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Hello and welcome to the Personal Development School podcast. I'm your host. HAYES 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.

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

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I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what the dismissive, avoidant attachment style individual needs after an argument. Okay, So this is like an amazing question. I've been asked so many different times, like how does this person respond?

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What do they need? What are they experiencing? A gentle reminder before I dive into this video. This video is not about somebody people pleasing and walking on eggshells and trying to make sure that they do everything perfectly for the dismissive avoidant. This video is intended to help you understand individuals with different sorts of programing because understanding really breaks down these invisible walls.

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We carry that stop us from really connecting and getting close to a space of unconditional love and understanding and empathy and compassion.

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But we also have to offer this to ourselves. So this can't be a mutually exclusive thing where we just learn to understand somebody else. You always want to make sure you're understanding yourself and your own boundaries and needs to, and then you're able to close the gap and sort of reconcile the differences

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between yourself and somebody else and do so in a healthy way with more information.

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So

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we will talk about this and we'll dive into what the dismissive avoidant sort of needs, how they tend to process an argument, what their experiences like.

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Before I dive into all of this,

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this, to be completely honest, does tend to a little bit for the dismissive avoiding more than any other attachment style across the six stages of a relationship.

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So they're going to respond slightly differently to an argument in the dating phase or the honeymoon phase, and they will in the power struggle phase or stability phase. So just keep that in mind. And if you want to do a deeper dive into like literally everything about the dismissal avoidant or any other attachment style in each of the six stages of a relationship and how it works and what the needs and expectations are and all those different components, you can check out our advanced

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Attachments L courses that cover exactly that,

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So let's talk about this. How does the dismissed of a word and respond when they experience an argument? Well, the first thing that they need is space because they're self soothers. They really need to take that time to like, process their own feelings.

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And usually what happens is when they're around other people, they just shut down because what they're actually trying to to get is the opportunity for quiet and peace to really understand and what's going on inside of them. And the analogy I want to use here is I want you to imagine that you're learning a new language and then somebody speaking to you and asking you to, like, speak back and come up with an answer in that new language on the spot, you're going to be like, Whoa, I can't like, you keep talking to me.

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You keep speaking, and I can't formulate my thoughts in that new language and then express it very well. I need to, like, take space, hit the pause button, go inside myself, understand what what my answer would be, and then formulate it in that new language. And a dismissive avoidance sort of tends to work like that when it comes to processing their emotions and working through emotional challenges because for them, they usually didn't have very good modeling growing up for how to communicate emotions, how to be in touch with their emotions.

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Usually they're quite repressed in their feelings and what they often need is sort of a space to like thaw and get rid of that numbness, which can be a cover emotion designed to actually keep them emotionally safe and avoiding their emotions according to what their subconscious programs and associations are about emotional safety. Right. And so so they need to, like, let that numbness fall away and then they need to sort of open to themselves and they need to slowly make sense of what their experience is before they can ever go communicate and formulate an answer.

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And so, you know, it's not necessarily that the person is trying to, like, push you away and say, like, I don't care about you. Oftentimes this individual just like doesn't have the answers exactly on the spot. And there's also applies to fearful avoidant attachment style individuals who lean, dismissive. So just really important to know now they need to process.

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And you can say if you're on the recipient end and you're going, but I don't like that space. That space triggers me enough. After an argument, you can say like, Hey, I want to respect your space, but I also want us to be able to resolve this issue at the root. And we don't get that opportunity if either of us is stonewalling.

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So when you're ready, can you let me know and we can try to have a healthy conversation. And sometimes that like that's you communicating that as a person who might be triggered by space if you're leaning anxious, if you're even securely attached, individuals can feel a little bit

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confused and a little bit afraid when a dismissive, avoidant pulls away or shuts down very strongly.

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If that's your experience, like by communicating that not only do you ensure safety because you're saying, I'm interested in having a healthy conversation, I also respect your needs like I see you. So not only do you touch on core needs that they need in an argument or right after an argument in order to create reconciliation, but

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you also get certainty for yourself because if they're like, Yeah, I need some time, but like I'm going to come back and talk, yes, then sometimes it can create that sense of certainty which can help both parties to feel less triggered.

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So, you know, we go through a lot of that in the communication scripts course as well,

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which if you join the all access membership, you get access to all the courses.

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that's in there too. And there's like ways to position what you're going to say so that it gives you like the best chances of reconciliation and fixing problems in the fastest possible path that's available.

