Do you think dismissive avoidants breeze through a breakup unscathed? Let’s delve into the often misunderstood realm of avoidant attachment styles, specifically focusing on how avoidants feel after a breakup.
It’s a common misconception that avoidants are aloof and unemotional, swiftly moving past their former relationships. However, the truth reveals a much more intricate scenario. As a relationship coach specializing in attachment styles, I’ve observed firsthand that the way avoidant clients process breakups is fraught with internal conflict. What might look like detachment or indifference from the outside is frequently a protective shield covering a storm of emotions.
In this exploration, we will uncover the hidden aspects of emotional suppression that make the healing process uniquely challenging for those with an avoidant attachment style. Questions like “how often do dismissive avoidants come back?” or “do avoidants feel pain after breakup?” are crucial as they hint at the profound internal struggles dismissive avoidants endure. We’ll discuss why their perceived resilience may actually hinder their genuine emotional recovery.
This exploration isn’t just about unpacking behaviors; it’s about recognizing the human experience behind the avoidant label—struggling with fears of intimacy and commitment, which complicate their journey in moving on. If you’ve ever been puzzled by how an avoidant feels after a breakup, or if you’re finding your way after ending things with someone who has this attachment style, this video will provide valuable insights into the complex realities beneath the surface.
Stay tuned as we address these poignant questions and shed light on what it truly means for an avoidant to move on, proving that it’s not as straightforward as it might seem.
For a more detailed explanation of avoidant attachment style, watch my youtube video: 4 Strengths of the Rolling Stone.
Avoidant Deactivation Strategies: Navigating the Barriers
For individuals with an avoidant attachment style, certain mechanisms initially serve as a shield but can ultimately create significant barriers to emotional intimacy and growth. These mechanisms are known as avoidant deactivation strategies, which are notably evident in the avoidants after breakup scenario. We’ll explore why these behaviors, though meant to protect, often hinder authentic emotional healing and growth.
Self-Reliance Misinterpreted as Strength
Avoidants often value their independence and self-sufficiency, which might seem like emotional strength. However, this intense self-reliance can isolate them, preventing the benefits of mutual support and shared experiences vital for deep, fulfilling relationships. This can be particularly noticeable in the dismissive avoidant breakup timeline, where their self-reliance peaks, often misinterpreted as a lack of need for others.
Emotional Suppression as a Norm
One of the primary avoidant deactivation strategies is emotional suppression to shield against perceived threats of intimacy. Over time, this results in a backlog of unprocessed emotions, complicating the ability to move past old relationships or engage fully in new ones. This emotional suppression is a common theme when exploring how do avoidants break up and how do avoidants feel after a breakup, acting as a substantial barrier to their emotional spectrum, crucial for their healing and growth.
Idealization of Partners
When avoidants idealize past partners, they create a ‘phantom ex’ scenario, making it challenging for anyone new to measure up. This idealization can obstruct their appreciation of new relationships, as they compare real individuals with an unrealistic memory—often leading to dismissive avoidant breakup regret.
Hyper-Focusing on Flaws
Alternatively, avoidants might excessively focus on flaws, using this as a defense mechanism to justify withdrawal and detachment, thereby preventing genuine connections. This critical perspective can rationalize their discomfort with intimacy and closeness, seen in how fearful avoidants deal with breakups, thus maintaining distance.
Intellectualizing Relationships
Another coping strategy is the intellectualization of relationships, where avoidants emotionally detach by focusing on theories and data. This approach allows them to avoid confronting their feelings, hiding behind cynicism or a scholarly view of relationship dynamics—a typical behavior seen in fearful avoidant breakup regret scenarios.
How Avoidants Feel After A Breakup
These avoidant deactivation strategies, while seemingly effective in staving off feelings of grief, loss, rejection, abandonment, fears of failure, or even desperate feelings to reunite, initially, act as significant roadblocks to genuine connections and emotional resilience. They reinforce the avoidant’s fears rather than alleviating them, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where the avoidant remains trapped in a cycle, unable to move forward or engage fully in the healing process. Avoidant partners may appear to move on quickly in rebound relationships, or they may abstain from dating for a long time after a painful breakup. Either response can be a method of distracting oneself from the emotional turmoil they may not want to confront, internally, if they are not intentionally processing the end of the relationship and integrating what lessons need to be learned from it.
