The biggest internalized fear of an anxious or avoidant attachment style person is getting hurt. Both grew up and experienced in their childhood a significant trauma that shaped their subconscious view of what love is. Each person has been conditioned by their upbringing to fear losing love because love was seen as conditional to them during their childhood. By this I mean that some trauma during their childhood has left them subconsciously thinking that all love is only given unreliably, with conditions, or else otherwise isn't unconditional. Generally, this fear comes from unreliable or unstable parenting for a variety of reasons, abuse at home, parents who divorced and didn't maintain a healthy stable environment for their children, and even something as common as poverty can be causes of this, but it is highly individualized for each anxious or avoidant person.
As a result of the aforementioned trauma and subconscious belief that love is conditional, the subconscious of this individual both craves stable love and fears losing it. Their upbringing has taught them that it is conditional and their subconscious mind as an adult constantly scans their friendships, relationships, etc. for signs of that love being taken away. Sometimes, perhaps the scan is right and someone in a friendship/relationship is pulling away. However, most of the time, the subconscious incorrectly identifies something completely different as an example of pulling away love. I will first explain what I mean and then why it is important.
For example, you and a friend of yours spend a lot of time together, maybe more than you had before; you've begun to get very close. You're enjoying the connection greatly as you don't make those type of connections easily or often. Yet your subconscious mind is scanning the entire time looking for signs that your past experiences are repeating, and that that love from your friend is going to be taken away. Your subconscious mind is trying to protect you from hurt, just wanting you to be safe.
Unfortunately, when the subconscious mind misfires and identifies a behavior as someone you love pulling away from you, it enters fight or flight mode to protect you. Just the same as you might fend off physical blows from an actual attack, it tries to fend of the blow of losing your friend to protect you from harm. As an example, a friend doesn't show up to plans at the planned time (or at all perhaps), doesn't apologize for doing, perhaps even downplays the importance of this action to you. Ordinarily, with an average connection, this would be annoying but wouldn't trigger fight or flight. But, the closer someone gets, the greater the threat your subconscious mind sees in their potential behaviors towards you. That is, the closer someone is the greater you fear them leaving, and therefore the greater the sensitivity of your subconscious to possible signs of that love being taken away. And, it's a feedback loop. I'll get to that in a moment as well.
For an anxious attacher like myself, when you get close to someone, your subconscious fears escalate because the likelihood of you being hurt if they leave increases greatly. This is also true for an avoidant. The only difference between the two attachment styles is the result. The anxious attacher moves into "fight or flight" mode and picks fight. They are going to fight to maintain that connection by pulling you closer, being too demanding of your time, being unreasonable in their requests for closeness. For an instance where someone is actually pulling away, this signals them to run. For someone who isn't, this leads to confusion, hurt feelings, and then often also the signal to run.
For the avoidant attacher, they are feeling a lot of internalized fear that love will be taken away as well. They too scan for signs of it. And when they find it, real or imagined, they flee to protect themselves. They subconsciously rationalize that the pain of losing someone now will be much less than the pain of losing them later. Their fight or flight leads them to flee the connection as a solution to their fears, whereas the anxious fight to keep the connection.
Additionally, as I said, this fear is stuck in a feedback loop. The closer someone gets, the tighter you hold to that fear and the greater it's impact becomes. You might even recognize that you're likely going to self-sabotage the connection even before you do. But the closer they get, the greater the fear and the greater the fear the higher the sensitivity of your subconscious mind's scans for a loss of that connection. Eventually the subconscious mind justifies it's fears on real or false actions by the other person, and the anxious fights for the connection and the avoidant flees it. These actions are particularly intense when the connection is between an anxious and an avoidant person. Both are constantly subconsciously scanning to determine their safety in a connection and both can and likely will find some reason to fight for that connection (anxious) or flee it (avoidant). When this is triggered, the anxious pulls the avoidant closer, often demanding more time with them, begging them to stay, questioning them for their actions, fearing the worst. The avoidant in this situation does in fact pull away, because they feel this behavior is unreasonable (and it typically is). When the avoidant pulls away, the anxious attacher's subconscious mind sees this as justification for how they act and triggers your brain to pull them closer even harder. This causes the avoidant to pull harder away, hence a feedback loop. Both are triggering each other now. Eventually either the anxious is going to be so unreasonable that the avoidant leaves entirely, or the avoidant will pull away so much that the anxious becomes unreasonable and the avoidant pulls away entirely regardless. Either way, unrecognized for what is happening for both parties, the connection will end as a result of one or both of their actions. It's only a matter of time.
