Avoidant Attachment: The Blindspot That Keeps You Repeating The Same Relationship Mistakes
Summary
TLDRIn this insightful video, Heidi Priebe delves into attachment theory, focusing on the cognitive errors made by individuals with avoidant attachment styles. She explains how these individuals often rely on analyzing patterns rather than addressing emotional blind spots, leading to repetitive relationship issues. Priebe emphasizes the importance of balancing analytical skills with emotional awareness to break unhealthy relationship cycles and set meaningful boundaries.
Takeaways
- 🔄 Heidi starts a series on cognitive errors made by insecure attachment styles in relationships.
- 🔍 Avoidant attachment individuals tend to focus on analyzing patterns rather than addressing emotional blind spots.
- 🧐 Avoidant individuals often rely on cause-and-effect thinking to understand and improve their relationships.
- 💡 The strength of avoidant attachment is in pattern recognition and logical analysis, but it can lead to overlooking emotional responses.
- 🚴♂️ The metaphor of riding a tricycle with one deflated wheel represents the imbalance between logical analysis and emotional awareness.
- 😖 Emotional pain is often hidden from conscious awareness for those with dismissive avoidant attachment, leading to a lack of emotional processing.
- 🤔 Avoidant individuals may struggle to make decisions when emotional processing is impaired due to early life experiences.
- 🛡️ Dismissive avoidant individuals may use defense mechanisms like frustration and contempt to protect themselves from emotional pain.
- 💔 Emotional pain is necessary for discernment and setting boundaries in relationships.
- 🚫 Avoidant attachment can lead to a cycle of accepting unhealthy situations without recognizing the need for change.
- 🌟 The key to breaking cycles of bad behavior is to integrate and communicate negative emotions, not just rely on logical strategies.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the channel run by Heidi Priebe?
-The channel focuses on attachment theory and how individuals can work with their own patterning to improve their lives and relationships.
Why do people tend to repeat the same relationship patterns despite reflecting on their past relationships?
-People often double down on their strengths instead of addressing their blind spots, which can lead to repeating the same patterns in future relationships.
What is the main issue with focusing solely on one's strengths in relationships?
-Focusing only on strengths without addressing blind spots is like riding a tricycle with one deflated wheel, leading to a lack of balance and progress in relationships.
What is the area of strength for those with avoidant attachment styles?
-Individuals with avoidant attachment styles are strong in analyzing cause and effect, understanding sequences of events, and pattern recognition.
How does the avoidant attachment style affect the way people process emotional pain?
-People with avoidant attachment styles learned from a young age to downplay emotional pain and focus more on understanding the cause and effect of events.
Why is it important to balance analytical skills with emotional awareness in relationships?
-Emotional awareness helps make intelligent decisions, and without it, individuals may get stuck in loops of unhealthy relationships due to a lack of emotional discernment.
What is the common misconception about dismissive avoidant attachment?
-A common misconception is that dismissive avoidant individuals purposely avoid or ignore their emotional pain, when in reality, their brain hides it from their conscious awareness.
How does the brain of a dismissive avoidant individual typically respond to emotional pain?
-The brain of a dismissive avoidant individual often covers up emotional pain with frustration or contempt, leading to a defense mechanism that dismisses the emotional impact of situations.
What is the significance of allowing oneself to feel emotional pain in breaking cycles of bad behavior?
-Allowing oneself to feel emotional pain provides discernment and helps identify harmful situations that need to be avoided, leading to healthier choices in relationships.
What is the role of negative emotions in making decisions?
-Negative emotions play a crucial role in decision-making by signaling what is harmful or undesirable, thus guiding individuals towards healthier choices.
How can integrating pain and communicating it to others help in attachment healing?
-Integrating and communicating pain can help individuals identify blind spots, receive valuable feedback, and develop a more balanced approach to relationships, fostering personal growth.
Outlines
🧐 Understanding Avoidant Attachment Styles
Heidi Priebe introduces a series on attachment theory, focusing on the cognitive errors made by insecure attachment styles, particularly avoidant attachment. She emphasizes the importance of reflecting on past relationships to break repetitive patterns. The structural problem is identified as a tendency to focus on strengths rather than addressing blind spots. Avoidant individuals are characterized by their analytical skills, focusing on cause and effect, which can be beneficial but incomplete without balancing emotional awareness.
