Understanding Attachment Styles, Part 2: Avoidant (Dismissive) Attachment Style
The person who seems least affected by relationship difficulties may not be the person who feels the least. They may simply have become very good at moving away from what feels uncomfortable.
People who lean toward avoidant, sometimes called dismissive attachment, are often the ones who appear to have it together. They can seem calm under pressure, independent, low-maintenance, and unbothered by things that seem to upset everyone else. They may genuinely value their independence, and they're often capable, and self-sufficient. But that surface calm is not necessarily the whole story. For some people, independence became more than a strength. It became a way of feeling safe.
In part one of this series, we looked at attachment theory as a way of bringing awareness to relational patterns, rather than treating attachment as a fixed identity. Here, we look more closely at avoidant attachment: where these strategies can come from, how they can show up in adult relationships, and what it can look like to move toward greater security. What follows draws on my clinical understanding of avoidant attachment, informed and adapted from the beautiful work of Dan Siegel, Terry Real, Diane Poole Heller, Lisa Firestone and Jessica Fern.
What Can Contribute to an Avoidant Style?
There are different relational environments in which avoidant strategies can develop. Two pathways are particularly useful to understand.
The Distance Pathway
One pathway involves a caregiver who is consistently unavailable, undemonstrative, uncomfortable with emotional closeness, or who minimises a child's emotional needs. A child in this environment gradually learns that reaching out doesn't reliably result in comfort.
This can begin with a caregiver whose own difficulty with emotional intimacy makes it hard for them to respond to a child's distress with warmth and attunement. The caregiver may be physically present but emotionally unavailable. A baby or toddler doesn't yet have words for what they need, so they communicate through crying, reaching, seeking eye contact, moving toward a caregiver's body, or protesting separation. When those signals are repeatedly met with distance rather than comfort, the child adapts. They may gradually reduce their signalling - less crying when upset, less seeking out a lap or a hand, less protest when a caregiver leaves.
From the outside, this can look like an easy, undemanding child. From the child's own perspective, something quite different may be happening: why reach if reaching doesn't reliably bring comfort? Over time, the child begins to reorganise themselves around not needing quite so much.
The Intrusive Pathway
Another pathway can emerge in an environment where closeness itself doesn't feel safe. Rather than having a caregiver who is difficult to reach, the child may have a caregiver who is difficult to get away from - overly intrusive, controlling, overinvolved, or unable to respect the child's emerging need for autonomy. For example, the caregiver may step in before the child asks, speak for them rather than allowing them to find their own words, or treat the child's private thoughts and feelings as something to be managed, corrected, or explained.
Here, the child doesn't learn that reaching out fails. They learn that closeness can come at the cost of having a separate, individual self. Withdrawal can therefore become a way of creating room to exist as an individual, and the child may begin to protect their preferences, thoughts, feelings, and physical space by creating distance of their own.
The adult pattern that eventually results can look similar to that of someone who grew up with emotional distance - independence, discomfort with closeness, a tendency to withdraw - but what the strategy was originally protecting may have been quite different. In one environment, distance protects against disappointment and unmet needs. In the other, distance protects against feeling overtaken.
What Both Pathways Have in Common
Although these developmental experiences are different, both can shape a person's expectations about closeness. The child begins to learn something about what happens when they need another person - that reaching out brings little response, that closeness feels intrusive, that emotional needs are ignored, or that they're met with criticism, correction, or pressure. Over time, the child adapts to the relationship they actually have, rather than the one they might have wished for.
This is where it becomes important to understand avoidant attachment not as a defect, but as a creative adjustment to their environment. The child isn't deciding, consciously, to become emotionally distant. Their developing nervous system and relational expectations are learning what seems safest. They may become increasingly self-reliant because relying on others hasn't felt dependable, skilled at containing emotion because emotional expression hasn't felt particularly useful, and comfortable being alone because solitude feels more predictable than closeness. The more often the strategy works, the more deeply it can become embedded.
A caregiver's own history can also matter here. A parent who is uncomfortable with intimacy may unconsciously encourage independence before a child is developmentally ready for it, placing greater value on self-sufficiency than connection. Another parent, shaped by their own history of separation or loss, may move in the opposite direction - becoming so involved, anxious, or controlling that the child has little opportunity to develop a separate sense of self. Family culture can play a role too. Some families place a strong value on achievement, stoicism, self-reliance, or keeping difficult emotions private, and a caregiver managing significant stress or emotional load may be physically present while having little capacity for emotional attunement.
None of this means that a particular parenting experience inevitably produces avoidant attachment…human development is more complex than that. But repeated relational experiences can shape the strategies a child comes to rely on, particularly when those strategies repeatedly help them manage their environment. This is where the story becomes particularly important in adulthood, because an adaptation can continue long after the environment that created it has changed.
The strategy doesn't automatically know that the relationship is different now. It can continue protecting against a disconnection that's no longer the primary risk, and paradoxically, the strategy that once helped protect the person can begin creating the very distance they no longer want.
What Avoidant Attachment Can Look Like in Adult Relationships
For someone who leans avoidant, closeness can become difficult when emotional intensity rises. Their own emotions may feel uncomfortable, a partner's emotions may feel overwhelming, and a request for greater intimacy may register not simply as a request for connection, but as pressure. Withdrawal can then become the quickest way to return to a more manageable internal state. From the outside, this can look like indifference. From the inside, it may feel much more like needing to get some space to breathe.
