(this was originally posted on the Attachment Community Facebook Group)
I’ve recently been seeing many people commenting on Dismissive Avoidants (DAs) not caring about emotions, and being completely indifferent to processing anything with their partners. I just wanted to provide my own view of this, in the hopes that this might provide another dimension of understanding here.
Superpowers emerge when we go into the places where the insecurities of our attachment systems (the most sensitive parts) have over-compensated to survive, and we begin healing these parts of ourselves. We uncover the power in the deep sensitivity of these areas, and then allow the richness of wisdom here to flow through our lives.
So, while the Anxious attacher's superpower is in the realm of empathy and the Avoidant attacher's is about intellectual understanding, the Disorganized attacher's superpowers are all about somatic/primal awareness.
We’ll cover all three here.
Anxious Superpowers
As a disorganized attacher, I relate deeply to the DA’s way of taking in the world... which is actually highly sensitive. So sensitive, in fact, that this is the reason they will often have less tolerance for intensity than other attachment styles. They feel so deeply that they get overwhelmed sooner, and need more recovery time (I want to clarify here, that tending to your own needs and sovereign boundaries are #1 and not to be replaced by tending to the person in front of you)
Here are some tips from my personal bank for those who are having difficulty in relating with DA's (or disorganized/FA ie fearful avoidant attachers leaning avoidant)...
Re-route your capacity for hyperawareness of 'what could be wrong?' to extending awareness into your person’s experience. Feeling the slowing down of truly compassionate listening will likely begin to open the person in front of you into trust and presence.
Anxious attachers (and FA's) naturally have a knack for being hyperaware of their surroundings, as well as being deeply in touch with their emotions. You can use these things to your benefit by utilizing them as medicine for your loved ones in the form of awareness of their experience, and compassion for their feelings. (This will also put you back in touch with your heart desire for them to feel safe and loved.)
Anxious attachers often move at a much faster pace than the DA. When in doubt, move a little slower. For DA’s, feeling someone who is usually high-strung/chaotic in triggered states consciously bringing themselves to a slower pace can feel VERY reassuring and trustworthy. (This will likely also help you Anxious attachers come into more presence/start to self-regulate automatically! You are not losing connection either, you are deepening the quality of the connection here - even amidst difficulty. Even better!)
When in doubt, look at the person in front of you as if they are a child. While honoring your own personal needs/boundaries, check in with how you can support what their inner child needs. This is also a very gentle way of putting your own ego to the side - there is very little need for ego in our interactions with children. The need here when we tap into the inner child is: how can i best support their growth into the person they are meant to be? (note: this may seem scary to the AA afraid of abandonment/change... but this also carries the potential of turning your relationship into one of powerful transformation and deep fulfillment! exponentially rewarding bonus.)
Take a few deep breaths, and suggest that each of you name a few sensations that you are feeling in your bodies. For the Dismissive Avoidant attacher, this is good because it encourages getting in touch with their own experience and presence without getting into the less literal nuances of emotion. In triggering moments, facts can be easier to handle than emotions for the DA. For the Anxious attacher this is helpful because it takes them out of the charged emotional waters that keep them spiraling, and brings them back into the physical feeling of their experience. The beautiful thing about naming physical feelings is that there doesn't need to be any 'good/bad' association with these expressions. It's a presence practice that is personal with not much to debate about... and helps you also feel into each other's bodies simply though naming what's going on without trying to solve anything.
I hope these pointers can be of help to some of you. I realize that a lot of Anxious attachers also have frustration that they often feel that they are having to calibrate to their DA's experience. I'm not trying to say this is the case, but simply trying to help you understand more options of finding connection points here. As a disorganized attacher with strong avoidant tendencies, I write this also from the point of view of what helps me feel open to being in communication with others who are more anxious.
Avoidant Superpowers
Here are my words about how I work with my own avoidant tendencies to interact more sustainably with somebody who has an anxious attachment style.
Remember to breathe. Breathing deeply for me is the quickest and gentlest way to claim my space - literally by filling my insides with oxygen, I expand my physical inner space, and in my exhales I feel that I can allow myself to calmly merge with the air around my body... coming into deeper peace with my surroundings. (If I'm in a highly avoidant space, I will feel super resistant to connection with the person in front of me, so breathing and connecting with the air around me as a way of claiming my space feels like both an incredibly powerful and peaceful move.)