🤔 The Analytical Strength and Emotional Blind Spot
This paragraph delves into the strengths of those with avoidant attachment styles, such as pattern recognition and understanding sequences of events, which are crucial for logical decision-making. However, it highlights the blind spot of being emotionally disconnected, which can lead to decision-making loops. Emotional awareness is necessary for intelligent choices, and dismissive avoidant individuals often suppress negative emotions, leading to a lack of emotional learning from experiences.
😣 The Impact of Emotional Suppression on Relationships
Heidi explains how dismissive avoidant attachment strategies can lead to emotional suppression, causing individuals to miss out on the valuable lessons that emotional pain can provide. The brain's defense mechanisms can result in overlooking emotional responses, leading to repeated relationship issues. The paragraph illustrates this with a metaphor of a 'little man' extracting pain from memories, preventing individuals from fully processing the emotional impact of past events.
🛡️ Letting Down Defenses to Feel Emotional Pain
The final paragraph discusses the importance of letting down psychological defenses to feel emotional pain consciously. It recounts a personal experience where Heidi allowed herself to be emotionally vulnerable during a conflict, leading to a clearer understanding of boundaries and discernment. The summary stresses the value of negative emotions in breaking cycles of bad behavior and choosing healthier interactions, advocating for a balance between logic and emotional awareness.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Attachment Theory
💡Cognitive Errors
💡Avoidant Attachment Style
💡Blind Spots
💡Emotional Processing
💡Cause and Effect
💡Emotional Dysregulation
💡Defensive Mechanisms
💡Emotional Pain
💡Boundaries
💡Emotional Discernment
Highlights
Heidi Priebe introduces a series on cognitive errors made by insecure attachment styles in relationships.
People often reflect on past relationships to avoid repeating patterns but fail to address their blind spots.
The structural problem is doubling down on strengths rather than addressing weaknesses.
Avoidant attachment styles focus on cause and effect thinking to understand relationship dynamics.
Understanding behavioral patterns is crucial but must be balanced with emotional awareness.
Emotion is key to making intelligent decisions, even in logical scenarios.
Dismissive avoidant attachment strategies can lead to ignoring negative emotions in relationships.
The brain may cover up emotional pain with frustration or contempt as a defense mechanism.
Avoidant individuals may not realize the emotional impact of their interactions.
Emotional pain is essential for discernment and setting boundaries in relationships.
Heidi shares a personal strategy of letting down psychological defenses to feel emotional pain.
Allowing oneself to feel emotional pain can lead to clearer boundary setting.
The importance of integrating pain and communicating it in relationships is emphasized.
Heidi discusses the challenge of overcoming the belief that communicating negative emotions is useless.
The video concludes with an invitation for viewers to share their thoughts and questions.
Transcripts
hey guys I'm Heidi Priebe welcome back
to my Channel or welcome if you're new
here on this channel we talk about
attachment Theory and in general how we
can work with our own patterning to help
us have healthier better lives and
relationships so today I want to kick
off a series about the types of mistakes
or the types of cognitive errors that
each attachment style each insecure
attachment style that is tends to make
repetitively in relationships that can
keep you feeling like you're kind of
going in circles
so I think that the first thing to note
here is that everybody of every
attachment Style no matter how much this
doesn't seem to be true tends to get out
of a relationship and do some reflection
right like they'll look at what did I
not do well what made that relationship
go the way it did and how can I make
sure that I'm not repeating those same
patterns in future relationships and
then what happens you get into another
relationship it seems very different on
the surface and then six months or two
years down the road you're right back in
the same situation repeating the same
old patterns and I think that the reason
this happens for every attachment style
it's going to be different in its
expression but the same in its
structural problem so the structural
problem here is that most of us when we
go to make changes tend to double down
on our strengths instead of tending to
what is in our blind spots and when we
do this especially when it comes to
relationship patterns it's kind of like
riding a try bicycle with one wheel
that's completely deflated and another
wheel that's kind of half pumped up and
so we're going okay I remember what I
did to get the air into that tire and it
was better when I put the air in that
tire right so now if I can just inflate
it the rest of the way then I'm going to
be able to smoothly shift my life in my
relationships in the direction that I
want them to go in the problem is that
that totally deflated wheel is what's in
your blind spot so you can inflate that
other wheel you can get really good at
your strengths but until you are
balancing out your strengths with the
opposite and equally important skill
you're just gonna get on that tricycle
and go perpetually in circles right so
this video is about drawing your
awareness if you have an avoidant
attachment style to what it is that's in
your blind spot and how you can start
working with it in order to get off that
Merry-Go-Round of unhealthy
