Researching why avoidants react to kindness the way they do
My brain that was already laden with intense rumination/mental health issues refuses to shut up about the whole avoidant discard situation, as much as I am trying to focus on self healing.
Something that my brain keeps coming back to is how they met my words of kindness with cold silence. I specifically cited how the action of ghost a friend of 10 years after he initiated physical intimacy and a romantic weekend together had caused hurt…but that I still believed he was deserving of support, connection and love, and that he was enough.
It really confused me as to how he could be so cold and indifferent when I was trying to be as kind as possible and considerate of his feelings even while I was hurting so much from his actions. I thought to google how avoidants respond to kindness and came across an article from the magazine psychology today. And now I am crying all over again at how horrifying an existence it must be to have avoidant attachment.
“This is why people sometimes push away the very thing they long for. Why someone can say, “I want connection,” and then panic when connection appears. Why they can initiate closeness and then retreat the moment they receive a response. Nice gestures awaken a part of them that is unprepared, unpracticed, or unregulated. These patterns or adaptations may originate early in life, when an avoidant attachment style was the safest path, or later, when avoidance mixes with rigidity because the less one takes in, the less one has to control.”
I didn’t know what PMDD was until last year, when my out of control hormonal brain behavior lead me to react in an unhinged way to his ghosting(when I was on birth control, I had stayed more or less quiet, regulated and barely message him when he first ghosted)
if I as a woman could be so unaware of this neuroendocrine disorder that has been recognized in the DSM5 for a little over a decade - how many people with disordered attachment like avoidants are similarly unaware of their own attachment issues, and don’t know how to seek help and improvement?
Now I just feel pity. For him and so many others.