I love to play armchair psychologist with one of my good friends. We are both interested in the psychology behind our own actions, thoughts and feelings and those of our friends and family. One of our favourite topics to circle around is attachment theory. We would both self-diagnose as anxious attachment types, and this is evident in our dealings with those around us.
People with anxious attachment, fear abandonment. For this reason, we tend to be relatively submissive, putting the needs of others before our own. Our sense of self worth is largely external, meaning we base how we feel about ourselves mostly on how other people feel about us. The more people that like us, the more likeable we must be! So then we can like ourselves…. This is problematic for many reasons, one of the most obvious being that we never actually truly know how other people feel about us. Most people don’t tell you directly, and even if they do, that doesn’t make it true. And feelings are subjective, nuanced and expressed differently by each individual. Ambiguity almost always exists, and it is ambiguity we find the most triggering.
Even if it is true, that someone likes us, then that’s coupled with the need for us anxious attachment types to make sure that the person in question keeps on feeling positively about us. Not just one person either, this applies to pretty much everyone we cross paths with. The idea that someone wont like us appears to trigger fears that we have been discovered as unlikeable, and it is only a matter of time before everyone else then finds out too! Deep down this must be how we feel about ourselves.
It sounds ridiculous, but it happens on such a deeply subconscious level, that most of the time we don’t even realise what’s happening. All we know is that we strive for perfection, aim to exceed expectation, tend to over give generously, listen more than talk, avoid conflict, and never express negative emotions. Well, not never. Because nobody is perfect, and you can only take so much, so eventually us anxious avoidants will explode, or withdraw, or both.
Our overactive emotional brains perceive rejection, often falsely, and this rejection triggers our fears of abandonment, which causes us to reject the other person before they can reject us. Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy really isn’t it? The thing is, we don’t want to reject people, we are merely trying to protect ourselves from the pain, and distance is the only way to achieve it. But only if that distance is instigated by us. At this point the coin flips and we become avoidant attachment types! Out of sight, out of mind, out of pain. Although, deep down, we want nothing more than for you to ask us to stay, forgive us, and ask us what we are really struggling with.
If you don’t, and why would you if we just ended things? (The only logical conclusion would be that we wanted things to be over, right?) We will avoid you out of shame. Definitely if we have had an angry outburst, spoken harsh words, or made a fool of ourselves crying or begging. But there is also shame for whatever way we let you down in the first place, for not being good enough, perfect enough, no matter how hard we tried. If someone has picked up a flaw, or put space between us, or we made some obvious mistake. If we let you down. The shame, coupled with the fear that the other person hates us now they have seen our true colours, triggers us to run away and hide. If you hate us, we hate ourselves, and we can’t escape ourselves, only you. If the hurt to us, perceived or real, was severe enough we may lash out and hurt them with our words, before we reject and retreat. We are not particularly logical, we are emotionally driven.
It’s ironic, because losing people is the very thing we fear. And yet, more often than not, the people we have lost, and there will inevitably be at least one, probably more, we were the ones who ended the friendship, one way or another. Friendships in particular are commonly the most fraught relationships in our lives, based on the voluntary nature of them. Family is stuck with us, in a broader general sense, although I recognize this is not true for all my readers. Romantic relationships have structure and stages and legalities behind them. Even coworkers are a bit of a fixed position. But friends? They chose us, and they could just as quickly change their mind and leave us.
In a romantic relationship, if a partner stops answering your calls, you are justified in seeking clarification about this. If they have no time for you and make zero effort for 2 weeks, acting as though you don’t exist, you are entitled to be upset and concerned. However, when the person is a friend, it is expected that you just carry on in the uncertainty, not knowing if they are leaving your life or not. If they are mad at you or not. If you have done something wrong or hurtful or upsetting. You aren’t meant to notice, or care. But we do! Although we all know the stresses of being busy, people with anxious attachment styles struggle to accept that sometimes it isn’t about us at all…. Unless we are reassured of this, and then the behaviour changes.
Commonly, if we do feel someone pulling away, we will become clingy. We actually don’t mean to be clingy, and don’t realise we are even doing it. What we think we are doing is trying even harder to please you, in an effort to regain your love and attention. Although the other person might just need some time and space to focus on their own life, we may try and interject. Insert ourselves, give ourselves some sort of role to stay relevant and included. We think we are being generous and helpful, offering support. Then, when said support is rejected, WE feel rejected, and that is when the triggering of anger might happen.
You might hear us throwing back in your face everything that we have ever done for you, how ungrateful you are and how all we were trying to do is help you. The fact that you didn’t want help, can be a bit lost on us. I guess, what I am getting at, is that we tend to make things about us, cringe, even when they aren’t. And that doesn’t usually end well. Either we push you to break up with us because we won’t give you space, or we give you so much space that it takes you a while to notice we are actually gone, when you resurface from whatever was keeping you busy and distracted.
We end things as abruptly as I am about to end this post! But tune in next week for the follow up edition of how people pleasing is pointless!
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