relationships or unhealthy friendships
or frustrating work situations whatever
it is your life that you feel like is
interpersonally going in circles we're
going to tackle through this video so
first I want to start off with talking
about what that area of strength is for
those who have avoidant attachment
Styles so what is that wheel that you
are trying perpetually to inflate more
and more and more because you see that
you're getting some benefit out of it so
those who have avoidant attachment
Styles learned from a very young age
that processing emotional pain was not
as important as understanding why things
happened the way they did so you learn
to rely very heavily from a very young
age on cause and effect or if then
thinking right you learn to analyze
sequences of events and understand what
led to what in order to produce what
outcome and this is probably still the
same type of reasoning that you use to
try to understand what happens in your
relationships and how you can have
better relationships so you might get
out of a bad situation and go okay
I remember all of these fights that we
had all of these conflicts that cropped
up all of these ways that things
happened what can I do to make sure that
that sequence of events does not repeat
itself in my next relationship and what
you're going to be naturally inclined to
do is to kind of review the sequence of
your relationship almost like it's a
movie or like it is a clinical video you
have been assigned to watch and make
sense out of and so you'll go back over
the relationship in your head and be
like okay
these types of interactions tended to
lead to these types of fights when I
would do this my partner would do this
and you can get really good at
identifying these behavioral patterns
including what your inciting role was in
those behavioral patterns so what you
did that would lead to a certain counter
response in your partner and you can
actually take this so far as to go okay
now that I understand what happened the
way it happened I could even go back to
that same relationship and I bet I could
do it better and that can be a worm that
gets in your brain if not with that
particular person but with the next
person like you can get so enamored with
your own analyzes that it can almost
feel like okay now I'm excited to go
back and try again and see if changing
my Approach and doing things differently
in this specific way is going to work
now is this a bad thing no that is a
phenomenal skill right it's really
really important in relation to
understand sequencing and pattern
recognition and knowing which things
lead to which other things you
absolutely need and should never lose
that skill secure people use that skill
all the time but the problem is that if
you cannot balance out that skill with
an awareness of your own emotional
responses to those situations you're
going to get stuck in these Loops
because it is our emotional responses
that help us make Intelligent Decisions
so there have been many cases throughout
the history of psychology where people
experience significant brain damage in
areas of their brain that are heavily
related to emotion processing and one of
the biggest problems if that happens is
that these people become incapable of
making decisions because in order to
make good decisions or any decisions at
all we have to be in touch with our
emotional state right and this
completely applies to logical decisions
like let's say I decide that I want to
save a very significant portion of my
take-home income every month and put it
into a retirement savings account and in
order to do that I have to give up a lot
of things that I want and that might be
what I associate with my kind of
impulsive emotional state right like I
can't just order food whenever I want it
I can't just go on vacation whenever I
want to I'm making The Logical decision
to handle my money responsibly but
what's really motivating that what's
really motivating that is I like the
feeling of knowing that I have some
security for myself later in life it
allows me to relax it allows my nervous
system to regulate better because I'm no
longer feeling chronically stressed
about what's going to happen in my
retirement so I might not be using
impulsive emotion to make decisions but
I am using emotion I want to have the
feeling of security and stability now
here's where attachment style comes into
play here at a very young age those
using dismissive avoidant attachment
strategies learned that it's not that
important to focus on negative emotion
so in non-attachment related Realms you
can easily use negative emotion to make
decisions right it felt bad when I knew
that I had no savings so I'm going to
start piling up some savings but in
attachment relationships you learned
very early on that when you were to
focus on and really get loud about
expressing your negative emotions it
probably meant you would either get
rejected or you would not get what you
want or you would even get punished in
some situations if it worked for you you
would have done it you would have cried
more you would have tugged on your
parents sleeves more you would have made
more of a Ruckus about when you weren't
feeling good if you got caregiving in
return from that but because some part
of that did not work for you at an early
age you learned instead to notice
patterns notice event sequencing and
understand how to get what you wanted
via paying attention to what happened
when and again good skill secure people
use it all the time but secure people
also know how to be present with absorb
and learn from negative emotion and this
is your greatest blind spot because it's
not like you have all of this negative
emotion that you're just shoving down