Ask for the person you are interacting with if they are willing to slow down. I do this when I feel my nervous system start to get frazzled, but am still within a manageable level of interaction. Simply and calmly asking if they would be willing to slow down to create more space in the conversation allows me to feel my own boundaries clearer, is a great self-reminder of the fact that I desire to stay in connection with this person (in my own voice), and shows the other person that you care about them, that you are being slightly stretched in your capacities at the moment, and it is an open invitation for you to meet in the middle. (I ask this about volume of voices as well... "would you be willing to speak a little softer so I can digest your words better?" If I am with someone who is both anxious and using a loud voice, AND I'm in an avoidant space it can be very hard for me to stay present.
Get into the practice of naming what's going on for you, without judgment or blaming (neither yourself or them). You can do this internally if you don't feel comfortable saying these things out loud to your person. The more you do this, the more you will start to notice the physiological symptoms of overwhelm that lead to your major avoidant moments. For example, I notice that oftentimes my first signs of overwhelm with company is that my skin starts feeling itchy, and my body gets restless - as if my body wants to run away. I get hypersensitive to noises, and I find myself unable to fully listen to what the other person is saying. It's these moments that I might tell the person I'm with that I'm noticing a sense of overwhelm. I remind them that it's not their fault, but that I'm simply noticing this. The less I have judgment about what's going on, the less they will need to feel defensive about it. Especially with anxious attachers, their sense of hypervigilance will pick up on any sort of pulling away - so stating what's going on out loud can help to also calm their nervous system which will otherwise likely begin to create dramatic stories about what they're picking up on.
Create structure within your alone time. I've recently begun incorporating this into my solo time and it has worked wonders for me in feeling rejuvenated in shorter amounts of time. I make sure that I have a minimum set amount of time to myself each day (and people know I am spending this time alone so I don't have to explain it each time), and then use it effectively by doing things that are the most valuable at regulating my nervous system. This helps ensure that I don't overextend myself without caring for myself to the point where I need crazy amounts of time alone to recuperate (which is much more difficult for an anxious person to digest, rather than knowing that you need some time every day).
I actively remind myself a few times a week to reach out to my loved ones and check in on them. I've actually gone through periods where I would write this on my phone or on a piece of paper. I realize this may sound disingenuous, but I assure you it comes from a deep place of love. For avoidants, it's more likely that they will get caught up in life and simply forget to reach out, but this doesn't mean they don't care. It helps bring back awareness to love and care, and is simply a way to create new patterns of reaching out for connection. It helps for multiple reasons: a. for people with an anxious attachment style, gestures like this are sweet reminders of your connection, b. having short interactions/messages more often soothes the nervous system into feeling that they are cared for, and c. reminds us that connection can be a normal part of daily life, and creates new habits for healthy interaction. Especially for those who are in an anxious/avoidant relationship, for the anxious person to receive more regular caring messages from the more avoidant person can have a calming effect to the relationship, which - if there are less blow-ups as a result - can have both parties start to feel safer and more open to healthy connection.
Use your superpowers for good! Each attachment style has their own superpower, and just like the anxious attacher is highly tapped into their emotions, the avoidant attacher is often logically inclined. If you can practice the first few tips on this list well (breathe deeply when in conflict, ask for some slowing down, name what's going on internally), you likely have the wherewithal to actually calm your system enough to feel that you have ownership of your personal space. Keep using the breath to remain centred, and then turn on your brain! I find that a lot of avoidant attachers get less avoidant when they look at a situation as if it's a puzzle to be solved. Especially when, if in conflict with your anxious person, you feel your emotional centres begin to be poked/prodded/pulled/attacked, by turning to your strengths (instead of your sore heart that's being pulled at), you will likely regain more sense of self, and bring new perspective to the situation. *When I say use your superpowers for good, I mean use them for the best possible outcome for both you AND your partner (it's super easy to use logic to out-argue your partner... but we all know that doesn't do any good!). Use your brain to assess what your partner is really saying, and map out where your needs overlap so you can get them both met as much as possible.
