Avoidant Attachment: How To Work With The ‘Fear Of Commitment’

hey guys I'm Heidi Priebe welcome back to my Channel or welcome if this is your first time here today on this channel I am going to be talking about the fear of

commitment so if you are at all engaged in the attachment style Community which I'm guessing you are if you have found your way here you will know that the fear of commitment is something that is

often ascribed to avoidant leaning attachment Styles whether that is the dismissive avoidant or the fearful avoidant and it's often talked about as

though it is random and irrational so someone could be in the perfect relationship they could have all of their needs getting fulfilled they could be perfectly happy and yet this fear of

commitment will just kind of crop up out of nowhere because it's like this de Factor character flaw that avoidant leaning types have and I am here to completely disagree

with that definition of the term I believe strongly that the fear of commitment is always a rational fear but

it's not the commitment itself that the person is likely afraid of so I would like to invite you to think about in this video fear of commitment

as kind of similar to a food aversion if you are someone who is not super in tune with your emotions and who is not always aware of what is and isn't working for

them in interpersonal relationships on a conscious level it's kind of like eating a smoothie where some ingredient within the Smoothie is spoiled but because you

don't have good discernment about what it is within that smoothie that is upsetting your stomach you don't really know why after a few times of having

that same smoothie you're suddenly feeling averse to the entire thing and I would like to suggest that the fear of commitment in romantic relationships

specifically when we're looking at people who air more avoidant on the attachment Spectrum can be very similar to having a food aversion so something happens within the relationship that

you're uncomfortable with that may be her hurts your feelings that you don't want to engage with any further and yet because you don't have good discernment about what it is that hurts you

emotionally you start to feel adverse to the entire relationship and when you think about planning a future with that person you might get that sense of

queasiness without understanding why and so in this video we're not going to talk about how to get rid of your fear of commitment we're going to talk about how

to get in touch with what your fear is telling you about which boundaries you might need to have within your relationships about how you may be showing up inside of the relationship in a way that you don't like and about what

is actually important for you within a relationship that you may be neglecting at this point so again this isn't about getting rid of the fear it's about listening to the fear and letting it

inform you about which ingredients you need to take out of that smoothie so that it starts going down more easily step one is to stop Gaslight lighting yourself and pretending that your fear

is irrational and coming out of nowhere so the number one thing I'm going to ask you to consider about the fear of commitment is the possibility that it's

not the other person you're necessarily afraid of committing to long term it's probably the version of yourself that you are within the relationship with

that other person that you're afraid of committing to long term so something I want to note here is that again we often see the fear of commitment as kind of an avoidant problem I don't believe that's fully

true I believe someone who's just a little bit avoidant is not going to have a huge fear of commitment because they're not distorting their identity that strongly to be in relationship but

if you have someone who is severely avoidant or anxious because it is absolutely a massive Spectrum you are going to have a person on either side of

that Spectrum at the extreme ends who is massively distorting their personality and who they authentically are in order to be an attachment relationships they

will be doing it for different reasons but both those people will be operating under a very false Persona now how does this relate back to the fear of

commitment if you are significantly distorting who you are and playing a role that is not completely authentic to your true embodied experience of being

alive in attachment relationships you are naturally going to start fearing a future of having to always play that role so some good questions to start off

asking yourself if you notice a fear of commitment coming online for you in a relationship that you would like to commit to long term might be in which

ways am I not showing up authentically in this relationship what parts of myself do I lie about or keep hidden on a regular basis in order to stay in comfortable connection with this other

person who am I pretending to be that I'm not so again secure people bring their whole selves into romantic relationships yeah they put their best foot forward at

first but even then they're relatively open and straightforward about the things that those of us who air more insecurely attached are guarding with our absolute lives in attachment

relationships so a thought experiment to do around this is think about what the differences are between the way that you show up when you are either alone with yourself or with someone who you feel

like you're completely authentic around like if you happen to have and not everyone will a close friend or someone else in your life who you just do not think before you speak around what are

the differences between the way that you show up in that relationship and the way that you show up in a romantic relationship or when you feel kind of exhausted and like you need a break from

