Mentioned episodes:
EP 164: A different look at anxious and avoidant attachment
EP 192: 5 Signs of Insecure Attachment (And How to Use Them to Heal)
We rarely talk about what it actually feels like on the inside for the one who starts pulling away in dating or relating. The lived, bodily experience of “something feels off” … and the quiet panic that follows.
In this episode, I sit down with my friend Pontus for an honest conversation about the avoidant strategy in insecure attachment. What happens when the body recoils, the mind starts building a case, and distance feels like the only way back to safety?
Many of us enter dating with quiet rules about how it should feel by the third or fourth meeting. When the butterflies do not arrive on cue, panic often does. This episode explores the avoidant side of insecure attachment through Pontus’ honest account of disgust, hopelessness, and the sudden urge to pull away when intimacy looms. Rather than pathologizing, we track the nervous system in real time: the push for connection, the recoil to safety, and the inner courtroom where an unforgiving judge tries the case. The goal isn’t to label, but to decode the lived experience—what thoughts arise, where it lands in the body, and how meaning gets assigned far too fast.
A central practice emerges: sitting with the feeling long enough to let it move. Pontus describes a 40-minute sit with the “ick,” repeating acceptance even while doubting it, until a deep bodily release arrived. That felt shift matters. It reclaims choice from survival reflexes and builds trust that emotions can crest and settle without running, blaming, or ending a promising bond. We discuss why new habits are hard: old neural grooves, amygdala-first protection, and cultural scripts that reward the dopamine high of pursuit. The body learns through safety and repetition, not self-attack; compassion is not coddling, it is the learning environment.
We also unpack the validation loop: the intoxicating proof of being wanted, then the crash when discomfort returns. Sex, flirting, the thrill of novelty—none are “bad,” but they can become bottomless cups when used to secure worth. Shifting from hunger to fullness means tending the part of us that still seeks a parent in a partner. This is the child-parent dynamic at the heart of many romances: please scoop me up, make me whole. When unexamined, it fuels projection and demands the other carry our five-year-old. When met directly, it becomes an opening to reparent, set boundaries, and stay present through awkward, non-cinematic moments.
Mirrors matter here. Partners reflect what we struggle to feel in ourselves, and that reflection can feel repulsive. We’re not repulsed by them as much as by the image of our disowned parts. When we stop sprinting from that mirror, intimacy deepens. Skills grow alongside healing: naming needs, setting limits before resentment, pacing contact, and distinguishing body signals from narratives. Curiosity replaces certainty, especially around timing—love can be a slow burn that nervous systems learn to trust. Follow the fun where possible; joy primes the brain for change better than pressure ever will.
Labels like avoidant and anxious are pointers, not prisons. They offer language to notice loops: automated patterns, either-or thinking, projection or dismissal of feelings, self-doubt, and heavy meaning-making. Once named with compassion, we can practice a different move: feel first, interpret later. Awareness without judgment, acceptance without collapse, growth without self-punishment. The invitation is simple and difficult: become a secure base for yourself. From there, you bring an overflowing cup to love—less chasing, fewer exits, more presence. That is how avoidance softens into choice, and choice grows into trust.