If the Anxious attacher's tendency is toward extreme emotion and connection, the Avoidant attacher's tendency is toward distance and individuality. You (avoidant) can use this to both of your advantages by remaining cool within the storm, practice not taking things personally, and remember that the anxiety is likely coming from unmet needs for connection/core wound material. Simply witnessing this, understanding, and holding compassion for this experience can be immensely healing in itself for both of you. The avoidant person's version of compassion (emotion) is understanding (intellectual)... and this is the bridge to secure relating.
Disorganized Superpowers
As I mentioned above, I believe the Disorganized attacher's superpowers are all about somatic/primal awareness. My hypothesis is this: while the avoidant and anxious attachment patterns work more with the inner child, the disorganized system has both of these patterns, AND the underlying patterns here are often attached to the inner animal as opposed to solely being about the inner child. Since the disorganized attachment style often manifests because the child has to develop multiple ways of attaching to their caregiver(s) because of trauma or volatility in their environment early on, a deep primal instinct is developed for safety - like learning how to survive in the unpredictability of nature.
So... somatic awareness and intuition; how does this relate to attachment style? Essentially having the capacity to engage both anxiously or avoidantly means learning to read a situation and react with whichever style of engagement is more safe in that moment. Since attachment styles originate in childhood, the decision of which attachment pattern to activate as children is not made consciously... which means that it is an intuitive response to the direct environment. We learn how to use intuition (which is the combining of the senses) to understand a situation, and then react accordingly. Growing up in a turbulent situation can mean that you needed to learn when it was necessary to attach to your caregiver, and simultaneously learn how to quickly detach when needed... similar to how animals behave in the wild. Things are rarely predictable in nature, but our brilliant instincts learn how to adapt quickly to keep us alive, and attachment plays a big part in survival for our species.
It's worth noting that although only 3-5% of the population has a disorganized attachment style, we make up a fairly large portion of this group... likely in part because there is so much stuff to work through in our systems that, unaddressed, can often result in disaster. But once these things start to get some space to breathe and come out of the shadows, there is are brilliant diamonds that have been forming at the depths of these darknesses.
So let's celebrate these diamonds!
Primal/somatic awareness: our nervous systems are so used to reacting to the energetics of a situation, that once we start to consciously extend awareness here, your body will have a wealth information to share with you and will often be able to tell you exactly what is happening in your system in various situations.
Pure presence: the bonus of primal awareness being the foundation of the disorganized attachment style is that deep down there is relatively little attachment to story/narrative. Sure, we develop this over time through pattern recognition and fear of specific scenarios unfolding... but this isn't materialized at the core of the nervous system in the same ways as the other attachment styles. Animals don't care about why or how; they care about what is happening directly in front of them in the present moment. Once you begin to connect your somatic awareness with ways to make yourself feel safe, then you are left with the very observant presence and power of your inner animal. Think of it like having a guardian animal by your side protecting you~
Creativity: disorganized nervous systems are already wired for maximum flexibility and resilience. I see the ability to switch from one response pattern to the next as the nervous system equivalent to growing up bilingual (obviously i'm speaking to the simultaneous learning of two things at once, not speaking to the trauma and other harmful effects of being disorganized). We already carry an expanded capacity for understanding things from different perspectives, and finding solutions to difficult situations. Once we learn to work with our system better (instead of fighting it), we can harness this creative power to use in any which way we desire.
Ability to be in the mystery: this is the true treasure chest, and cumulation of all of the above points. With your somatic awareness, calling back the power of your inner animal to protect you, being able to sit in full presence with it, and the spontaneous problem solving of creativity on your side... the unknown (i like to call it the mystery) is no longer a scary place. We roll with what comes, like true pirates of the sea!
I hope this article helped you discern some of your superpowers. It’s important to realize that for these skills to fully develop in a healthy way instead of them being used as coping mechanisms, you will have to grow your own “earned” secure attachment style and use them from a deeper place of awareness, security, and maturity.
This will take time and effort, but like with all superheros of movies and stories, this goal is indeed accessible and reachable with support.
Don’t try to do this alone. Find a good practitioner—a counselor, a psychotherapist, a coach you trust—who will help you develop yourself and your skills so they can be used for your benefit and the benefit of others around you.