Hey what's going on my beautiful people? I'm going to go ahead and get into this video right away because I saw a pretty disturbing TikTok video that really made me want to speak up and kind of set the record straight. I don't have as big of a following as this person has, but I really feel that the content that they put out here, as far as avoidant attachment styles, how to manage an avoidant attachment style, how to be in a relationship with someone that's an avoidant, it disturbed me because it started using some very confusing language. So the title of the video is exactly what I titled this video, “Do Avoidants Discard”, well theirs was more like “Discarded by a Dismissive Avoidant”. When you start using words like “discard”, you start to think more of that negativity and more that “toxic traits”, if you want to call it toxic, of someone who might be more on the cluster B spectrum or someone who's more specifically a narcissist. Meaning, you have the love bombing phase, you have the devaluing, and the discard of a narcissist. So when you put language like that in the title of a video and you get it all ‘click baity’, because people will watch that type of video. It already kind of picks up the pitchfork for the ‘midnight burning’ of someone who's an avoidant already. It's frustrating because, for this channel, and if you guys are on my YouTube channel or if you're watching this from Instagram and TikTok, this is what I specifically talk about on my YouTube channel, which is bridging the gap between the avoidant person and people who have other types of attachment styles. So there's already enough negativity in the comments, there's already people upset about this. When you use that language once again, about “discard”, it instantly brings up the narcissist for people and they've already been confused enough about whether or not their avoidant is a narcissist or they just have an avoidant attachment style. So I want to set the record straight there and I have a couple more things here.
I feel like this person who positions themselves as an actual attachment style expert, I don't think that they're trauma informed. I took trauma informed care training, got the certification and I'm not trying to say that I'm holier than thou, but I do understand what people who are on the insecure attachment spectrum, are going through, and I try to advocate for them. So this kind of grinds my gears when I see someone trying to position himself as an expert, or he actually is, it feels like someone's undoing a lot of the different work that I'm trying to bridge together.
If you guys have been on my channel, I interviewed someone who was actually an avoidant attacher, and I immediately got rid of all the negative comments. I'm actually coaching two avoidants right now in particular. I'm not going to disclose any names, but I asked them specifically why they chose to reach out to me as a coach. Why did they choose to be healed, as far as their attachment style? They gave me these three answers.
The first one says that they don't want to be alone. If you think about the narcissist compared to the avoidant, the narcissist can't be alone, the avoidant chooses to be with someone because they don't want to be alone. I thought that was a pretty informed answer from this person because that's what I've been told by a lot of different avoidants over the years.
The second reason that he said was he saw how much pain he was putting his girlfriend through, and that is the exact opposite of someone who's on a narcissism spectrum, they typically don't see that. It’s usually all about being self-absorbed, needing to get themselves in position to get what they want out of that relationship, and they don't really care if there's some type of collateral damage. This is once again, when you think about a narcissist breakup, it feels more like a discard and people have a hard time getting over that, they're really reeling for a long time. For the avoidant, it's more like, ‘I need to pull away’, ‘I need to get out of this closeness, this space that I'm in, I'm feeling very claustrophobic right now’. That's totally different than someone who's more on a narcissism spectrum, because they're going out, trying to find their needs to get met from somewhere else, usually. Now this is not 100%. I don't know everything, I'm not a therapist, I'm not licensed, but I've been doing this for almost a decade now and I've talked to many different people. This isn't for me to try to boast myself up, I just feel like, when you're going to get into this field and get into this space of talking about things like insecure attachment, anxious attachment and more specifically, dismissive avoidant, you have to be careful about the language that you use. You could do whatever you want, but, in the end it's going to cause more confusion and it’s going to continue to separate and divide us from what I'm really trying to make this channel about, which is bringing us together.
The third one was, he saw how much his partner has helped him throughout his healing process. Now actually this is the woman I'm working with. She's in therapy and she has really been trying to work on being more mindful, being more present, understanding herself and understanding what her partner's needs are. A lot of time, it just goes over her head and she's oblivious. Certain ways of communicating, certain things that are normal communication, healthy communication, she doesn't see that throughout her day-to-day interaction with the guy that she's with or the guys that she's been with over the years, because she never quite understood, she couldn't put herself in that other person's shoes when it comes to that.
Now that's all I have for this video on do avoidants discard, no, they deactivate, they pull back. You guys have to understand that when anxious attachers get clingy, when they get a little bit anxious, a little bit nervous about the person pulling away, it's always a subconscious need to get their needs met. 95% of the way that we operate is operated from the subconscious mind and only 5% we're tapped into. Like I said, do your own research, do your own homework. I'm not a licensed therapist, this is just what I've seen.