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that's what we just touched on is like, you know, partially an important strategy in there that you can utilize. So that's that's what they want space, but they can you know, they also want to be understood and heard. So by you validating those feelings and asking for certainty, like, hey, can we eventually have a healthy conversation? And by saying the word healthy, you also ensure safety, which is another one of their needs.

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So it's sort of like a way to meet both needs at the same time, if that makes sense. So that's one. And number two, to be understood, which we've just sort of touched on as well, they want to feel understood and they want to feel like they have a chance at being understood. If they don't currently feel understood, if they feel like you're not going to understand their position anyways, their needs, their experience, their emotions, they will go in their mind and they'll be like, Well, why bother?

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I there's no point. And so they'll they'll keep that wall up. They might. And this is where we see like the dismissal wouldn't go cold for like three or four days sometimes in more extreme cases and then eventually like open back up and it's the time healed thing. But time didn't heal. They just repressed stuff deep enough and they got over it and they still see more positives and negatives and staying in the relationship.

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So eventually they come back or you know, and they might not have laughs like you might like live together or you might be neighbors or whatever it is. Like, you know, they might not have left physically, but like they're shutting down emotionally over time unless you actually work to resolve things. And so being understood and knowing that you want to understand them, like, Hey, I want to understand where you're coming from.

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I want to understand what's upsetting you. I'm not exactly sure right now, but if you communicate to me like I'm really interested in knowing and listening, that's very valuable to a dismissive when it gives them hope. And usually it's not until somebody says that that they even really think of expressing their emotions in the first place. So gentleness, softness, attempting to hear and understand them, saying that you want to understand them providing safety in your interactions by saying things like healthy, interested in resolution on the same team, like using using language that insinuates collective ness and working together is very powerful, giving them space

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and then, you know, space can vary for somebody who's like

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extremely dismissive avoidant, and then it'll take four days. But that's also usually somebody who's extremely dismissive of woman, but also doesn't know about attachment styles,

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doesn't have somebody like appropriately addressing the issue with them or guiding them in a way like modeling for them. So it's usually a dismissive one who's also disempowered, if that makes sense.

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For somebody who's a little less dismissive of one in which a full day before they bounce back, but then is dismissive, wouldn't start to feel empowered to communicate and know that they can be heard, they can express their needs, express their emotions, and their emotions can be validated and understood.

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Naturally, you'll see it as someone start to speak because they like logical solutions to things. So if they say if they see okay expressing is positively reinforced, it helps us build harmony, which is very valuable for days. It's like largely what they look for in long term relationships. If, if you provide that in your interactions,

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as long as and I mean this like you have to provide your part too, like you have to express your emotions and your feelings and it has to be a two way street.

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But if they see that there are logical answers and solutions to problems, they are very positive, very positively reinforce to keep communicating and especially communicating in a way that creates resolution.

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So those are really, really important things. Okay.

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Respect for their physical space is important.

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If you say, like, I'll give you space and I want to respect your space, but then 5 minutes later you're not. They're going to feel a little bit of distrust around that and suspicion

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Another thing, too, is like you'll see dismissive ones are usually willing to come intellectually closer first, like, for example, can you see how

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if one of us stonewalls or if we both stonewall, we don't get to properly resolve things at the root.

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And that's not a healthy strategy for a good relationship when you give them like logical things like that that make reasonable sense, they usually like our interest, their intrigued to come closer towards reconciliation and usually it will go in stages. It'll be intellectually closer than emotionally closer. If both parties emotions are validated, then physically closer. The last thing that dismissive ones want after an argument is to be hugged, to hug, to be physically affectionate.

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All that stuff. If you see dismissive ones doing that, it's often a sign that they're becoming more secure. So that's important to know as well. And then again, logical action steps to create change, transformation

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points where you show that you're understanding yourself, a willingness to be accountable for your part. But this doesn't mean like that. They don't have to be accountable for that.

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It's just like you leading the way by showing, Look, here's I think what happened from my end, from my perspective, here's where I probably went wrong. You know, I think from from your perspective, this was something that was difficult for me. And, you know, I would love if you could acknowledge that as well and maybe work on that.

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And I'm happy to work on this. You know, these types of conversations go extremely well. So these are some really core parts of what I dismiss avoidant feels, experiences, needs after an argument. I hope this all makes lots of sense. We have a tremendous amount of information on this in our Advanced Attachments L courses and our communications scripts courses.

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If you find this is something you're struggling with and you really are looking for answers, now, you're going to not get more in depth than in there doing that. So I hope that's beneficial

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And thank you so much for being here.