Fearful Avoidants: A Helpful Method to Kill the Hot and Cold Behavior

Can you remember when you were in a relationship, and it took you a while to build trust?

The hesitation could be from past experiences or a gut feeling that you might get hurt if you do it too fast.

Maybe you think the problem lies inside of you.

The issue is that you are searching for who is responsible for that feeling instead of what created it.

The root of that feeling is your experiences that developed your perception of love and relationships.

The result is developing a fearful avoidant attachment style over time.

No, you are not cursed or destined to be single forever, never finding a relationship where you have trust in someone.

But.

If you do not attack this feeling, you will approach your relationships with a foot-out-of-the-door approach and be hot and cold with your partner.

How do we prevent this? Let’s take a look.

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Websters Dictionary

Let’s stick to the topic of trust to begin. It can cause a fair amount of pain points internally and within the bounds of a relationship for the fearful-avoidant.

The key to building trust is two-fold for this attachment style:

• There is an internal fear that you are setting yourself up to get hurt.
• There is an external fear that you need to know more about someone to hand over the keys to your heart.

You are not crazy for having this belief system if you toy with the seesaw in your head over this dilemma.

You have to work to develop a system to alleviate your concern over these internal and external feelings.

To build trust externally or with a partner, you have to work together to develop a line of communication that accomplishes the completion of one task.

Building transparency.

When you do not have details for a story, you will create them in your mind and believe them to be true.

You think someone is leaving out details when they answer you, but the reality is that you want more color and detail to fill in the “gaps.”

It is not fair to grill your partner into exhaustion, but it is reasonable to ask for a high level of communication and paint the picture of what that looks like to you.

Define what that looks like to you.

When you receive full transparency from your partner, it is your job to self-soothe and regulate your feelings.

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Stay still

There is a yin and yang battle you face as a fearful-avoidant. You are in a constant fight between your dismissive and your anxious side.

You might think both sides would cause you to want to run away, but they operate differently.

Your anxious side wants to be seen and heard by your partner. It can cause you to want control over the relationship. You pull in because you want to alleviate yourself of that feeling.

Your dismissive side says you are helpless in this fight and should revert to being alone. Fearful avoidants are troubled by feeling pressure and can become quickly overwhelmed and want to distance themselves.

The strategy to combat that is to focus on the behaviors that make you sense an emotion instead of the feeling itself.

It is necessary for any attachment style.

I am not telling you to ignore your feelings, but what behavior caused them?

You want to go beyond “feeling sad because you feel unheard” and think, “When someone doesn’t let me talk about my problems without adding their opinion, I don’t feel heard.”

You can kill two birds with one stone because you are detracting the anxious side that desperately wants to feel seen but also moving away from isolating yourself, thinking your partner doesn’t care.

When you recognize behaviors that are at the root, it gives you a defined answer.

When you do not know the root, it causes you to sway on both sides of the spectrum without discovering an answer.

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The Kill

Killing the hot and cold behavior starts with defeating the dismissive and anxious emotional sway, then building trust and transparency.

Another point of focus is that each of the pillars above can cause you to feel overwhelmed. It feels like you are troubled by a demanding set of expectations.

Again, you are not helpless. Ask your partner for help, but paint a picture of what that looks like.

You face a balancing act of feeling needy and yet somehow alone.

Your past experiences teach you to have a foot out of the door to avoid hurt.

You are not fully participating in your relationship and are keeping your distance from your partner. Guess what? They can feel that.

You are placing weight on someone to make up for unresolved issues from the past.

Letting go of the past is easy. (kidding)

We know that it’s not easy, but your relationship is a fresh start. What happens is that every time you’re hurt, you have built up a longer requirement list for the next person.

When you feel like they are not meeting those heightened expectations, you leave.

It is time to stop spinning the wheel and crush the cycle.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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