Avoidant Attachment Style: Signs, Causes, & Treatment

What Is Attachment?

Attachment refers to the baby-caregiver bond and is an interplay of communication that fosters physical and emotional closeness, security, and a safe haven of comfort in times of distress.¹ What infants learn from caregivers shapes their worldview and significantly impacts their interactions in future relationships.^1,2 Secure attachment forms when a healthy, strong emotional parent-child bond leads to feelings of empathy, trust, and self-worth.¹

What Is Avoidant Attachment?

Avoidant attachment results in believing others are unreliable, untrustworthy, or uncaring. An infant quickly learns to meet their own needs because they cannot count on their caregiver—a form of attachment trauma. Therefore, avoidant attachment is a self-protective measure, allowing someone to avoid relying on others.

Avoidant attachment has life-long mental health implications because a heightened sense of independence and self-reliance can lead someone to have fewer or shallow relationships.³ Individuals may also struggle with low self-worth, social anxiety, and depression.³

Anxious Avoidant Attachment Style

An anxious-avoidant attachment style consists of worries about rejection, sometimes leading to excessive relationship anxiety. People with this attachment style may feel insecure and exhibit clingy behaviors to ensure closeness with others. They desire to be vulnerable while feeling skeptical or worried about trusting people.

Dismissive Avoidant Attachment Style

A dismissive-avoidant attachment style consists of withdrawn or guarded behavior in relationships. For example, those with this style may shut down when stressed. They also tend to value independence over seeking support, sometimes appearing emotionally unavailable to others.

Anxious Vs. Avoidant Attachment

Someone with an anxious attachment style often seeks reassurance and safety from others to feel regulated. Conversely, those with avoidant attachment styles move away from relationships to gain security, finding regulation through distance. However, people can experience fluctuating attachment throughout their lives.

What Causes Avoidant Attachment Style?

Attachment patterns stem largely from parenting practices.^1,2,4 In the case of avoidant attachment, a child continually feels unsafe, unseen, and unsoothed if their caregiver does not respond consistently to their cries or interacts minimally and without warmth and empathy.² Children learn they cannot rely on their caregiver and must instead meet their own needs.

Additionally, receiving disapproval or rejection when expressing emotions teaches children to keep their needs and feelings to themselves. As they grow, they develop a sense of shame and feel unworthy of love and affection. Many avoid emotional expression, suppress their desires, and tend to their own needs.^1,3

Other potential causes include infant temperament (their unique behavioral and emotional characteristics).¹ Some babies are less responsive to attention and slower to soothe than others, sometimes affecting how parents care for them. Personality traits, life experiences, and traumatic events can also encourage avoidant behavior.²

Parenting behaviors that contribute to avoidant attachment include:^1,2,4

• Not responding promptly or consistently to cries
• Avoiding holding their baby and other physical contact as the child grows
• Showing little warmth and affection
• Not engaging in play
• Showing irritation, disdain, or mockery when their child gets hurt or needs attention
• Discouraging crying or other emotional expression
• Remaining distant and aloof
• Consistently being unavailable or distracted, tending to other things rather than listening to or interacting with their child
• Expecting a level of independence beyond what is developmentally appropriate

Avoidant Attachment Style Traits

Outward signs of avoidant attachment may be observable to others because internal experiences influence behavior and interactions. Individuals may display altered emotions, avoid eye contact and physical touch, and hyperfixate on personal goals.

Signs of avoidant attachment may include:^1,2,4

• Lacking positive emotional displays when a caregiver returns
• Ignoring adults and focusing on something else, such as a toy
• Doing most tasks for themselves and showing a reluctance to ask for help even when having difficulty with something (often called “pseudo-independence” in children and teens)
• Preferring to spend time by themselves
• Avoiding eye contact
• Shunning physical touch
• Becoming annoyed when others express desires or feelings
• Tuning out during emotional or other uncomfortable conversations
• Accusing others of being needy
• Appearing self-centered or selfish, focusing on themselves and their own priorities
• Displaying overconfidence coupled with a negative view of others (usually as a defense mechanism to protect themselves and deny a low sense of self-worth)
• Hyperfocusing on work or other goals to avoid feelings of emptiness