your romantic relationship what energy inside of yourself is it that you want a break from what is the social role you're playing that you want a break from playing the more clear you can get

on that the more you can start to do that work of isolating that ingredient right what is it about the way I am showing up that I don't like and that my

body is having an instinctive fear response to at the thought of having to show up that way fairly consistently for the rest of my life the next thing I'm going to recommend in this process of figuring out where your fear of

commitment is coming from and starting to work with it is using the discussed responses that come online for you as useful information about what you don't

like within your relationship so this is going to be something that is a fairly common response for those who are avoidant but can also come online quite strongly for those who are

severely anxiously attached is this sense of suddenly and inexplicably feeling discussed towards your partner in circumstances where you consciously feel as though you shouldn't be feeling

discussed and as though you should just accept them as they are so there can be this kind of tug of war between your body and your brain what you are feeling and what you want to be feeling now when

we are experiencing disgust and we are not being conscious about it we're not really putting any thought into where it comes from or what it means it's often going to come out as contempt towards our partners so they're going to do

something we're going to get the ick we're not going to know why and we're not going to process it any further maybe we're just going to be rude or dismissive towards our partner in that moment or maybe we're going to retreat and kind of ruminate on the fact that

this thing they do disgusts us when we become a little bit more conscious of that discussed response what we're likely to do is start shaming ourselves for having it so a lot of us feel something along the lines of I should

accept my partner completely I should not feel discussed towards them Ergo if I'm feeling it I'm just going to retreat for a while wait until the feeling passes and then return to the

relationship only when I'm able to do so with complete and total love and acceptance of my partner which often involves me wearing that social mask that I have come to wear so well I'm

going to suggest here that you start looking at disgust as a potential indication of what you don't like within your relationship discussed on a

biological level is designed to help humans understand what is and is not safe and good for consumption and the same is true emotionally feeling

discussed towards either ourselves or someone else does not mean that we are the other people are inherently shameful and bad and should be altogether

rejected it's just just an indication that something we're coming across is something we don't want to consume and if we can stay with disgust in a

non-judgmental way for long enough if we can sit with the feeling inside of our own bodies often we're going to find that underneath it there's some kind of pain

some kind of anger or some kind of negative emotion that actually serves as incredibly useful information so I'll give an example here let's say you are lying in bed one day

with your partner and they look up at you and they have these giant loving doe eyes and they're just looking at you like you are an absolute dream and the best thing that's ever happened to them

and you get a giant sense of disgust flowing through your body as a response it would be easy to shame yourself for this response it would be easy to go that's just me and my fear of commitment

but what if you sit with it for another moment and ask yourself what is it that I don't like about this maybe your partner is in their child self in that moment maybe they are

displaying a degree of vulnerability that is a little bit excessive and maybe your partner is quite frequently in their child's self so in a state where they are extremely vulnerable and

looking to you for protection and care and maybe that naturally forces you into the parent role in your Dynamic quite a bit when you are playing the parent role it

means you must be completely self-regulated and attentive to the needs of your partner and maybe what you're really wanting and craving in a

romantic partnership is two people being in their adult selves rather than frequently retreating to that parent-child role and that sense of disgust if you really

listen to it it's not telling you something is inherently flawed with your partner or with you it might just be alerting you to the fact that you are

back in a dynamic with your partner that some part of you does not like or is growing to resent and that is very useful information to have so by sitting

with those feelings of disgust and getting to the root of them we start to develop discernment once again about what exactly it is within the dynamic that we don't like or that we are

starting to feel averse to so the next tip I'm going to give on working with the fear of commitment is figuring out what you would need to do to more consistently align your inner and outer

world put yourself for a period of time under observation mode and just get really curious about noticing when you're around your partner or when you're thinking about your relationship

what body State you're in how often are you relaxed how often are you feeling open and free-flowing in your energy versus how often are you feeling tense

how often are you feeling reserved how often are you kind of clenching your muscles and the more you can start to notice patterns of which types of

situations or circumstances those kind of tense resistant Body Sensations arrive in the more discernment you're going to develop around which situations

