Avoidant Attachment Quotes

“You’re not a quiet person.
But somehow your silence is even louder than you. I’m tired of talking to it.”
― Josie Eamer, I Want To Know You When You’re Forty

“In their effort to avoid conflicts, they have avoided intimacy. They can feel numb to a spouse’s needs. Messages become jumbled and can eventually almost stop being taken in by the AVP.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“To the significant other, the confusion can become enormous. They “hear” the AVP say, I want it, but I don’t. I want it all, not just some. I’m too overwhelmed; I can’t get what I really want. Poor me. I can’t deal with this, and you, too. I’m tired. I’m bored. I don’t care about your situation. Calm down. We don’t need emotions here. Only controlled access is allowed. These statements may or may not be said, but they are acted out.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen

“Under stress in a relationship, thoughts and emotions increase. They gravitate to negative emotions of fear and grab onto a fear thought that quickly manifests itself.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“They can be seen as givers in their inability to confront situations. This can have a benefit of appearing to be trying in a relationship, yet distancing themselves. This ultimately exhausts them and overwhelms them to the point of poor me.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“This means that emotional hoarding is occurring. How to balance the needs of others is difficult for them. Therefore, more AVPs need psychological treatment to assist on an ongoing basis. Add to this the fact that the spouse of the AVP recognizes the AVP has times of clarity. This just increases anxiety and defensiveness for both when the needed clarity is gone.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“In family life, avoidants appear to have a high need for attention. This attention needs to be positive attention, even if they are silent. If expectations or demands are made, they will quickly withdraw.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“The AVP’s ambivalence extends to displaying affection. They can at once show interest and then shut this interest off when the spouse responds more intimately. The spouse is left with feelings of disappointment and discouragement, annoyance, and confusion.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“The AVP often has intestinal issues. The intestines are indeed a second brain and need a significant amount of support. It may be interesting to note the polyvagal theory of Steven Porges (2011), who wrote about the tenth cranial nerve, which runs from the brain to the gut. Negative responses in the gut can occur when flight/fight/freeze responses are automatically activated.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“Empathy is difficult for the AVP. They do care about others and can be very aware of emotional content. AVPs are capable of expressing empathetic thought, though it is usually short lived. Their thoughts are often racing and difficult to find. They vacillate between what is fair or not. You might see an AVP give more empathy to a distant relative at an event than the significant other. They do care, but the feeling of that care response can be problematic. They are still hiding, balancing, and are fearful of rejection. Interactions rarely are confronted or dealt with.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“Both men and women AVPs are emotionally silent. The notable loss of intimacy is reported by the spouse of the AVP. These day-to-day losses are very wearing on the spouse.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“AVPs will hold the spouse accountable for “wrong” action. This is true even if the spouse felt he or she was supporting the AVP. The AVP is hypersensitive. They do have a continued suspiciousness of others and what they might do to them. This, in turn, maintains a fairly consistent internal defensive posture.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“Human beings are a species evolved for secure connection with others--that's just human biology & neuroscience.
But some of us wonder if we can feel secure without being abandoned
&
some of us wonder if we can feel secure without being overwhelmed.
Some of us a little of both.”
― Allyson Dinneen, Notes From Your Therapist