Avoidant Attachment Style in Relationships

Adults with avoidant attachment styles often have difficulty forming true connections with others, whether romantic partners, friends, coworkers, or acquaintances. Their need for independence and personal freedom typically outweighs emotional and physical closeness because they believe showing feelings leaves them vulnerable to hurt and rejection.²

Elizabeth Bonet, PhD, LMHC explains that “not wanting to talk about things that are bothering you or using activities to avoid being with or engaging with your partner” can indicate an avoidant attachment style. She continues, “You have no idea what your feelings are. People who have avoidant attachment styles often avoid feeling their own feelings as a way to disconnect from both themselves and others.”⁹

Rigid, Distant, and Repressed Emotionally

Others tend to accuse adults with avoidant attachments of being rigid or distant because they actively avoid emotional connections, dismiss emotions, and are uncomfortable with physical touch. In response, dismissively attached adults describe others as too needy or clingy.²

Difficulty Handling Conflict

People with avoidant attachment styles may struggle with conflict resolution, often shutting down, attempting to avoid conflict all together, or stonewalling others when overwhelmed. Sometimes, they will leave a relationship at the first sign of conflict or avoid commitment to avoid the potential of adversity in a relationship.

Dr. Bonet adds that you may have an avoidant attachment style if, “Either you’re a serial cheater and find you can’t be with just one person or have a hard time being in a relationship at all.”

Unwilling to Ask for Help or Rely on Others

Avoidant attachment coincides with a high need for autonomy and self-control. From a young age, people with this attachment style view others as unreliable, thus resigning to self-containment. At the same time, they find being vulnerable and leaning on others for emotional or practical support difficult.

Trouble Reading Others’ Emotions

Some people with avoidant attachments may disregard the importance of emotions in daily life. With that, they may struggle with emotional intelligence or feel misattuned by people in relationships. They may withdraw (rather than grow closer) when someone else is vulnerable, further exacerbating this issue.

Repulsed or Wary of Intimacy

Avoidant attachment can also coincide with a dislike of intimacy. Intimacy in a relationship can be synonymous with vulnerability, an emotion these individuals see as threatening. Some avoidant individuals will only engage in casual intimacy because further commitment feels unsafe. Others will avoid intimacy as much as possible or only engage to appease a partner.

Don’t Like Feeling Needed

Some people with avoidant attachments dislike the natural social connectivity of living in a modern society. They would prefer to be left alone or have casual dynamics with others. They do not like feeling tied down to obligation, even if they want the security of a relationship.

Need to Be Independent Over All Else

One of the hallmark characteristics of avoidant attachment is a need for autonomy. People with this attachment style are used to having their own backs, relying on themselves for survival, and feeling left down. Because of that, depending on people or even delegating tasks can be challenging.

What Can Trigger Someone With Avoidant Attachment?

Being aware of potential triggers that cause emotional distress can be helpful if you or a loved one experiences an avoidant attachment style. However, avoiding these triggers is not the goal. Instead, being mindful of them (and knowing how to react) can help everyone feel more empowered should stress emerge.

The following are triggers for avoidant attachment behavior:

• Feeling out of control
• The other person wanting more out of the relationship
• Feeling like there isn’t enough free time or space to be alone
• Needing to ask for help or rely on others
• Someone else asking for emotional support
• Being physically intimate
• Spending time with someone who triggered old attachment wounds (like a parent)

Can Adults Change Their Attachment Styles?

Changing your attachment style is possible but takes time, effort, and intention. Being around others with more secure attachment styles is one of the best ways to address how you relate to others. In addition, improving your self-esteem and resolving old traumas can promote healthier attachment.

How to Heal Avoidant Attachment Style

Everyone can grow and change throughout life. Regardless of age, forming a more secure attachment style is possible. Changing deep-seated ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving can be challenging and require patience, practice, and support.

Understand the Origin of Your Avoidant Attachment

Remember, an avoidant attachment style is not a character flaw but a self-protective response that served a positive purpose in your childhood. You may have developed a harsh inner critic that tries to protect you by making you deny your emotions and avoid close relationships. Thus, examining these underlying beliefs in adulthood is important.

