Do Dismissive Avoidants Actually Struggle With Low Self Esteem

[00:00:00] Thais Gibson: Dismissive avoidants often seem like from the outside they've got an incredible sense of self-esteem because they have no problem saying no to things or being assertive or setting their boundaries. But one thing that's really important to notice is that dismissive avoidants may not always feel on the outside as they express on the outside.

[00:00:18] Thais Gibson: In fact, On the inside, they often can really struggle with self-esteem and have extreme highs and lows in terms of the way that they feel about themselves. Now, you wouldn't necessarily know this because dismissive avoidants are not the most outwardly expressive creatures, of course. And we're gonna cover really important components of how to improve self-esteem as a dismissive avoidant.

[00:00:38] Thais Gibson: And if you have a partner and a loved one who is a da, We also wanna cover a little bit of the things that they're not doing that can give you some more insight and awareness into their internal world and better understanding them. First and foremost, one of the most common things that dismissive avoidants do is they incessantly struggle with feelings of shame.

[00:00:56] Thais Gibson: And you wouldn't know this from the outside, but sometimes when dismissive avoidants are setting these really strong boundaries and they're really withdrawing and pushing people away, it's actually because shame is the emotion that makes us want to hide. Think of if you've ever felt embarrassed in front of people, you wanna run away, don't you?

[00:01:12] Thais Gibson: You wanna like get out of that space that you're in. So embarrassment, shame. These are emotions that dismiss avoidants will cope with by actually trying to push people away and create distance. Now, it's not the only reason that dismiss avoidants create that distance, just to be clear, but it can be a very, very common one.

[00:01:30] Thais Gibson: Dismissive avoidants as well. They, they grew up being neglected, and when children are neglected, they don't have the emotional awareness to say, oh, my parent is emotionally unavailable. They don't understand that yet. So what happens is the child's mind, the childhood mind in general, personalizes everything.

[00:01:45] Thais Gibson: So instead, the dismissive avoidants tends to personalize this. They tend to believe that something's wrong with me, that I'm being neglected. It must be something about me that's dysfunctional or defective. And then they bring this concept or idea about themselves out into the world, and the moment they make a mistake or they do something wrong or they feel confused about something or they don't have an answer to something, they very much easily self shame and it has a massive impact on self-esteem overall.

[00:02:13] Thais Gibson: The second really important thing for dismissal, avoidants to work on is recognizing what your needs actually are. dismissive avoidants tend to operate very much from their survival needs, meaning that they're really good at getting basic needs met for like safety. Survival, shelter, comfort, like all of these things that make us feel like we're just gonna be okay, but they're generally in this low level state of fight or flight all the time.

[00:02:38] Thais Gibson: and really what I mean by that is sympathetic nervous system mode, which can express itself as being in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, a k a people pleasing mode. And for dismissive avoidants, you won't see them fawning very easily, but you will tend to see them in low levels of fight, flight, and freeze.

[00:02:54] Thais Gibson: And this will often express itself as a sense of irritation, frustration, and when they're dealing with this low level anxiety, they, they sort of act that way. And because they often get stuck in this cycle for a very long period of time because they have a dysregulated nervous system.

[00:03:09] Thais Gibson: They're always in this like sympathetic. State versus parasympathetic. Rest and digest. I shouldn't say always cause it's not always, but they spend a lot of their waking time there. They often seem irritated and frustrated and, and all these sorts of different dynamics. And when we're in sympathetic nervous system mode, we are not in a space of.

[00:03:27] Thais Gibson: Self-actualizing. We are not in a space of intro respecting. We're not in a space of more deeply trying to understand ourselves. And one of the problems with this is the dismissive avoidants. As a result of this and as a result of being out of touch with their emotions and trying to repress those uncomfortable feelings, dismissive avoidants will often go through life, ending up doing things they don't actually care about.

[00:03:48] Thais Gibson: The more out of alignment that we feel from our needs. The less good or confident we're gonna feel in the relationship to ourselves. Let me give you an example. So I absolutely love what I do for a living, right? I, I get so excited I get to do things around personal development, personal growth, emotional connection.

[00:04:09] Thais Gibson: There's a lot of like freedom and flexibility in the way I get to do things. and I really am aligned with a lot of my needs and the work that I do. Now if you took me and you put me in a totally different career where I wasn't around people, like maybe I'm an accountant, for example, that's a great job.

[00:04:25] Thais Gibson: That's a great career for, for so many people. But for me personally, if I didn't have a sense of like novelty, emotional connection, personal growth or personal development focus, human behavior learning. Like if I didn't have these dynamics in my daily life, I would probably sabotage things a lot more. I would be at work, but I'd be like, oh, how can I connect with people or talk to people or learn about people?

[00:04:48] Thais Gibson: And I would have a hard time being focused and present. So the more we live out of alignment with our needs, the more we tend to self-sabotage things. Because what's actually happening is that our conscious mind, Says, okay, I'm gonna go to work and be an accountant. And our subconscious mind, which is really the one running the show, says, no, you're not.

[00:05:06] Thais Gibson: You're gonna try to connect with people and, and focus on other things. And, and this friction that we have between our conscious mind intending something and our subconscious pulling us in a different direction is actually what self-sabotage and procrastination are. It's that we have a form of cognitive dissonance between our conscious and subconscious mind.

[00:05:24] Thais Gibson: And when we have cognitive resonance, because the things we intend at a conscious level to do, the tasks that we have to accomplish on a daily basis is actually in alignment with what our subconscious prefers and wants and is driving us towards. The easier things are, the more frictionless things are, the better we feel, the more confident we feel.

[00:05:41] Thais Gibson: Because notice what happens when you sabotage things or procrastinate. You beat yourself up. And dismissive avoidants. Guess what they do? They shame themselves. So the more you can learn your needs, not just your survival needs, the more you can regulate your nervous system and the more you can actually live in alignment with your needs, the higher your self-esteem will become.

[00:06:00] Thais Gibson: And when you can work on not shaming yourself in that process as well, goes a long way. , the other really important thing dismissive avoidants can work on, when it comes to self-esteem is to learn to accept your vulnerability and your emotions. The more you reject aspects of yourself, like, think about this for a second. You're born as a human being, and what do you do? You eat, you sleep, you have thirst signals.

[00:06:23] Thais Gibson: You drink water, or milk, right? You eat, sleep, drink. And, you go to the bathroom and you feel emotions and your emotions are a very inherent part of yourself, and they're actually guiding you towards what's right and wrong for you. They're actually there for you to take us feedback and listen to and pay attention to, but what ends up happening instead.

[00:06:40] Thais Gibson: Is if we say, okay, this part of me is defective, this part of me is weak and it's vulnerable, and it's wrong and it's defective and you know it's not good enough. The more we judge or shame inherent aspects of ourselves, of course that has a massive impact directly on our self-worth and self-esteem. So a massive part of growth and learning and healing for dismissive when attachment cells is, guess what?

[00:07:02] Thais Gibson: Learn to accept your emotions. Stop judging them. Stop shaming yourself for having them learn to listen to them and unpack the feedback that they're giving you because they're going to guide you into the right direction for your life. And I don't mean act on your emotions. I don't mean when you're angry, yell at people.

[00:07:18] Thais Gibson: I mean, if you feel angry, listen, why am I feeling angry? Try to understand, oh, a boundary was violated, or, oh, a need isn't being met that I have to express, or, oh, I'm, I'm beating myself up for something and feeling frustrated. And then correct that root cause that's happening behind your emotion or beneath it.

[00:07:37] Thais Gibson: I'm not saying yell and act on your emotion, but I'm definitely not saying ignore, repress your emotion. Your emotions are always giving you perfect feedback if you just get curious and try to discover what that is. So that's it for today.