Understanding the Fearful Avoidant Attachment Style — 7 Signs You’re Fearful Avoidant in Relationships
The Fearful Avoidant, or Disorganized, attachment style feels like a constant tug-of-war between craving emotional closeness and fearing it. While secure attachment combines the positive aspects of the anxious and avoidant styles, allowing individuals to create a healthy balance between togetherness and autonomy in relationships, the Fearful Avoidant style seems to combine the challenging aspects, leading to erratic relationship patterns.
Individuals with a Fearful Avoidant attachment style may oscillate between desiring intimacy and pushing people away; fearing abandonment and abandoning; being cut off from their emotions or becoming consumed by them. These conflicting states can make it very difficult for individuals to trust themselves and others in relationships.
If you resonate with this attachment style, know that addressing and healing these emotional wounds and limiting beliefs is possible and will allow you to have the deep, fulfilling relationships your heart desires while also maintaining your freedom and autonomy.
In this article, we will go over:
What Exactly is an Attachment Style — A brief overview of attachment theory
Secure vs. Insecure Attachment — The fundamental differences between secure and insecure worldviews
7 Signs of Fearful Avoidant Attachment — How to recognize this attachment style in yourself or your partner
Is Attachment Theory Valid — A brief look at the history and scientific validity of attachment theory
What Exactly is an Attachment Style?
Attachment styles are the ways we learn to connect with and depend on others during our formative years.
You can think of them as strategies you developed to protect yourself — mentally, physically and emotionally — and get your needs met in the environment you grew up in.
Your attachment style is not an inborn trait, but a learned mechanism that evolved and adapted over time based on what worked best in your specific circumstances.
As you grew up, these strategies became more sophisticated and, through constant repetition and emotional reinforcement, they became habitual ways of thinking, feeling, behaving and responding.
Our attachment strategies shape our self-image, guide our interactions, and leave a lasting impact on our relationships and personal well-being. There are four main attachment styles: Secure, Anxious Preoccupied, Dismissive Avoidant, and Fearful Avoidant.
These styles significantly influence how we perceive ourselves and others, ultimately shaping the quality of our connections and overall life experiences.
Although our attachment styles show up most strongly in our romantic relationships, where we tend to feel the most vulnerable, they also influence every other area of life, including our friendships, career, mental and physical health, finances, spirituality, worldview and even our relationship with authority.
Secure vs. Insecure Attachment
People who formed a secure attachment style early on typically hold positive and compassionate beliefs about both themselves and others. They tend to be emotionally mature and available, seeking connection and closeness with others, while maintaining a sense of groundedness and autonomy.
This inner sense of security allows them to trust in their own self-worth and authenticity as well as the intentions of others. As such, they often find themselves in more compatible and harmonious relationships, experiencing less fear, anxiety, or mistrust in their relationships.
Meanwhile, individuals with one of the three insecure attachment styles — Anxious Preoccupied, Dismissive Avoidant, or Fearful Avoidant — often carry negative emotions such as anger, shame, guilt, fear, mistrust, and anxiety in their perceptions of themselves and others.
This emotional insecurity makes it challenging for them to fully relax in relationships and trust the intentions of others. They may struggle with doubts about their worthiness and lovability, leading to more challenging and often painful experiences in their relationships.
7 Signs You May Have a Fearful Avoidant Attachment Style
When you have a Fearful Avoidant attachment style, you may find yourself facing unique challenges in relationships.
Because you experience both ends of the attachment spectrum at different times, it may be extremely confusing for you to figure out what you actually want, and you may find yourself falling into push-pull dynamics, co-dependency, chaotic or on-again-off-again relationships and long periods where you have no desire to date anyone at all.
The Fearful Avoidant attachment style can manifest in many different ways. You may lean more towards the anxious side of the attachment spectrum and resonate a lot with Anxious Preoccupied traits and only sometimes experience avoidance. Or, you may lean more towards the avoidant side and relate to Dismissive Avoidant traits, and occasionally experience bursts of intense emotion and relationship anxiety. Or you may find yourself somewhere in the middle, going back and forth between the two.
Interestingly, this attachment style is often seen among artists, musicians, and poets, who create works of art that capture the complex interplay of desire and distance, love and fear they experience in relationships.
1. You have a push-pull relationship with love and intimacy
You crave connection, love, and intimacy but feel terrified, distrustful, or unworthy of it, leading you to push it away. This results in conflicting fears of rejection, abandonment, betrayal, entrapment, and engulfment. You may approach people, hold on tightly, or even cling to them and people-please, only to later withdraw, shut down, or actively push them away.
Often, you may suddenly lose your feelings for someone you liked when things start to get serious. This persistent inner conflict leaves you confused and disoriented about what you truly want, often resulting in chaotic, roller-coaster, on-again-off-again relationships.
2. You feel like you lose yourself in relationships, so you tend to resist them
You have a high need for autonomy but tend to become co-dependent in relationships. You often prioritize the other person at the expense of yourself, so you feel like you deteriorate in these relationships. You abandon yourself by ignoring your own feelings, needs, and boundaries in the early stages until you “snap out of it” and push or pull away to reclaim your independence and sense of self.
When your fears of engulfment surface, you may blame the other person or the relationship for your co-dependent behavior, feeling suffocated or overwhelmed by their demands. You believe you can only feel “okay” when you are out of relationships, leading you to stay single for long stretches until your fears subside and your need for connection returns.
3. You are deeply emotional and empathetic, but find it overwhelming
You have a rich emotional world and tend to experience your feelings very intensely, though you may struggle to express them. There are also periods when you feel completely cut off from your emotions, leaving you unsure of which self is the real you — the deeply emotional, vulnerable self or the more detached self. You might identify more strongly with one of these states or frequently oscillate between them.
Your ability to empathize with others’ emotions can be overwhelming, leading you to either caretake their feelings or shut people out completely in order to feel okay. This hot-and-cold behavior makes others perceive you as passionate, intimidating, unpredictable, or hard to read, while some may see you as friendly, caring, and a little intense.
4. Vulnerability tends to be a one-way street for you
Others often open up and share vulnerably with you because you can be highly empathetic, attuned, and present, allowing them to feel seen and heard. But you yourself remain quite guarded for fear of being seen as weak, bad, or shameful, or for fear of being rejected or betrayed. While others may feel connected to you, you often feel unseen and disconnected in relationships because you rarely open up in the same way.
While you may share deep, challenging experiences that seem vulnerable to others, they are usually things you have already overcome; you rarely share what you feel truly helpless about. Your romantic relationships may be the only place where you allow yourself to open up, but they are also often also a source of great dysregulation for you, so your inner conflict around openness and vulnerability persists.
5. You tend to operate in extremes across different areas of your life
You tend to have an all-or-nothing approach to life and struggle to find balance in various areas. You are either completely in your head or entirely in your feelings. Your decisions are either purely emotional or purely logical, and you often go back on them when you switch modes because they no longer make sense in the new context.
You can be extremely rigid, disciplined, and practical at one time and completely reckless and out of control the next, leaving you unsure of which is the real you. In relationships, you are either all-in or all-out. You can be super present, passionate, warm, and giving to the point of depletion and resentment, and then suddenly withdraw, isolate, and stop investing in others completely.
6. Your nervous system is often dysregulated
You feel like your emotions often overwhelm you, and you struggle to regulate them effectively. You may be easily triggered into intense anger, either having an explosive temper or trying to contain it until it reaches a boiling point. You tend to experience a lot of guilt, shame, anxiety, and restlessness.
Dissociation is also common for you; you shut down emotionally and have difficulty accessing your feelings. Because you are accustomed to chaos, you tend to feel uneasy when things are calm, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Additionally, you may struggle with addiction and substance abuse.
7. You see relationships as a power struggle and have a high need for control
You are keenly aware of who holds power in a relationship, whether romantic or platonic. While you may not desire power over others, you cannot tolerate others having power over you due to your struggle to trust their motives. You have a significant fear of being powerless, helpless, trapped, or out of control.
Your suspicion of those with power makes it difficult for you to relinquish control or give away your power, fearing hurt, betrayal, or being made a fool of. You hate being seen as vulnerable, so you may put up a tough front, sometimes without even realizing it.
Is Attachment Theory Valid?
Attachment theory is a valid and well-established framework of human development and relationships.
It was originally developed by Dr. John Bowlby in the 1950s and 60s and was further reinforced, modified and expanded on by other psychologists in the field, such as Mary Ainsworth, Mary Main, Hary Harlow and Patricia Crittendon.
It has been widely researched, tested, and applied in various contexts across cultures since its original conception.
Of course, researchers continue to explore and refine the theory, allowing room for ongoing discussions and developments in the field.
Conclusion
It’s essential to recognize that each of the four attachment styles is nuanced, complex and dynamic. It exists on a broad spectrum and can manifest differently in different people.
In this article, I have outlined some general tendencies of the Fearful Avoidant attachment style. However, this is not an exhaustive list and you may not identify with every single point.
Furthermore, you may also recognize yourself in some of these traits if you have an Anxious Preoccupied or Dismissive Avoidant attachment style.
Regardless of which attachment style you identify with, it is possible to unlearn the patterns that are causing you pain. And you can also learn to relate to yourself and others in more secure ways so that you can create the deep, authentic relationships you desire.
Take care.
Want more practical guidance along your healing journey? Join my newsletter for weekly insights on self-love, conscious relationships and authentic transformation.
