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Hello and welcome to the Personal Development School podcast. I'm your host Thais Gibson, and I create regular podcast episodes to teach you about your relationships, attachment style and the subconscious mind. My goal of this podcast is to give you tools and awareness you need to thrive in your relationships, feel deeply connected, and find harmony and fulfillment in your relationships and personal life.

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So I hope you tune in here with me each and every week.

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I want to talk to you a little bit about what the fearful, avoidant, attachment style individual needs after an argument. So this is actually a question I've had so many times in the comments on different videos, things like this.

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And it's such an exceptional idea for a topic because there are completely different needs amongst the insecurely attached individuals in terms of what they need to take place after an argument to come to a true place of resolution. Now, I cover this in a lot of detail inside of our advanced Attachments L courses, and we touch on actual scripts and things to say word by word and our communication and scripting course.

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So if you're looking for something more in depth, definitely check that out.

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Okay, so

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let's talk about this. So fearful avoidance tend to often feel really triggered when they get into arguments, as we know. Right. And usually it's because they have more stored emotional pain or stored emotional intensity

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at the subconscious level. Just as a general rule. It doesn't apply to all arguments and all types of things. But we know as a general rule, the FCA tends to experience a little bit more emotional trauma than the other attachment styles, and they tend to have sort of like more minds in their mind field, for example, and those minds tend to be stronger or more explosive.

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So one of your four wardens is

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in the midst of going through an argument. Usually this triggers their deactivating side. It is very rare that a fearful avoidance

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gets triggered. And in the midst of an argument, I don't mean right after, but in the midst of an argument that they are not

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deactivating, usually that deactivation comes up very hard.

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Why? Because fearful ones usually have to protect themselves, defend themselves, figure stuff out for themselves, so they get into like super defensive mode.

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And that's a form of deactivation being being very defensive. And they often are in a space where they feel the need to push the person away that they are associating as being the cause of the pain.

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And sometimes the person is causing your pain, but sometimes they're a catalyst for that pain to ignite as well. And it's more about unresolved emotional associations and subconscious programs from the past and painful experiences you've been through than it is necessarily about what somebody is doing in this moment. And so those are things you want to sort of be able to muddle through and understand the difference.

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The school goes into that stuff in like so much detail, but let's stay on track. So so here's what happens. Fearful ones go through an argument. Usually they're deactivating during the argument, and then usually when they start feeling like they're getting to a place of resolution or moving past an argument, it can be because just lots of time has passed and

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they're just sort of over it.

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Or it can be because they've actually done the work, you know, after the arguments taking place and worked on their stories and checked in with their needs, understand, understood their part, want to communicate to the partner whatever it might be,

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and suddenly they they usually go into activating mode right after an argument. So what's really important for them to feel actually resolved?

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Not like time heals all wounds kind of thing, a.k.a time helps you repress your your memories and the emotions attached to them only to surface back later unless you properly resolved things

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because there is no time heals all wounds. That time represses wounds into the subconscious mind and they come that come back out.

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know, with like full intensity unless they're actually properly resolved.

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So here's the first thing. If your full body needs, they need understanding. And I don't mean they need to be understood, though that does apply too. But this is very secondary to them needing to understand you. Transparency, understanding, like really getting to the root of knowing why everything took place actually helps a fearful avoidant retain trust. And that is extremely important for the fearful, avoidant, individual or even helps them rebuild trust if they have if they've sort of stopped trusting for a moment there when the arguments happen.

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Okay, So trust and transparency are like the antidote to the fearful avoidance stories, right? So, for example, let's say the dismissal avoidance did something where they pulled away. Maybe the fearful avoidance makes that mean that that's suspicious and they can't trust this person and this person is going to betray them. And if the dismissive one comes and says, Oh, I pulled away because I was actually feeling criticized and I shut off, and that's what was happening inside of me, it is like a remedy for a fearful one because they get to go, Oh my goodness, it's not this worst case case assumption I was projecting on to the situation.

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It's actually it makes sense now. And they need clarity. Clarity. It gives them a sense of control to a certain degree as well. Not necessarily control over another person by any means, but control in the sense of, oh, if I can understand now, I can control how I adapt to the situation, how I pivot, how we resolve the situation.

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Information is knowledge is control

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and control in terms of safety is really what the fearful of voidness looking for, being able to control their fate sort of thing. So this is huge understanding is huge transparency. All the things that rebuild trust or give trust and opportunity are huge. Number two, to be understood, they also need to feel validated because if a fearful one deactivates really hard during an argument, sometimes they say negative things, sometimes they have negative stuff come up.

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And often what happens is they feel so guilty about it after and sometimes so ashamed and if somebody can say like, Hey, you know, it's okay what you said, but I can understand that you were really hurt. And I can understand that like you were lashing out or saying negative things as a way to protect yourself and create distance and like, let's work on it.

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And I'm not going to put up with that long term, but like, let's have a conversation. Let's get to the root of it to offer understanding in terms of recognizing that, hey, you're just really triggered. I see you're in pain or you okay,

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is extremely powerful for a fearful avoidance. It really makes them feel bonded and connected and it stops them from like guilting and shaming themselves so much after an argument which I think fearful ones do more than any other attachment style.

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The next thing is they want to feel like their feelings are validated. So to be understood, feelings validated, they kind of go hand in hand in the way that you present them. So like, Hey, you know, I see that you're angry. I see that you're really underneath all of that anger is a lot of hurt, a lot of pain, a lot of sadness, a lot of fear.

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Like, you know, I want to understand more about that. But I know that that's where that need to push away was coming from. And like, let's explore it. Let's work through it. Talk to me like these sorts of things together, you know, being understood, having the feeling seen, heard, validated, they sort of go hand in hand. Okay, so let's two and three together and we're four space sometimes.

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And this is a really interesting one because it the amount of space this individual needs largely depends on which way they lean as an essay. So, for example, a fearful avoidant who's leaning anxious often if there's an argument and then both parties sort of go into separate rooms or something like that,

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what you'll often see is that a fearful venue leans anxious, usually needs like 10 minutes or so of space.

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A fearful one who leans dismissive, usually needs like 20 to 30 minutes. So they actually need space and differently before they want to go back towards the person to then try to resolve the problem. But at some point in time, a fearful one usually does need a little bit of space in order to like take a moment, come back to themselves, get grounded.

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Sometimes they get very triggered and they can almost be like disconnected from their own feelings because they're so in self-preservation self-protection mode in the argument, because usually they had to stand up for themselves very intensely at different points in their lives. And so there's so there that then it's almost like they regain their sobriety in a way when they come back and have space to, like, take a moment and then, you know, that that willingness to work towards towards resolution can come in.

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So that's our next one. Our first one, I believe, one, two, three, four or five. I think this is our fifth one

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a physical touch. Okay. This is really interesting for a lot of essays. It's not I can't say this is for 100% of my face, but I would say it's like at least 90%. It's very high where after there is some kind of frustration, once there starts to become resolution, once there's been a little bit of space, once you know, if feelings can be validated, things like that, like giving a fearful void and a hug is like a very

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powerful thing to do right after an argument.

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And it tends to really make a fearful of like a melt a little bit like all that cold, hard outer shell kind of melts away a little bit. And it's sort of this reminder because, remember, fearful ones, it's like they want connection, but they fear it at the same time. They like want connection so badly, but they're so afraid of it.

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So they have these really competing needs. And when you can sort of be this reminder that says,

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hey, like we're on the same team here, we're just having an obstacle or roadblock together, let's work through it like that. Extending the olive branch usually resonates very well with an essay. Now I want to keep in mind, as I'm saying all this, this isn't me, because I know some of you guys will be like,

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not very many, very few, but some people will be like, Oh, this is about catering to an essay.

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What if they're treating you unfairly? Your job is to take care of yourself first, like your job as a person is to show up for yourself. That's actually what makes healthy relationships work because you're aware of your feelings, your needs, where you stand, your boundaries. So I'm telling all this information under the pretense is essentially that, like you're here to do the work to recognize these things, but you can't just like understand the other person.

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I'm going to be doing a series of this like what A's need is need secure individuals need. So you can look at this and be like, These are what I need after an argument. And then your job is to bring those to the table with your essay partner. If you're not the essay, but the partner of an essay and bridge the gap.

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Like if you need space and this person needs more closeness, like it's your job to communicate, hey, you know, I'm needing a little bit of space right now. I know you probably want closeness. I need a little bit of time to resolve my feelings and like, let's come back and have a conversation in, like, an hour or whatever it is.

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Like you can reconcile the two differences. Okay? So just just be aware of that.

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Okay. So the next

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really important piece here is breakthroughs. Verbal wins want breakthroughs. They want to know like what the root is. They want to acknowledge their part. It is extremely freeing for fearful avoidant to acknowledge their part. Why? Because one of the things that leads to the absence of guilt and shame is accountability and responsibility.

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So if you are guilting and shaming yourself and then you go to the table and you say, Hey, you know what? I acknowledge that I reacted in this way and it wasn't appropriate at the time, and I acknowledge that I probably was critical or I hurt your feelings and I'm really sorry for that. I think this is what the root cause was.

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Here's what we can do about it next time. If you're the fearful avoidant and you give yourself the gift to be able to apologize and take accountability for your part, not saying somebody else doesn't have a part two, there's always two parts to an argument, even if it's like 1%, 99%, there's always two parts. But

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if you're in a position where

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you're like, you know, you're you own your stuff, you take accountability, you communicate, you get to free yourself from guilt and shame because you can't be in accountability mode and be in guilting and shaming mode simultaneously.

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You can go back and forth really quick, but if you stay as rooted in accountability and recognition and empowerment as possible, you're going to see that guilt and shame sort of trail off as a result. Okay. So very important to check in with.

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And if there are preventative measures you can show up with,

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you know, in one of our courses in the Communication and Scripts course, we literally have an in-depth script about how to take accountability and apologize and own your part as a fearful, avoidant after an argument.

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And it's like very in-depth. So you can jump on in there as well if that's something you're looking for.

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And then actually like how to resolve arguments step by step in forms of scripts.

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So you can check all of that out. But I hope it all makes sense for right now, and I hope this makes sense to partners about phase as well as fearful avoidance themselves.