This is the second blog in a series on attachment theory and the different attachment styles. You can find the first blog in this series – Attachment Styles Explained: Why You Attach the Way You Do – here

Does any of this sound familiar?

Someone gets close – emotionally, not just physically – and something in you steps back. You prefer to be a bit of a lone wolf, keeping everyone at arm’s length, not letting anyone in. That can show up as something small: a flat “I’m fine” when someone’s asking and you’re really not. Sometimes it’s bigger: pulling away just as things start to feel serious, avoiding responsibility in all its forms, feeling twitchy at the word “commitment”, or being the one who’s always packing up and moving on.

If you’re recognising any of this, you may have an avoidant attachment style. And if you’re here, you might be wondering how to start healing avoidant attachment without losing the bits of yourself that actually serve you well – your independence, your steadiness, your ability to get on with things.

Healing avoidant attachment and moving towards a more secure attachment style isn’t about becoming a different person. It’s about keeping what makes you, you, whilst releasing the protective systems that aren’t really serving you so well. Allowing you to stay still, allowing you to love and connect, allowing you to open the door a little to let the right people in.

Where Avoidant Attachment Comes From

An avoidant attachment style (or avoidant-dominant, since most of us carry a bit of all the styles) is characterised by a strong desire for independence, difficulty fully trusting others, and often a real discomfort with getting close or letting people in – emotional intimacy, essentially.

It’s important to remember that an avoidant attachment style, like any attachment style, isn’t a flaw or a failure. It’s a protective mechanism that develops in early childhood if the needs for warmth, comfort and safety are not being met consistently.

It doesn’t have to mean that there was cruelty or absence, although for some people that could have been the case. More often, it’s about caregivers who were emotionally reserved or unavailable, or not picking up on what their child was really feeling or expressing. When a child reached for support, reassurance or affection, it was perhaps met by withdrawal, retreat or even overwhelm and shut down.

The messages to the child might have been disapproval or anger around any displays of emotion, even positive emotions. Told to keep quiet, keep it to yourself,  don’t cause a scene, don’t make a fuss, grow up or toughen up. There may have been some parentification – when a child takes on responsibility for parental duties, either practically or emotionally. In that situation, the caregiver is rarely in a position to then provide the safety and support needed for a secure attachment style.

Over time, the child learns that displaying emotion, whatever kind, tends to be met with discomfort or disapproval, whilst independence gets rewarded. So the child adapts brilliantly. They stop expecting anyone to consistently show up. They learn that they can’t rely on others to be there for them, and instead rely only on themselves.

The adaptation keeps us safe and can serve us in many ways. Many avoidantly attached people are capable (hello workaholics), self-sufficient, and excellent in a crisis. But the same pattern can also leave the adult feeling alone and lonely, an outsider who is hard to reach, fearful of trust or connection, and exhausted by going it alone. We can get trapped in a protective pattern that, as calm, capable adults, we no longer need. Instead, they’re making life tough.

And this is where healing avoidant attachment and moving towards a secure attachment style comes in.

Not sure which style is yours? Then my Attachment Style Quiz is just for you. Send me an email and I’ll whizz it over to you.

Signs You Might Have An Avoidant Attachment Style

Starting to heal avoidant attachment begins with recognising the pattern, not judging it. Remember, this doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means your younger self found a genuinely clever way to stay safe, which you now might want to shift a bit.

Here’s a few patterns that might feel familiar:

  • Feeling like an island, even around people who care about you
  • Struggling to ask for help, or not really knowing how
  • Shutting down, sidestepping, or going quiet during conflict, rather than working through it
  • Feeling crowded, suffocated, or strangely irritated when someone wants you close
  • Being told you’re “hard to read” or “hard to help”
  • Not feeling a lot of your own feelings – or noticing them late, after the moment’s passed
  • Pulling away, cancelling plans, or going quiet on people without much warning
  • Keeping conversations light and hiding behind humour, rather than anything that gets too real
  • Finding it hard to tune into what someone else is feeling, even people you love
  • Running from commitment and avoiding responsibility
  • Keeping people at arm’s length and never letting down your protective wall
  • Not quite trusting people, even when there’s no obvious reason not to
  • Physical or verbal affection not coming naturally, even with people you’re close to
  • Putting work, projects, or “getting on with it” ahead of relationships, almost by default
  • Ending relationships before they get too serious, or steering clear of commitment altogether

5 Simple Steps to Start Healing Avoidant Attachment

Starting to heal avoidant attachment isn’t about forcing yourself into constant vulnerability, or suddenly needing people in a way that feels alien and false. That’s not healing, that’s just swapping one uncomfortable extreme for another.

The real work is smaller and slower than that. It’s about building your capacity to be with people – to let connection feel tolerable, rather than threatening. If you’re avoidantly attached, self-reliance is already a well-practised skill. The muscle worth building now is co-regulation: letting yourself settle in someone else’s presence, rather than always settling yourself, alone, behind a closed door.

One of the most powerful things you can do here is spend time in the company of someone with a more secure attachment style. That might be a partner or a friend – though if you’re avoidantly attached, finding someone like that, and actually letting them in, isn’t always straightforward. It can also be a therapist or a coach: someone whose whole role is to sit with you, without judgement, offering the kind of unconditional, unwavering support and safety that’s harder to find, or trust, elsewhere. This is exactly where I come in 👋. If it would help to have that steady, non-judgemental presence while you do this work, let’s talk.

  • 1

    Send one small, real update a week: Choose someone who feels good to do this with, and share something real about how you’re doing. It doesn’t have to be a big reveal. Just something you’d normally keep to yourself. Perhaps “I’ve had a rough week” or “I’m struggling with back pain at the moment”. This helps the part of you that assumes sharing leads to being a burden to acclimatise to letting others in.

  • 2

    Add one sentence to “fine” when someone asks you how you are: Next time someone asks how you are, try answering with slightly more truth than usual. It doesn’t have to be overly personal or completely out of synch with the situation. But something that’s a little more honest and open.

  • 3

    Name your need for space instead of disappearing: “I need an hour to myself, then I’ll check back in” keeps the connection open. Vanishing closes it, and erodes trust with others, especially those on the anxious attachment side.

  • 4

    Practise being calm near people, not just without them: Sitting in the same room (even a cinema screening or coffee shop with strangers), watching something with someone else, an online live exercise class, even a smile with a stranger as you pass on a walk can help to give your nervous system a sense of safety in the proximity of others.

  • 5

    Let repair be imperfect: When you do pull away or shut down mid-conflict, you don’t need a perfect explanation to reconnect. Naming what’s happened and being present once more is a big help. Perhaps something like “I walked off before because I was feeling overwhelmed” can be enough. A short, imperfect return sooner beats a polished one later.

None of this needs to happen overnight. Pick one and practise until it feels a little more familiar before adding another. The protective younger part of you that built this pattern isn’t going to hand over control because you’ve read a blog post – it needs repeated evidence that closeness can be safe.

Remember, You’re Not Trying to Undo Who You Are

Starting to heal avoidant attachment isn’t about becoming more “needy”, less capable, less independent, or less you. It’s about giving yourself the option to let people in so you can share a life of love and connection as you choose.

And if part of that involves finding someone safe to do this work alongside – someone who’s there without judgement, offering unconditional, unwavering support while you practise letting people in – that’s exactly what coaching with me can offer. If you like the sound of that, let’s talk with my free exploratory call.

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