Attachment avoidance

Attachment avoidance is the other dimension of attachment insecurity, along with attachment anxiety. Avoidance presumes a fear of dependence, and a dismissive attitude towards closeness and intimacy. Research found that people with high attachment avoidance tend to accurately perceive negative emotions experienced by others but exaggerate their intensity (Overall et al., 2015). As a consequence of kind of overestimated perception of others’ negative emotions, avoidantly attached people can act defensively or even hostile. Since avoidance presumes a view of others as rejecting and distant, people high in avoidance learn to cope with difficult emotions by turning inward, as opposed to others. In some avoidant people, this strategy can lead to pathological self-reliance, which is connected with defensive self-enhancement and grandiosity, as well as denial of vulnerabilities and relational needs. Another strategy involves deactivating the attachment system altogether and dismissing perceived threats (and/or negative emotions), in order not to have to seek support from unavailable attachment figures.

Attachment insecurity - avoidance and anxiety - leads to the development of mental representations of others as either inconsistent or unavailable, as well as oneself as unworthy of care. These mental representations are referred to as the internal working models (IWMs) of self and others. Shifting negative IWMs to positive representations of self and others requires new relational experiences, which is where experiential therapy (individual and couples) comes in.