The connection ends because one or both parties no longer feel safe in the friendship or relationship. They feel that the risk of getting hurt is now the most likely outcome of this friendship or relationship. In fact, for the avoidant in particular, the perceived loss of safety in a connection will lead them to pull away. For either party, this loss of safety can be caused by many actions: arguments are a huge cause of this, but also one party threatening to end the friendship or relationship if their needs aren't met is another huge reason. When a connection is no longer felt as safe, both party's subconscious minds are working to end the connection to protect themselves, even the anxious attacher even though they don't want it to end. Part of the anxiety caused for the anxious is a result of conflicting thoughts. The subconscious mind wants to end a connection because they're afraid to be hurt again and the conscious mind craves that connection and while they also fear losing it, will cling to it using any means necessary because the conscious mind of an anxious attacher is mortally afraid of losing that connection too. Unfortunately, when this level of anxiety is reached, the connection is usually damaged beyond repair and falls apart.
The anxious attacher finds safety in the connection with a trusted person that they've actually let into their hearts, as friend or romantic partner. The avoidant attacher finds safety in solitude. They would rather have no connection rather than constantly fear losing it. For either party, when the safety of that connection is challenged, by fight, or emotional trigger, or even just the closeness itself, their subconscious minds look to find a solution. The anxious cling to the connection and the avoidant push away from it, both to protect themselves from hurt as I've said.
Taking away safety in one of these connections is the linchpin to the connection being unintentionally ended. Both the anxious and the avoidant as I said, are fighting a fear of losing that love. When the safety of that connection is no longer seen as certain, the subconscious mind of both parties moves into the fight (anxious) or flight (avoidant) mode that I previously mentioned thus dooming the connection.
Everything above leaves both the anxious and the avoidant EXTREMELY unhappy. The anxious loses the one thing they're afraid to lose and the avoidant pushes away the one thing they don't want to lose to protect themselves. Both party's subconscious minds feel justified in their actions, because to them the ends justify the means. "I told you so." "They were going to leave you and I was right." "They were crazy and going to hurt you." These are just some simple examples of the thought processes that happen and that reinforce the subconscious mind's self-destructive fears. In short, you feel justified in being afraid to lose connections and that trauma-induced anxious or avoidant attachment style is strengthened and maybe justified not only in the subconscious mind but also now in the conscious mind as well.
So what can be done? It's clear that self-sabotaging close connections isn't beneficial to you as an anxious or avoidant attacher. You will still crave that connection and still lose it, time and time and time again. You have to break the feedback loop and change how your subconscious mind thinks. I talked a little about that in the last post and I will go into greater detail in the future in my next post as well about how to do that. For now however, it's important to recognize the role that safety plays in this process. Anxious and avoidant attachers both constantly subconsciously weigh the pros and cons of a close connection to protect themselves. Safety is the biggest pro that most connections have. "I feel safe with them." That thought outweighs a ton of fears and keeps you in a functioning friendship or relationship. Conversely, one or more party removing that feeling of safety through their actions is the single biggest trigger that will doom that connection.
The anxious feels that the other removes that safety but withdrawing, being less communicative, not being where they said they'd be for plans they've had, increasing time between texts or replies, mood changes, and many other similar triggers. The avoidant feels safety is removed when the anxious clings to them or worse, has a temporary break, during which the anxious might block them on social media, remove them from their lives, shout at them and argue with them unfairly, and then come back later begging forgiveness. This instability is overwhelming for the avoidant, who sees these actions not as a struggle in the anxious's mind spilling out onto them, but as a purposeful attack on them (the avoidant) which triggers them to feel that safety was taken way and causes them to sever the connection.
In each the anxious and avoidant, the loss of a perception of safety dooms the connection. Each clings to the idea of safety in the connection to justify it continuing despite feeling an increasing level of fear of being hurt as each gets closer to the other. When that safety is taken away, there's no justification in either's mind for continuing the connection. The avoidant leaves. The anxious clings to the connection out of fear, driving the other away anyways. Either way, the connection ends due to fear because safety is no longer a justification to stay.
Next time, I will dive into methods of combatting this self-sabotage.