Finding Your Voice: Assertiveness Skills for Individuals with Avoidant Attachment
Navigating relationships can be challenging for anyone, but for individuals with an avoidant attachment style, expressing needs and emotions can feel particularly overwhelming. When avoidance becomes a core defense mechanism, individuals may find it difficult to communicate openly, advocate for themselves, or even recognize their own emotional needs. This can create a cycle of isolation and dissatisfaction in relationships, leaving individuals feeling unheard and disconnected.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the nature of avoidant attachment, the challenges it poses in relationships, and how you can begin to find your voice. We’ll also discuss practical tips for developing assertiveness skills that foster healthier, more fulfilling connections, and how therapy can support this journey toward self-expression and intimacy.
Understanding Avoidant Attachment
What Is Avoidant Attachment?
Avoidant attachment is one of four primary attachment styles that develop in childhood based on early caregiving experiences. Individuals with avoidant attachment often learned, consciously or unconsciously, that expressing emotions or seeking connection was met with neglect, rejection, or indifference. To protect themselves from the pain of unmet needs, they may have learned to suppress their emotions, withdraw from intimacy, and rely on self-sufficiency. As a result, individuals with avoidant attachment often appear emotionally distant or aloof, even when they crave connection deep down.
How Does Avoidant Attachment Develop?
Avoidant attachment typically develops in childhood, often as a result of relational trauma or inconsistent caregiving. Trauma can take many forms—ranging from neglect, emotional abandonment, or caregivers who were emotionally unavailable or overwhelmed by their own challenges. Children who grow up in these environments may learn to dismiss or avoid their own emotions as a way of coping with the unpredictability or lack of emotional support.
For example, a child whose emotional needs were consistently minimized might internalize the belief that expressing vulnerability is dangerous or futile. Over time, these early experiences shape their attachment style, leading to difficulties in forming deep emotional bonds and trusting others as adults.
The Challenges of Avoidant Attachment: Expressing Needs and Emotions
For individuals with avoidant attachment, one of the greatest struggles is acknowledging and expressing their own emotional needs. Growing up in an environment where emotional vulnerability was met with disappointment or harm, they often internalize the belief that emotions are burdensome or irrelevant. This can manifest in the following ways:
Suppressing Emotions: Individuals with avoidant attachment often suppress or deny their feelings, both to themselves and to others. This can make it difficult for them to even recognize when they are hurt, lonely, or in need of support.
Difficulty Asserting Needs: Because avoidantly attached individuals have learned to rely on themselves, they may struggle to ask for help or communicate their needs in relationships. This can lead to a sense of loneliness and frustration, as their emotional needs go unspoken and unmet.
Avoiding Conflict: To maintain emotional distance, individuals with avoidant attachment often avoid conflict, even if it means neglecting important conversations. While this avoidance can create the illusion of peace, it often leads to unresolved issues and deeper emotional distance over time.
Fear of Vulnerability: Avoidant attachment can create a strong fear of emotional intimacy. When faced with situations that require vulnerability—such as expressing love, sadness, or frustration—an individual may retreat emotionally or become defensive to protect themselves from perceived rejection or hurt.
These patterns can create significant challenges in relationships, where open communication and emotional connection are key to building trust and intimacy.
How Avoidant Attachment Affects Relationships
Individuals with avoidant attachment may find themselves caught in a paradox—they crave connection, but their fear of vulnerability prevents them from expressing their emotions or needs. This emotional distancing can create misunderstandings, frustration, and tension in relationships. Below are a few scenarios that illustrate how avoidant attachment may show up:
Silent Resentment: An individual with avoidant attachment may feel unsupported in a relationship but avoid expressing these feelings, fearing that vulnerability will lead to disappointment or rejection. Instead, they may silently withdraw or become resentful, creating emotional distance without addressing the root of the issue.
Avoiding Important Conversations: When conflicts arise, individuals with avoidant attachment may disengage or stonewall, refusing to engage in difficult conversations. For example, they might respond with short answers, change the subject, or leave the room, leaving their partner feeling ignored or unimportant.
Struggling to Set Boundaries: Paradoxically, while individuals with avoidant attachment avoid emotional closeness, they may also struggle with setting boundaries. They may say "yes" to things they don’t want to do, or fail to advocate for themselves, because they fear that asserting their needs will push others away or cause conflict.
