Internally, when they are faced with these challenges, any attempt try to self reflect in order to consider change (which is the very first step to change, generally)will result in hitting their defectiveness wound almost immediately. Self reflection immediately turns to feelings of defectiveness and inadequacy, which then results in shame, which triggers their automatic nervous system response of suppressing, and going into “flight” response, and disassociation from their feelings. If subconsciously you feel extremely defective and incapable of giving your partner what they need, you’re going to take the stance of, “well, I guess I am who I am” rather than attempt something different, which feels unsafe.
What needs to be emphasized with DA’s on their own terms is healthy emotional processing. Because they are so used to suppressing their emotion, those connections in the brain really are hard wired. They never had any practice in healthy emotional processing and validation, so they don’t know what it feels like and have no ability to do so, until someone teaches them how or they recognize the need to learn. They also have to be able to regulate their nervous systems with someone else’s vulnerability so that they can work through conflict effectively because perpetual peace and harmony just isn’t realistic. They must do this on their own terms. As a partner of a DA, the key to be able to disarm is to really try and bring up problems and concerns without judgment, criticism, or blame. As their partners, we need to really empathize and have compassion for their experiences of feeling overly criticized. We also must recognize we do not have the power to change anyone, and must work separately on earning our attachment security, so we are not so reliant and focused on our partners to show up for us the way that we want, and instead, we can show up for ourselves.