In our Attachment 101 courses and through the application of The MacWilliam Method™, we directly address these barriers. Our aim is to dismantle these unhelpful patterns and replace them with healthier, more adaptive behaviors and beliefs that promote genuine connections and emotional resilience. This transformation prepares you to move beyond the past and into a future where relationships are rooted in mutual trust, respect, and love.
(Note: To learn more about the nuanced differences between avoidant attachment and fearful avoidant attachment, watch my video: 2 Types of Emotional Unavailability: Fearful vs. Dismissive Avoidance)
Healing Attachment Styles with The MacWilliam Method™
Are you feeling stuck in patterns of avoidance, fear of intimacy, or struggling with maintaining relationships without feeling overwhelmed or detached? Or perhaps you have a partner that struggles with these things, leaving you feeling stuck in a perpetual cycle of people-pleasing, and losing oneself in the process. Maybe you’ve experienced prolonged waiting for your love to be reciprocated, in a relationship, with an emotional wall between you.
Sound familiar?
There are so many smart, funny, witty, sexy, individuals out there, struggling with insecure attachment styles, who, deep down, want someone amazing, who will rescue them from their isolation, and make them believe in love again, before they’ll allow themselves to start experiencing a fulfilling life.
I’m here to tell you it’s possible. And to introduce you to a transformative opportunity—my Attachment 101 courses.
These courses provide a proven roadmap to help you navigate from the struggles of insecure attachment styles to the freedom and joy of secure attachment in relationships.
A Three-Phase Healing Journey
With my Attachment 101 courses, the journey is structured around four phases and seven key steps, each crafted to address specific concerns of each of the four attachment styles, including avoidant attachment.
Phase 1: Exploring
In the Exploring Phase of our program as we guide you from the depths of codependent patterns, overwhelming emotions, and negative thinking to a place of unwavering confidence, clarity, and intuitive wisdom. Lessons 1-3 offer invaluable tools and insight that will liberate you from toxic relationships once and for all.
- How to recognize and transform activating, deactivating, and secure coping strategies.
- Cut through overwhelm by building your emotional vocabulary with an art therapy exercise.
- Get your needs met through positive action language and a winning 5-step formula for communication.
- End boundary violations with the guidance of the 5 archetypes for emotional boundaries.
- Recognize your intuition versus a “triggering” stimuli.
- Connect with your authentic self through somatic awareness and art therapy techniques.
Phase 2: Discovering
Unlock your true potential in the Discovering Phase as we guide you from frustration and fearfully repeating patterns to transcending past wounds, and establishing mind-body safety, by harnessing the strengths of your unique attachment style.Lessons 4-5 will dispel blame games and reclaim your inner power.
- Decoding emotional subtleties and how to use them to cultivate relationships.
- Conceptualizing emotions as “charge”; to help establish an understanding of “emotional regulation” and controlling triggered episodes.
- Gently releasing energy blocks due to trauma on the body so you can feel your feelings without fear, shame, or guilt.
- Stop blame games for good, by learning the 3 biggest myths about emotional Responsibility in love, and how to correct them.
- An examination of three essential boundaries in love, and how to articulate them, without sacrificing your needs.
Phase 3: Loving
In the Loving Phase as we guide you from questioning your worthiness and lovability while anxiously doubting your growth, to confidently advocating for your needs and priorities, ready to give and receive love beyond insecurity. Lessons 6-7 will install empowering beliefs and amplify loving energy in your life.
- Clarify 12 dimensions of compatibility in love, and how highly you prioritize those values long-term with a compatibility assessment.
- Script 2 high impact core beliefs statements, and extract your spirit-based desire from ego-based fear.
- Create a focus wheel to reframe limiting beliefs and stop automatic negative thinking for good.
- Receive your next action steps after connecting to your spirit with a soul-deep guided meditation.
- Blast through obstacles, with an arts-based experiential assessment that will “bridge” your expansion into love.
- Open your heart chakra with a guided visualization and “active imagination” technique that will lead to lasting changes in love.
These steps are not just theoretical; they are practical and designed for experiential learning. You’ll engage with these steps in the context of our supportive online community, with the added benefit of monthly live Q&As like this one, where you can receive direct support and insights tailored to your personal growth journey.