and purposefully avoiding or ignoring
right that is the totally uninformed
stereotype that I think a lot of people
have about dismissive avoidance your
pain is not something you're hiding from
other people it's something your brain
is hiding from you when you have
emotional pain as a dismissive avoidant
when it is in your conscious awareness
you tend to be just as willing as the
next person at least the next secure
person to process and work through that
but the ways in which you are in pain in
your relationships often are not
apparent to you because your brain has
learned to cover it up with frustration
and contempt so instead of feeling
wounded or feeling hurt when something
painful happens to you your brain has
developed this defense mechanism of
going okay this person who did that
thing to me who said that cruel thing to
me was not thinking logically or clearly
and I can Comfort myself with the fact
that I know better than them and this
leads you into a lot of relationships
where you end up let's say getting
accused of things a lot or having people
blow up on you a lot and the way that
you protect yourself from feeling the
pain is by going this doesn't matter to
me because the things this person are
expressing are a logical irrational and
I don't need to pay attention to them
now it's not that you're wrong in this
sense it is likely that you're dealing
with people who have emotional
dysregulation issues because insecurely
attached people tend to get together
right but the problem is that you get
stuck in these Cycles because you are
not being present with and processing
the pain that these Cycles are causing
you so sometimes the way that I like to
explain dismissive avoidant attachment
to other people especially if you're
coming from a more preoccupied mindset
it's like imagine that every night when
you go to sleep this little man breaks
into your room and he sticks a syringe
into your head and extracts like 70
percent of the pain from your memories
so as soon as you're not in a situation
that is activating and that's causing
you to become frustrated overwhelmed
distressed it's like your brain kind of
just neutralizes the memory in your own
head because you learned it's not
important to focus on the negative right
it's not important to keep the memory of
negative events super strong in your
mind and in fact it's often adaptive to
do the opposite and to kind of take the
emotional charge out of your memories
without realizing you're doing that so
that you can get better at analyzing
them and figuring out the sequence of
events that you might not have noticed
transpiring in the moment because you
are distracted in the Moment by being in
a heightened emotional state now the
problem is when you go back over these
memories in a more regulated State what
you're not keeping active in your
awareness is how emotionally activated
you were at the time of all of this
going down and so what you're not
factoring in for the future is the fact
that you will once again become
emotionally activated it in these
situations and this will give way to the
situation playing out differently than
you might expect while you're sitting
there thinking about it right now now of
course you do not get emotionally
activated the same way let's say an
anxious preoccupied person does so you
might not be yelling and screaming but
what your activation might look like or
deactivation in attachment terms is
looking at this person and being unable
to really hear or listen to what they're
saying because that defensive side of
you is coming up and going this doesn't
make sense I need to point out all of
the ways in which this doesn't make
sense because in the past being able to
do that was what kept me safe right but
in this situation it's going to just
polarize you and your partner so if
you're not accounting for your
deactivation in that high stress moment
you're not going to be able to carry
through the plan that you had maybe
identified when you were analyzing what
went wrong in the past so this kind of
reminds me of the show The Rehearsal by
Nathan Fielder who's a comedian very
like morally a questionable show but
very entertaining where basically he
gets people to rehearse interpersonal
interactions they're going to have with
people in their lives that they think
are going to be difficult or might not
go well and in the first episode of the
show he has this guy who he runs through
like all of these iterations of how this
difficult conversation he needs to have
might go in the future but he forgets to
prepare him for the emotional side of
things for the fact that in that
situation this man is going to
experience a heightened emotional
response so then he does all these
elaborate things to get the rehearsal to
try to match the stakes that the
person's going to be in emotionally at
the time that they're having this
conversation but the point here is that
this is also often your error if you
have an avoidant attachment style is
you're not factoring in what the emotion
of the moment is going to be doing to
your attachment system and what defenses
are going to be popping up for you as a
consequence of that and the biggest
problem with your own defense system is
that it Shields you from feeling the
pain of what is happening to you in the
moment right so when your partner is
dysregulated they're yelling at you
maybe they're saying nasty things about
your character it's unlikely that you
are feeling the pain of that what's
likely is that your defensive and
dismissing them either out loud or
inside of your own mind and the problem
is that because the pain of the
situation is not really getting through
your defense wall you're unable to learn
the important lesson that this type of
situation is painful and ought to be
avoided because unfortunately your
emotional system can be impacted even by
things that don't in theory on the
surface make sense now I have
historically aired avoidant on the
attachment spectrum and this has by far
been one of my biggest and most frequent
mistakes is thinking that I can go back
into these high pressure situations with
a better more logical plan and have it
turn out differently not accounting for
what it feels like in the moment and so
the last time I had a really high
pressure emotional situation that I felt
was unwarranted I felt the other person
was being ridiculous unreasonable
disregulated I didn't have to listen to
what they were saying because what they
were saying was not coming from a
rational place and I chose to try
something different and go okay I'm
gonna picture myself and my avoidant
defenses that I feel coming online right
now in the form of me criticizing this
person in my head as kind of like fists
that I'm putting up right like I'm now
kind of psychologically like this and
nothing they say is going to really get
through to me because I'm ready for an
attack and then I pictured myself taking
those fists psychologically and just
completely letting them drop away and
just get hit by this person like just
take everything they're saying is like
blow to the face blow to the stomach
blow to the side right
and I walked away from the interaction
being like
I feel beat up psychologically like I
just let this person take a whole bunch
of hits at me and yeah it hurt like they
were being unreasonable I don't believe
that what they were saying was true but
it is hurtful to me that somebody said
that to me anyways somebody I love and
care about was that disrespectful to me
that hurts even if what they're saying
is not true it hurts and that was the
first time I felt like I was ever
actually able to see that situation for
what it was emotionally it was the first
time I was able to really notice the
kind of blows that my inner child was
taking when my adult self was out there
with their fists up right I was still
feeling all of the pain on some subtle
felt level I just wasn't experiencing it
consciously and the first time the very
first time I ever actually allowed
myself to stay present undefended and
feel the pain come in of that
interaction it was so clear to me where
I needed to draw my boundaries and I
don't mean like avoidant boundaries I
don't mean oh I need to back away and
take some space I mean very clear very
unquestionable very non-debatable
boundaries because the thing about
emotional pain is that it gives us with
discernment if we don't know what hurts
and what doesn't because we're never
really allowing the pain in then we
never learn what to do and not do we
just decide I can bear anything I can
get through anything so I will just
accept any situation and then figure out
how to logically maneuver my way through
it we are robbing ourselves of the
ability to put ourselves in better
situations by listening to our body and
the pain that we are absorbing through
unhealthy interactions and then we can
put ourselves in situations that are
actually healthy from the get-go and use
both our logic and our emotional
discernment skills to navigate better
situations effectively all of this is to
say you are really good at figuring out
what leads to what and how to get
through certain situations and how to
strategize about your human interactions
that is a great thing keep that skill
and balance it out as much as you can
with learning to be present
undefended and allow yourself to feel
the pain consciously that you usually
defend yourself against and that skill
is going to be the thing that helps you
finally set clear meaningful boundaries
we need negative emotion to help us
break Loops of bad behavior and start
choosing different things
and if you are blocking yourself off
from all negative emotion that you
believe is beneath you right so choosing
that kind of high ground instead of
leveling yourself out with the other
person intentionally and going when they
hit me emotionally it hurts and allowing
yourself to be kind of hit without
defending yourself or coming back at
them in some sort of passive aggressive
way you're going to learn pretty quickly
what situations you need to stop putting
yourself in and then you are by default
going to begin to choose better
healthier situations just because you
can figure out a way to navigate through
these complex difficult situations does
not mean you have to now there is a lot
more to say on this I think I'm going to
make a whole other video on just
avoidant attachment and the value of
integrating pain as well as
communicating pain to other people I
think the single biggest hurdle I have
had to face in my attachment healing
journey is getting rid of the eye idea
that it's useless to communicate any
negative emotion to other people and
learning that there actually are people
out there I can learn from in an
interactive way and who can give me
something emotionally that will help me
develop even if nobody out there
understands my situation better than I
do which is true but there are people
out there who can see my blind spots and
I need to be able to capitalize on that
if I want to actually grow in a way that
is not just continuing to be more and
more one-sided but for now this video is
getting long so I'm going to cap it as
always if you have any questions let me
know in the comments let me know what
you're thinking about what this does or
doesn't bring up for you also as always
I love you guys I hope you're taking
care of yourselves and each other and I
will see you back here again really soon
foreign
[Music]
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