you tend to not show up authentically to or if you air more on the dissociative side of things when it comes to the way in which you're resistant to reality responses come online you might find

that you are just suddenly feeling extremely bored tired zoned out in certain interactions with your partner all of those things can indicate

repressed anger or repressed strong emotions that the mind is trying to put you to sleep to so ask yourself if I were to change my body state in this

moment if I were to let go of either the tension and the clenching in my body or if I were to become more Associated and focused on the present moment in those times when I'm noticing myself kind of

zoning out and leaving the present moment what would I be feeling in that moment what is it that I am resisting or that I don't want to let into my body in

this relationship is there something my partner says or does that actually really pisses me off or that actually I am really not okay with and what would happen just run this through your mind

as a thought experiment first what would happen if I shared my authentic feeling in that moment what would happen if I expressed that I felt angry what would happen if I expressed that I did not

agree with what they were saying or doing maybe you feel like you have too many irrational feelings like the things that you would be taking issue with are too small or they are not valid enough

to bring up doesn't matter just imagine what would happen if you did it anyway and you've got your inner and outer State aligned this experiment is going to start giving you information about

the areas in which you are not showing up for yourself and the areas in which you are self-abandoning and putting yourself to sleep in order to keep engaging with and those are the parts of

yourself that are going to start to panic when you think about making a commitment because those parts of yourself are like wait I don't want to hide away forever I don't want to have to numb myself out forever I don't want

to have to back down in situations that I feel strongly about forever right now you're getting really precise about exactly what it is that you're not bringing into the relationship

and at this point I want to give some resources so if you actually want to start communicating more directly with your partner as you start to become aware of these areas in which you've

been repressing things like anger or things like excitement whatever emotion it is that you naturally tend to dissociate from tone down within yourself Etc there are a lot of different

approaches you could use for communicating those things so a very kind of gentle approach to difficult conversations can be non-violent communication which there are books and

training seminars by the Dozen out there if you do a quick Google of non-violent communication you are highly likely to find some immediate resources the next one and this is the one that if I'm being honest has helped me the most

however it is kind of a highly potent chemical that I hesitate to recommend across the board but the philosophy of radical honesty if you go online and Google it you can pick up the book by

Brad Blanton that will explain the philosophy to you very simply and directly and it talks a lot about how to get in touch with those repressed emotions and communicate them with

people directly in order to get on the same page the reason I give caveats when I recommend radical honesty is that the philosophy itself is a very quick way to tear down a lot of the psychological

defenses that we've built and I believe that in some cases if that happens too quickly it can be really difficult for people to deal with so approach this philosophy with caution if you do not

have a therapist a good community of people you can rely on when you are using these new skills just make sure that you are sticking within your own window of Tolerance and the third thing

I'm going to recommend is the philosophy of authentic relating this is a new one that I'm getting very into it's similar to radical honesty in that it talks a lot about how to have direct

self-responsible communication but it does it with a little bit less intensity than radical honesty which is probably going to feel a lot more accessible if you are just starting out in this journey of becoming more authentic in

your communication but again you don't actually have to do the inner and outer lining yet all I'm asking you to do in this step is become aware of where you are not doing it and why tool number

four for working with the fear of commitment is learning what no feels like in your body and being willing to say it and set clear boundaries in your relationships

if you do not know how to set boundaries in a relationship there is an almost 100 chance you are going to feel terrified of commitment because it means committing to a life of chronic

self-abandonment because as we go through life our bodies are saying no to things all the time right think about what you just learned in the last step think of all the situations in which you

are tensing yourself up resisting what's happening and trying to push it out of your awareness without ever saying no and rejecting it outright so the more we say yes when we mean no and know when we

mean yes the more we are creating a Chasm between the way we feel and the way that we are showing up and the bigger a Chasm exists between reality and our inner State the more dissociated

from the present moment we are becoming in order to stay present and engaged with our lives we have to use our yeses and our no's use our body information to

inform the choices that we are making so that we are not sitting in front of someone completely distracted by all of the resentment and pent up frustration that we feel we have let that go by