(To learn more, take this attachment styles quiz, and enroll in the course that’s the best fit for you and your attachment style.)
Why Choose The MacWilliam Method™?
What sets the Attachment 101 courses apart is the integration of my trademarked approach, The MacWilliam Method™ (TMM). This method isn’t just about gaining intellectual insight into attachment theory; it’s about embodied practice that addresses the energetic and physical constrictions caused by attachment injuries at the level of the body and nervous system.
TMM’s Three Principal Tools:
Cognitive Reframing
We start by raising your conscious awareness, helping you rewrite painful narratives and open yourself to the possibility of receiving the love you desire.
Body Activation
Using a blend of guided imagery, basic movement, and sound healing, we work to release the anxious energy stored up in your body. This process helps build new neural networks, fostering a healthier emotional framework using the language of the body and the unconscious.
Arts-Based Experientials
Through creative arts interventions, you’ll externalize your inner world. This not only facilitates a deeper understanding of your emotions and patterns but also promotes self-sovereignty by engaging in a dialogue with your Authentic Self.
Healing Avoidant Attachment Style
If you’re feeling uncertain about the journey to overcome avoidant attachment, let me assure you—healing is possible. The transformation may seem daunting at first, but with the right tools and support, anyone can move towards a healthier, more fulfilling way of connecting with others. Remember, the goal is to shift how you feel about yourself and others in your life. This change opens doors to new possibilities for love, trust, and joy that may have seemed out of reach before.
To illustrate just how impactful this journey can be, I’d like to share with you a special video clip. This clip features heartfelt testimonials from Mikael, Irena, and Jordan, all of whom once identified strongly with avoidant attachment styles.
Mikael’s Story
In this video, Mikael shares that the arts-based activities and focus wheel were his favorite parts of the course. This allowed him to let go of his perfectionism, and discover his inner child. Mikael says, “And in these exercises, I feel the presence of my inner child, I think. I have a whole new perspective on it. I’m more focused now. If you really want to do something about it, you have to join the courses. Not all advice is as good as these courses.”
Irena’s Story
Irena had read all the books, watched all the YouTube videos, and even tried counseling to help her with relationship issues. And as an avid learner and reader, she gained a lot of knowledge based on her own merit. But she still struggled to feel differently.
After taking my course, Avoidant Attachment 101, Irena was able to “stop intellectually detaching”, and get more in touch with her] emotions. Irena says, “I’ve been dealing with these issues for over a decade, and in only half a year, this has helped me tremendously.”
Jordan’s Story
Jordan found the psycho educational content and focus wheel helpful for breaking old negative thought patterns in a quicker and easier way. And if you’re not sure if you should enroll, he advises, “Don’t even question it, just dive straight in.” Jordan says, “The feeling that I have now is that of hope; and hopeful that I can ultimately become the partner that I’ve aspired to become.”
(To experience results like this, take this attachment styles quiz, and enroll in the course that’s the best fit for you and your attachment style.)
Embrace The Healing Journey
These are real clients who have walked the path you’re considering now. They’ve engaged with the Avoidant Attachment 101 course and embraced The MacWilliam Method™ to great effect.
After experiencing my trademarked method for healing avoidant attachment…
- You INHABIT your body with pleasure, ease and receptivity.
- You ATTRACT healthier partners.
- You STOP telling old, painful stories and building your identity around them.
- You EMBRACE an attitude of compassion towards yourself and others.
- You START living a life that lights you on fire, from your crown to your toes!
This process allows you to step into a state of being on FIYAH about life, and sharing that brilliance with a “stars-in-their-eyes” lover. Consider what your own story might be like on the other side of healing your own avoidant attachment style, or your partner healing their avoidant attachment style. Imagine a life where you can freely give and receive love without fear, where you trust in your ability to maintain boundaries while still being open and connected. This isn’t just a dream—it’s a real possibility, and it starts with taking that first step towards healing.
Let that first step be to take this attachment styles quiz, today.
After submitting your information, you will receive access to a detailed explanation of your attachment style and a limited time offer to purchase the course that’s the best fit for you, at a generously discounted price.
Become part of a community that supports each other through every step of the journey. Together, we can transform the way you relate to the world, opening up a future filled with healthier relationships and a profound sense of personal peace and satisfaction. Your path to healing starts here, and I’m excited to guide and support you every step of the way.
