Psychologist Explains What Helps Avoidants Heal | Healing An Avoidant Attachment Style

Key takeaways for healing an avoidant attachment style (toward secure attachment)

Understand what avoidant attachment is

• A pattern of avoiding closeness and/or wanting connection but not knowing how to feel emotionally connected
• Often involves excluding emotions from awareness to feel safe

Recognize the impact of emotional avoidance

• Unattended emotions may show up as emptiness, depression, frustration, and physical stress (e.g., effects on blood pressure/heart rate)
• In relationships, avoidant partners may struggle to:
  • Express themselves emotionally
  • Emotionally meet their partner’s needs (especially in romantic relationships)

Notice common avoidance-driven relationship behaviors

• Shutting down, dismissing the issue, blaming the partner for being “too sensitive/unclear”
• Stonewalling, being defensive, postponing emotionally difficult conversations
• Trying to “fix” the surface argument while excluding deeper attachment needs and emotions
• Offering responses aimed at what the partner “wants to hear” at the cost of authenticity

Identify where the pattern may have formed

Avoidant attachment can develop when caregivers model avoidance or when vulnerability/emotions lead to negative outcomes, such as:

• Rejection for expressing emotions (especially negative ones)
• Messages like “something’s wrong with you”
• Lack of emotional support
• Intrusive questioning about the child’s inner world; not respecting privacy/boundaries
• Emphasis on fixing the surface instead of feelings
• An environment where caregivers become overwhelmed/panicky when the child expresses difficult emotions

Don’t assume attachment style is fixed

• Attachment styles are not set in stone, and change is possible
• Motivation improves when you believe:
  • Secure attachment is worthwhile
  • You can personally attain it

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Wellness strategies / self-care techniques to move toward secure attachment

Start with insight and motivation

• Learn the negative consequences of avoidant patterns
• Learn the positive consequences of secure attachment
• Understand how avoidant attachment shows up internally and in relationships

Challenge unhelpful beliefs

Examples of beliefs to identify and reframe:

• “I’m valuable because I’m strong/independent; emotions make me feel icky.”
• “If I let people get close, I’ll lose myself/control.”
• “Having needs isn’t acceptable; love means not burdening others.”

Replace with healthier beliefs such as:

• “I’m enough; I have what it takes.”
• “Emotions, needs, and vulnerability make me human—not unacceptable.”
• “Emotional needs denying them causes problems; meeting them supports well-being and thriving relationships.”

Build emotional awareness (core practice)

• Practice checking in with your emotions
• Notice, allow, and experience emotions rather than push them away
• If avoidant people don’t feel emotions clearly, they may need to pull emotions back into the body and give them “space” to unfold over time

Trust emotions as information

• Emotions may not make sense instantly; understanding them often requires staying with them for a while
• The goal is not abandoning logic, but balancing reason with emotional data

Practice emotional communication

• Express your own emotions
• Talk about your partner’s emotions with the partner (care-taking around their emotional experience)
• This supports both partners’ attachment needs and improves the relationship

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Presenter / source

• Dr. John D. Preston (Psychologist; referenced as “my relationships playlist,” presenting the video content)