setting boundaries saying no to things we don't want and now we can actually just be present and receptive to the person in front of us right and when we can be present and

receptive to the people in front of us and they're doing the same with us it is so hard not to feel loving and excited about the opportunities that exist in the present moment the more present and

engaged with reality we are the more authentically we are acting and the more authentically we're acting in our attachment relationships the less we

fear commitment because we are actually showing up as ourselves now I want to make a point here that is probably self-evident but deserves being said overtly you might notice in this process

that the partner you have chosen is not someone who would necessarily take well to you showing up more authentically the partner you have chosen is likely someone who if you came into the

relationship with a huge amount of ego defenses online has complementary ego defenses to yours and actually likes your ego defenses more than they might

like you as a person that does not mean there's something wrong with you as a person it just means that when we are afraid of our true authentic selves because we have this internalization that there's something wrong with that

self it's very threatening to engage with someone else who is in touch with that part of themselves because it reminds us that we have that too at our core and we're afraid of it if we have a

lot of toxic shame from growing up insecurely attached so I am not suggesting that doing this work is going to be sunshine and roses for your relationship in a lot of cases it is

likely to lead to the relationship that you are currently in if your relationship is a heavily defended one on both sides breaking down if you really struggle with vulnerability and you get in touch with that more

vulnerable honest part of yourself if you have a partner who picked you because they wanted a parent figure who never shows any vulnerability it's highly possible I'm even unfortunately

going to say likely that when you bring that vulnerable side of yourself out they are going to have a disgust response if again they are operating from their own wounding and so I want to

be clear that this isn't going to be a very simple battle to fight right the work of becoming more authentic and showing up as we actually are in attachment relationships is a really

brutal Road a lot of the time as with absolutely everything I recommend on here I am not offering you the easy solution I'm offering you the one that is going to be the most meaningful and

worthwhile long term for living a type of life that you actually want to live so this leads us to point number five if you are working on your fear of commitment if you realize that the

partnership you are in is not one that it is wise for you to stay committed to long term if you discern that overall your fear is actually giving you very good information about the fact that you

don't want this type of partnership that it would be overall not the best choice for you to stay with this person for the rest of your life then your work becomes if you do want a long-term life partner if you're consciously interested in

getting rid of that fear of commitment you have to start thinking about what type of a relationship or what type of a person would you feel happy and excited to commit to long term and then ask

yourself what barriers are currently in the way of you having that type of relationship or being with that type of person most people will tell you to your face that they want a secure part

partner when they themselves are insecurely attached but they haven't really thought about what type of work that means they would have to do in order to be the type of person who could

maintain a secure partnership a secure partner is not going to do a hundred and fifty percent of the work for you so if you air a little bit more avoidant and you really like the other person to take

on all the emotional labor and all of the vulnerability in the relationship you're not going to get that with a secure partner and if you are anxious on the attachment spectrum and you want a partner who hides all of their

vulnerability and who is always strong and regulated and competent you are not going to find that in a secure partner a secure partner is going to have their own vulnerabilities and they're going to

need you to be strong for them and serve as a secure base just as frequently as they do the same thing for you so really think about what you're saying when you say that you want a secure Partnership

if that is a phrase you use think not about how to like snag secure person think about what skills you need to develop to build yourself up to be the

kind of person who a secure person would Naturally Fit with this might mean working on either your self-responsibility and ability to regulate yourself emotionally on a

consistent basis if you are more anxious or making yourself more vulnerable and willing to take other people's needs and want seriously and make meaningful

compromises because you actually value the relationship in a real way if you air more avoidant so again those who are significantly insecurely attached on

either ends of the spectrum have a tendency to just fall into relationships and then act like the victim for being there right this person just pursued me

so hard so I gave in but I don't really want to commit that's not going to cut it in a secure relationship you have to decide to be there and you have to decide that you are willing to do 100

percent of the hard work it takes to maintain a secure Dynamic if that's something that you want long term so this part is all about developing

yourself into the type of person whose authentic self-expression includes both vulnerability and self-responsibility if either of those muscles is very weak for

