Anxious Avoidant Attachment: What It Is and What to Know
Lindsay Knake
| 3 min read
Key Takeaways
- Anxious-avoidant attachment develops when caregivers meet a child's physical needs but consistently neglect emotional support, leading adults to become highly independent, guarded and distrustful of intimacy.
- Common signs include difficulty trusting others, a strong need for self-reliance, reluctance to commit, discomfort with closeness and a tendency to withdraw as self-protection.
- With self-awareness and professional help, individuals can shift toward a secure attachment by building trust, improving communication, regulating emotions and managing conflict.
You may have heard about attachment styles through social media or podcast episodes. As more people seek to understand relationships and how childhood experiences affect their adult relationships, attachment theory has become more popular.
Here is a look at attachment styles, particularly anxious-avoidant attachment style, known as avoidant attachment style.
What are attachment styles?
Attachment theory comes from various studies that looked at how babies form emotional attachments to their caregivers in their first 18 months, according to the Cleveland Clinic. One such research study is the 1969 experiment called the Strange Situation, which examined how babies reacted when their mothers left them in a room alone and returned shortly.
The reactions of the babies in the study became the four main types of attachment styles:
- Secure: a strong sense of self-esteem and the ability to have healthy relationships with others, including confidence, reliability and trust
- Anxious: a sense of insecurity in relationships and feeling uncertain about how other people feel about the relationship
- Avoidant or anxious-avoidant: a sense of emotional distance and strong independence, difficulty trusting and relying on other people out of fear
- Disorganized: a sense of unpredictability and intensity in relationships, wanting closeness but pulling away when faced with it
While this framework can help us understand ourselves and others, it doesn’t tell the whole, complex story of relationships. The attachment styles are a way to characterize relationships, and you may not completely identify with one. It is normal for anyone to experience anxiety and avoidance within all kinds of relationships, according to the American Psychological Association.
What is anxious-avoidant attachment style?
Children who grow up to have the anxious-avoidant attachment style often do not have caregivers who provide enough emotional support. While the caregivers provide adequate or good physical care, including food, shelter and safety, the caregivers may not consistently or fully address the child’s emotions, including helping them understand and work through painful or confusing feelings. Sometimes, the caregiver may dismiss or ignore how a child is feeling, which can reduce the child’s trust in their caregiver. Some children in such an environment may learn to not rely on the adults for consistent emotional comfort and care, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
As adults, people with this attachment style are strongly independent and emotionally guarded. They tend not to turn to others for emotional comfort and support and have trouble providing emotional support to others because they are afraid of not being able to rely on others. This can create a fear of intimacy and difficulty building meaningful relationships.
Signs of an anxious-avoidant attachment style include:
- Difficulty trusting others
- Strong sense of independence
- Struggling to commit to others
- Feelings of unease when others seek a close relationship
- Withdrawing from others as self-protection
It is possible to move from an avoidant attachment style to a secure attachment style through awareness and effort. First, being aware of these feelings and patterns of behavior can be a first step in addressing them.
Support from a mental health professional such as a therapist can help you recognize your own patterns and fears, explore childhood experiences and make changes to improve your relationships. This means working on:
- Increasing trust and connection
- Improving effective communication
- Improving emotional regulation
- Managing conflict in a healthy way
Having strong relationships is associated with better mental and physical health and longevity. Learn more about mental health and options you have as a member to seek help at bcbsm.com/mentalhealth.
Image: Getty Images
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