Find a Mentor to Help You Practice Communication

Finding a mentor (a teacher, boss, romantic partner, friend, or support group) to support you in this journey can be beneficial. Just as a mental health professional does in therapy sessions, a mentor will act as a secure base, providing non-judgmental feedback as you overcome unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaving.

Use Affirmations to Start Healing Your Inner Child

Treat yourself with the empathy and compassion you deserve. Consider using positive affirmations as you shift to a more secure attachment style. Writing brief, optimistic statements about yourself and reading them (aloud if possible) can help you counter and eventually overcome your harsh inner critic. Be emotionally available and gentle to yourself to experience the warmth you may have lacked in childhood.

Learn How to Regulate Your Nervous System

Avoidant attachment behaviors can trigger the fight-or-flight response.⁵ However, you can take steps to regulate your nervous system by engaging in more mindfulness, gratitude, and conscious breathwork. Learning to relax can show the nervous system you are safe and not in immediate danger.

Treatment for Avoidant Attachment Styles

Avoidant attachment is treatable at any life stage. Treatment differs according to age and state of development. For instance, treating avoidant attachment in children is usually twofold, including both caregivers and their children.⁶ Individual work with a child can aid in developing a sense of self-worth, trust in others, and ability to show emotions and express empathy.

Working with a therapist specializing in attachment issues can help adults explore and make sense of their past experiences.² In turn, they can determine what might hold them back from satisfying relationships and interactions, identify changes to make, and determine steps to improve.²

Bonet encourages, “Therapy models a secure, healthy relationship and gives room to practice healthier patterns. It can help you figure out your feelings and what to do with them. It can also help you learn skills to reduce anxiety around communicating about things that are important to you in a relationship and help you practice doing that in a safe way.”

Below are treatment options for avoidant attachment styles in children and adults:

• Family therapy: Family therapy can help family members improve communication and develop healthy, positive ways of relating to and interacting with each other. In some cases, therapists may visit the home to observe family interaction and provide feedback.⁷
• Play therapy: Play therapists can help children overcome the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of avoidant attachment through work with puppets, doll houses, art therapy (like drawing or clay), and storytelling.⁷
• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): One study found that those with anxious attachment participating in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) reported improved anxiety, avoidance behaviors, and emotional regulation.⁸

How to Cope If You Have an Avoidant Partner

Loving someone with avoidant attachment tendencies can be challenging. You may feel like your partner is too distant or emotionally unavailable, worrying you are too clingy or needy. Understanding their past experiences is beneficial when working together. At the same time, consider your own relationship needs moving forward.

Don’t Take It Personally

Attachment styles emerge in childhood and play out in subsequent relationships. Remember, you are not inherently responsible for your partner’s behavior. You did not cause your partner to act this way, and assuming fault for this dynamic is not helpful.

Gently Encourage Therapy

Individual or couples therapy (or both) can be helpful when avoidant attachment dynamics exist in a relationship. Therapy can help you and your partner address avoidance behaviors in a nonjudgmental environment. Therapists can also provide a roadmap for recovering from past traumas or relationship issues that caused avoidance in the first place.

Approach Your Relationship as a Team

Relationships require mutual effort–one person should not be responsible for all the emotional work. Talk to your partner about how you can best support them while also advocating for your needs in the relationship. The goal is to feel safe together.

Let Your Partner Know How Their Avoidance Affects You

Avoidant attachment can be extremely difficult for partners. Express your concerns honestly when struggling in your relationship. Avoid attacking or blaming your partner, opting to be neutral by conveying how their behaviors make you feel. You may need to reconsider what you gain from this relationship if they are unwilling to self-reflect or change.

Can Avoidant Attachment Be Prevented?

Preventing avoidant attachment is plausible because attachment patterns are active responses to the world. Parental support and education can help caregivers establish and maintain a nurturing relationship with their babies and children to foster secure attachment.¹ Changing how parents provide care can shift attachment patterns, even if a baby or child has already begun to develop avoidant attachment.

Final Thoughts

Working with a therapist can help you achieve secure attachment if dismissive-avoidant attachment interferes with your life and relationships. Therapists act as the secure base you lacked in childhood, listening attentively and nonjudgmentally as you explore your past and present experiences.⁶ You can shift your thoughts and feelings about yourself and others and behave in ways that help you meet your life and relationship goals.