“At the time, I was unable to understand anything! I should have based my judgement upon deeds and not words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I should never have run away from her! I should have guessed at the affection behind her poor little tricks. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“There may also be a paranoid response in the AVP, a sense of imminent harm by a family member, which sets up protection devices. The AVP thus controls situations, even though there is only a short-term gain. In the long term, this produces more hurt and anger for the people involved. The avoidant, however, has a sense of relief in that they can relax a bit. They have done the “right” action, or they have kept tensions at a given level once again. They do not want the blowup from tension. This is too difficult, as more may be released than their system can handle. Also, there may be an illusory sense of closeness, and of success. These scenarios also keep boredom at bay. It is a type of delusion they create and operate under. They do this to justify their behavior. This delusion is very difficult for family members to penetrate with rational thought.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“AVPs are usually willing to show or tell others about their external or physical pain. In so doing, they avoid sharing the internal pain they feel. They can overdwell on their anatomical issues. This ambivalent thinking can be self-defeating. And AVPs fear finality. Some patients have not had a recommended surgery, due to the finality of having the problem fixed. The avoidant person’s gauging of their own body is flawed. Some avoidants are quick to seek treatment for their bodily concerns. The tensions they absorb have produced some very real problems. On the other hand, some avoidant persons tend to “ignore” these concerns until a significant health event occurs. As a group, they do need rest, less stressful environments, and dietary consistency, but they are not good at these following these restrictions.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“They base their behavior on fear of both criticism and rejection. However, they also want to relate. We see them placing their weight on one side of the teeter-totter and then the other. This occurs in most aspects of their lives. On one side, they will strive to look and act close to perfect, in order to establish connections. Then, they will do things to keep others away. They consciously or unconsciously set themselves up to be the first to reject. Others will then respond with the desired rejection or criticism. The dynamic is one of success to failure, failure to success.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“Perfectionism has its own set of judgment issues. The AVP may see the partner as less than perfect and can exclude them on such a basis. These erroneous judgments, at best, impede their social relationships and, at worst, leave them alone. The way in which they reflect on their lives and the lives of others is so often done from one perspective—theirs.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“Over the years, the significant other can come to feel shame, even though this was not part of their coping mechanisms. Shame can therefore be used by the significant other. Either consciously or unconsciously, they may use shame in interaction with the AVP. Part of this is due to the fact that the significant other fears being guilty (hurting the AVP). When communication becomes more and more difficult in relationships, shame increases in both partners. The other may find that, without using shame, the AVP doesn’t respond in any meaningful way: What is wrong with you? One of the major struggles of the partner of the AVP is in the area of whether they need to hold the AVP responsible for his or her actions. This is a truly difficult piece for the spouse. They have a sense that the AVP is not deliberately trying to hurt them. June often is confused. She doesn’t know if Doug is understanding the hurt he is inflicting.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“These scenarios are repeated over and over again in daily living. The spouse feels anger, frustration, and confusion. They ask for a different approach, but usually, over years, it ends up in a hopeless state of confusion. AVPs state they love their spouse, but the question remains for them: To what end? The spouses would like their life to be different, but often they end up in stagnation.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“The problems arise when they become exhausted with their role of spouse or parent, and life involves more than work. AVPs put in huge efforts toward the tasks they do. They have very little energy left. Their families begin to feel the abandonment when ambivalence replaces the structure of rules or work. They can clean up the kitchen, help with homework, but the needed or intimate parts of relationships are more minimal. The other issue is often trying to hold the line, as it were. Many of the AVP’s psychological symptoms turn into health-related issues, which can further remove them”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“In the beginning of their relationships, both short term and long term, the AVP seems to welcome assistance. As time progresses, they can see these same helpers as incompetent. This could be from a spouse helper to a therapist. When this occurs, passive–aggressive displays can be apparent, subsequent to distancing from a given relationship.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“They are extreme in their self-analysis at certain times. Nothing, but nothing, escapes their derision. This extends outward. In times of stress, they have little hope of a breakthrough in the wall of negativity.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“Hence, the significant other has little to no input on this process. It’s already been done. The dramas/traumas have already been enacted. Their own memories carry negative emotions, even if they are not able to remember the details of the memory.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“We know that while AVP may be the least problematic of the personality disorders, it can have serious consequences in the lives of close family members, and particularly the significant other. Treatment can be initiated by an AVP, but often the focus is on other “symptoms,” such as failed relationships, anxiety, or depression. More often, treatment is initiated by the AVP’s significant other.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“They are taking the “victim” position in the triangle model. AVPs are internally tight and stiff. This can cause a number of physical issues, from fatigue to asthma.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“The more stressors in an AVP’s life, the more heightened is his or her unfolding ambivalence. This action blocks the forward motion of a warm, intimate relationship. They are preoccupied; they are stressed;”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“The spouse sees all the wonderful aspects embodied in these relationships, and the missing pieces in their own relationship with the AVP. This is how the spouse would prefer to be treated. This causes anxiety, confusion, frustration, and loss for the spouse. Coworkers, colleagues, employees experience different levels of the AVP. The AVP’s perfectionism is usually full blown on the job, where the AVPs are at their best”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“Overall, AVPs will be the ones to shut down in a relationship. There appear to be various reasons. They may find the spouse does understand them too well and is getting close.”
― Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen, Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder

“I think now that White's quest for the hawks was his final test of Gos: he was behaving like a fearful man who has finally won someone's love and, unsure whether that love can be trusted, decides it is safer to obsess about someone else.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk