Avoidant Attachment: The Blindspot That Keeps You Repeating The Same Relationship Mistakes

Summary

In 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

00:00

🧐 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.

05:01

🤔 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.

10:02

😣 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.

15:03

🛡️ 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.

Keywords

💡Attachment Theory

Attachment Theory is a psychological framework that describes the dynamics of long-term interpersonal relationships from the perspective of Bowlby's attachment theory. In the video, it is the foundational concept for discussing how individuals can improve their lives and relationships by understanding their attachment styles. The script mentions that every attachment style, including insecure ones, undergoes reflection after a relationship ends, aiming to avoid repeating past patterns.

💡Cognitive Errors

Cognitive Errors refer to the mistakes in thinking that can lead to irrational conclusions or ineffective behaviors. The video script discusses how each insecure attachment style tends to make repetitive cognitive errors in relationships, which can create a cycle of unhealthy patterns. An example from the script is the tendency to double down on one's strengths rather than addressing blind spots, which can hinder personal growth and relationship health.

💡Avoidant Attachment Style

An Avoidant Attachment Style is characterized by a tendency to avoid emotional closeness and dependence on others. In the context of the video, avoidant individuals are described as having learned from a young age to rely on cause-and-effect thinking rather than emotional processing. The script explains that this can lead to a focus on analyzing relationship patterns without adequately addressing the emotional responses that are crucial for making healthy decisions.

💡Blind Spots

Blind spots in the video refer to the aspects of one's behavior or personality that are not easily recognized or acknowledged. The script emphasizes the importance of identifying and addressing these blind spots to avoid repeating unhealthy relationship patterns. For avoidant individuals, their blind spot is often their lack of awareness of their own emotional responses, which can lead to a failure to make necessary changes in their behavior.

💡Emotional Processing

Emotional Processing is the act of acknowledging, understanding, and managing one's emotions. The video script highlights the importance of emotional processing in making intelligent decisions and avoiding negative relationship patterns. It points out that avoidant individuals often undervalue emotional processing, which can result in them repeating the same mistakes because they do not fully understand the emotional impact of their actions.

💡Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect is a fundamental concept in understanding how actions or events lead to outcomes. In the video, it is mentioned that avoidant individuals rely heavily on cause-and-effect thinking to analyze sequences of events in their relationships. This analytical approach can be beneficial, but the script notes that it becomes problematic when not balanced with emotional awareness.

💡Emotional Dysregulation

Emotional Dysregulation refers to the inability to effectively manage one's emotions, often leading to extreme emotional responses. The script discusses how avoidant individuals may end up in relationships with others who have emotional dysregulation, and their own defensive mechanisms can exacerbate the situation, preventing them from addressing the underlying emotional issues.

💡Defensive Mechanisms

Defensive Mechanisms are psychological strategies that protect a person from anxiety or distress by denying or avoiding confrontation with unpleasant emotions. The video describes how avoidant individuals use defensive mechanisms to dismiss the emotional impact of negative interactions, which can prevent them from learning from these experiences and making healthier choices in the future.

💡Emotional Pain

Emotional Pain is the psychological discomfort or suffering that arises from negative experiences or situations. The script emphasizes that recognizing and allowing oneself to feel emotional pain is crucial for personal growth and setting boundaries in relationships. Avoidant individuals often suppress their emotional pain, which can lead to a lack of awareness of what is harmful in their relationships.

💡Boundaries

Boundaries in the context of the video refer to the limits and rules that a person sets for themselves in relationships to protect their well-being. The script suggests that by allowing oneself to feel emotional pain and not relying solely on logic, avoidant individuals can establish clearer and more meaningful boundaries, which is essential for breaking cycles of unhealthy relationships.

💡Emotional Discernment

Emotional Discernment is the ability to recognize and understand one's own emotional responses, which can guide decision-making and behavior. The video argues that developing emotional discernment, alongside logical reasoning, is key for avoidant individuals to navigate relationships more effectively and choose healthier interactions.

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]