These patterns can leave both partners feeling unfulfilled and misunderstood. However, with intentional effort and the development of assertiveness skills, it is possible to break these cycles and build more emotionally secure and fulfilling relationships.
Practical Tips and Assertiveness Skills for Healthier Relationships
For individuals with avoidant attachment, developing assertiveness and communication skills is key to fostering deeper connection and emotional safety in relationships. Below are some practical strategies to help you find your voice and build healthier relationships:
1. Acknowledge Your Emotions
The first step in expressing your needs is recognizing and accepting your emotions. It can be helpful to regularly check in with yourself and ask, "What am I feeling right now?" This might feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable at first, but practicing mindfulness or journaling can help you reconnect with your emotions over time. By acknowledging your feelings, you can begin to understand your needs and communicate them more clearly to others.
2. Use “I” Statements
When communicating your needs or feelings, it’s helpful to use “I” statements rather than “you” statements. This reduces the likelihood of your partner feeling blamed or defensive. For example, instead of saying, “You never support me,” try saying, “I feel unsupported when I’m going through a tough time, and I would appreciate more check-ins.” This approach fosters healthier, more constructive conversations.
3. Practice Asking for What You Need
Start small by practicing how to ask for what you need, whether it’s asking for space, emotional support, or help with a task. Learning to voice your needs can feel vulnerable, but it’s a crucial skill in building deeper connections. For example, if you need alone time to recharge after a long day, try saying, “I really need some quiet time to unwind—can we catch up after dinner?”
4. Set Healthy Boundaries
Setting boundaries is a vital aspect of assertiveness. Boundaries allow you to protect your emotional well-being while maintaining healthy relationships. This might involve saying “no” to activities that drain you or communicating what behavior you will not tolerate in a relationship. For example, you might say, “I need to step away from this conversation if it turns into shouting—I’m happy to continue once we’ve both calmed down.”
5. Embrace Vulnerability
While vulnerability can feel risky, it’s a necessary part of building trust and intimacy in relationships. Start by sharing small, manageable emotions or thoughts with your partner. Over time, you can increase your emotional openness. It can be as simple as saying, “I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed lately, and I’d like to talk about it.” Gradually, this practice will help you become more comfortable with emotional expression.
6. Be Patient with Yourself
Developing assertiveness and emotional expression is a journey, not an overnight transformation. Be patient with yourself as you learn new ways of communicating. It’s okay to take small steps and practice these skills over time. Celebrate your progress, no matter how incremental it may seem.
How Therapy Can Help with Avoidant Attachment
If you recognize yourself in the patterns of avoidant attachment, individual or couples therapy can offer a path toward healing. Therapy provides a safe space to explore the underlying causes of your attachment style and learn new strategies for emotional expression and communication.
Individual Therapy: In individual therapy, you’ll work one-on-one with a therapist to unpack the origins of your avoidant attachment. Trauma-informed therapies such as Brainspotting, EMDR, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) can help you process past relational wounds that contributed to your attachment style. Therapy also helps you reconnect with your emotions and develop assertiveness skills in a supportive environment.
Couples Therapy: Couples therapy can help both partners understand how avoidant attachment is impacting their relationship. A therapist can facilitate open communication and teach you and your partner skills to navigate emotional distance, conflict, and unmet needs. By working together, you can learn to create a more emotionally secure and connected partnership.
Takeaways
Avoidant attachment can make it difficult to express emotions and assert your needs in relationships, but with awareness and effort, it’s possible to find your voice. By acknowledging your feelings, setting boundaries, and practicing vulnerability, you can begin to cultivate healthier, more fulfilling connections.
If you’re struggling with avoidant attachment and want to improve your relationships, individual or couples therapy can offer invaluable support. I offer trauma-informed therapy (in Oregon and Washington) that incorporates Brainspotting, EMDR, and IFS to help individuals heal from attachment-related wounds and foster greater emotional connection.
Looking to connect with a therapist who can help you navigate avoidant attachment?
Take your first step towards healthier communication and self-expression.
(Oregon & Washington residents only)
About the author
Amanda Buduris is a licensed psychologist providing virtual Brainspotting sessions in Oregon and Washington. In-person services are available for therapy intensives only. She is trained in multiple modalities of trauma-focused healing to best support clients who are looking to feel better faster.