This can show up in a number of ways which could include;
finding it difficult to ask for help, and feeling discomfort or irritation when someone offers help without being asked;
noticing a partner's bids for closeness and experiencing an urge to create space rather than lean in, particularly as the relationship becomes more emotionally intimate;
managing conflict by going quiet, withdrawing, or leaving the room rather than remaining present through the discomfort of disagreement;
focusing on a partner's flaws, incompatibilities, or the practical downsides of the relationship when intimacy begins to increase;
finding it easier to think about emotions than to actually feel them, and struggling to identify or name feelings in the moment;
experiencing a strong preference for handling things alone;
feeling uncomfortable when a partner needs a lot of reassurance or emotional contact and
experiencing commitment itself as a loss of freedom or autonomy.
There can also be a critical inner voice at work, one that tells someone with an avoidant pattern that needing someone makes them weak, that they should be able to handle this themselves, that it's easier not to depend on anyone, or that people become too demanding once you let them get close. These beliefs can make independence feel not simply preferable, but necessary. Sometimes an avoidant pattern can coexist with a strong outward sense of confidence and competence, while a much harsher form of self-judgement exists underneath.
There can also be a kind of imagined closeness that allows someone to experience themselves as connected to a partner without fully entering the vulnerability of emotional intimacy. The relationship may exist, the commitment may exist, the love may exist - but emotional contact can remain at a safe distance.
Moving Toward Secure Attachment
The hopeful premise underneath all of this work is that attachment patterns are not fixed. The nervous system remains capable of learning throughout life, and the same capacity for adaptation that helped develop an avoidant strategy can also support the development of new relational experiences. This doesn't require becoming a completely different person, giving up independence, or becoming endlessly available to other people's emotions. The goal is greater flexibility - the ability to remain connected without feeling consumed, to be independent without becoming isolated, to experience a need without immediately judging it, and to stay present when closeness feels uncomfortable.
A few places to begin:
Notice the urge to withdraw before acting on it. The moment before pulling away - from a conversation, a request for closeness, or a difficult feeling - is where choice becomes possible. Instead of immediately acting on the urge, notice it: "I want to leave this conversation," or "I can feel myself shutting down." Naming what's happening can create a small amount of space between the impulse and the response.
Practise staying, in small doses. You don't need to force yourself into prolonged emotional intensity. Instead, practise remaining present for slightly longer than is comfortable - staying for another minute, listening to your partner without immediately solving the problem. Small experiences of staying can gradually create a new expectation: that you can experience closeness and still be okay.
Work with the body, not just the thoughts. Avoidant strategies can involve becoming disconnected from bodily and emotional signals, which is why body-based approaches can be useful alongside insight. Notice what happens in your body when someone moves toward you emotionally - whether your chest tightens, whether you feel an urge to move away, whether your breathing changes, whether you become restless, numb, or suddenly very tired. The goal isn't to force the body to relax. It's to become more familiar with what happens inside you when closeness increases.
Identify the critical inner voice. Notice the messages that appear when you need someone - "I should be able to handle this," "this is too much," "I don't need anyone," "they're being needy." Rather than automatically treating these thoughts as truth, begin to recognise them as learned ways of making sense of vulnerability, rather than accurate accounts of what's actually happening.
Let small needs become visible. Start small - ask for help with something low-stakes, tell someone you need a little reassurance, say that you're having a difficult day, allow another person to do something for you. These experiences can begin to challenge the expectation that needing someone will inevitably lead to disappointment, loss of autonomy, or rejection.
Build awareness of your own story. Understanding where your patterns came from doesn't mean blaming your caregivers or becoming trapped in the past. It means developing a coherent understanding of how your experiences shaped the way you learned to relate. The goal isn't to rewrite your childhood - it's to understand the strategy well enough that you no longer have to automatically live from it.
Consider therapeutic support. Attachment patterns can be difficult to change in isolation, because relationships are where they were formed and relationships are also where new experiences can occur. A steady, attuned therapeutic relationship can provide an opportunity to experience closeness without losing autonomy, emotional expression without being overwhelmed, and connection without having to abandon yourself. For someone who has learned that distance equals safety, experiencing a relationship that can hold both connection and independence can be deeply reparative.
You Don't Have to Lose Your Independence
Moving toward secure attachment doesn't mean becoming a different person. It doesn't mean losing the qualities that may genuinely serve you well - self-sufficiency, calm under pressure, independence, competence, and the ability to think clearly in a crisis. These are strengths. The work is to develop more choice around how you use them: to be able to ask for help without experiencing it as weakness, to remain present when someone needs you without feeling trapped, to experience closeness without automatically needing distance, and to know that you can be deeply connected to another person and still remain yourself.
Secure attachment isn't the absence of independence. It's the ability to experience both autonomy and connection - not learning how to need people, but learning that needing someone, sometimes, doesn't mean losing yourself.
Next in this series, we'll look at anxious attachment - a very different-looking pattern that, underneath, may be trying to solve the same fundamental problem: how to feel safe enough to stay close.
About the Author
Biannka Brannigan is a Gestalt psychotherapist, relationship and couples therapist, and educator specialising in couples on the brink of separation. She holds a Master's in Gestalt Psychotherapy and is a Certified Relational Life Therapist, integrating relational therapy, interpersonal neurobiology, and nervous-system informed approaches in her work with individuals and couples.
Her work explores the intersection of relationships, attachment, emotional regulation, and the patterns that shape how we connect with the people we love.
Photo by Aaron Barrera on Unsplash