you right now you've got to take the time to build that muscle up before you can expect to have that type of connection like all of us at some point

have met someone or been someone who claims they have a massive fear of commitment when it is super clear to everyone else around them that actually they just don't like their partner and they're in the relationship for the

wrong reasons and they're unwilling to compromise or to actually work to make it work because they just don't want to spend their life with that person but maybe their own insecurity is keeping

them from leaving and finding a partnership that they would be willing to commit wholeheartedly to and I want to be clear here that that doesn't mean that their partner is not a good person

who is worthy of love and respect and commitment insecure attachment just has us out here choosing people we are wildly incompatible with because we are trying to repair the wounds we have from

childhood rather than actually devote ourselves in an adult way to another adult and sometimes we just need to call that out in ourselves am I fearing commitment because I have this crazy

irrational fear of commitment or am I refusing to pursue people who actually share my interests and values because I'm afraid of getting rejected or whatever it is so this step is all about

getting really freaking real with yourself if you are full of BS and you are just telling yourself that you have this fear of commitment when really you don't like your partner you don't like the way you show up in attachment

relationships and you are absolutely terrified of trying for something real with someone who you actually respect and feel aligned with and compatible with this is the stage where you have to

get really real with yourself about that and start developing the skills you would need to be in a relationship with the type of person you would actually like to be with all right the last thing we're going to talk about for today when

it comes to working with your fear of commitment is figuring out and remaining constantly Vigilant to the things you have internalized as

inherent to commitment that might not be true so what does that mean I mean that when we are young we all make assumptions about what it means to be in a romantic relationship long term to

have a family to be in connection with other people sometimes the things that we internalized were true in the family Dynamics we grew up in but are not true to all Dynamics everywhere and in

reality we could be doing a lot of creative designing of the relationships we'd like to have so an example of this is that for the longest time in my own life I felt very ambivalent about

becoming a mother at this point I currently do not have kids but for the longest time I felt like there's a part of me that absolutely loves spending time with my nieces that really enjoys

the thought of starting a family but there is another part of me that felt very scared and resistant to that thought because I had internalized this idea that to become a parent you have to

turn off your brain you have to dissociate from the parts of yourself that are intellectual analytical that are kind of wired into what's happening in the world and all the inter resting

things going on and you have to let your entire brain get taken over by like diapers and dumb songs about sharks and so for a long time when I thought about motherhood I thought that that was the

exchange I was saying yes or no to am I willing to turn my brain off forever in order to have kids and so of course I felt terrified at the thought of committing to being a mother and I

remember at one point I went on a first date with someone who was super into developmental psychology and who talked at length about all of their reasons for wanting to become a parent which were

things like I find developmental psychology fascinating and I would love to experiment with different modes of helping my kid acquire language and learn to regulate their emotions and it

would also be fascinating to learn and have my own assumptions routinely challenged through the art of being a parent and sitting across from this person for the first time I realized there is a totally different way to

approach Parenthood than the way that I had internalized if I could bring my whole entire analytical intellectual self into Parenthood and that would probably be the healthiest possible

environment for both me and the child and at the end of the day this is how we need to be approaching every aspect of attachment relationships do you have preconceived ideas about what it means

to be a partner to have a partner to be a parent to exist in any type of social role that involves another person in a committed lifelong way and the more we

can start being precise about what things we have internalized as ways that we have to show up to be in any of these roles and the more we can challenge

whether or not those things are really true the better an idea we get of the type of Partnerships and family Dynamics we are in control of creating and those

Partnerships and family Dynamics should be direct extensions of who we authentically are because again the more we can be showing up as our whole complete authentic selves in any type of

relationship the more that fear of commitment is going to start dropping away because we're taking the poisonous things out of the Smoothie right and so our bodies are no longer going to be

panicking trying to eject the things that we aren't being honest with ourselves are just not working for us okay that's all I have to say for today on this topic as always let me know in

the comments what your thoughts feelings experiences are listening to this I love you guys I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other and your inner children and I will see you back here

again super soon [Music] all right [Music]