“I WANT YOU BUT I DON'T TRUST YOU”

– THE SECRET WAR OF THE AVOIDANT HEART

There’s a silence that lives between skin and soul. A pause before you say “I love you,”where your nervous system whispers, “You don’t mean that. You’ll leave.”

This is avoidant attachment: a love style built on the graveyard of unmet needs.

You flinch when someone sees you too clearly. You feel claustrophobic when they want more of you—not because you don’t want to give it, but because somewhere in your childhood, giving meant erasure.

Dr. Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, wrote:

“When children are repeatedly ignored or rejected by caregivers, they learn to deactivate their attachment system in order to avoid pain.”

So you become excellent at pretending not to need anyone. You prize independence like it’s a religion. You say “I’m just not into labels”when what you mean is “Labels mean expectations, and expectations mean failure.”

People call you detached, cold, intimidating. They don’t see the part of you that watches them sleep, terrified that love will leave while you’re still learning how to hold it.

Avoidant doesn’t mean unfeeling. It means your feelings got buried so deep, you needed poetry and panic attacks to dig them up.

✦ TRUTH TO SWALLOW:

You can be avoidant and deeply romantic. You can crave intimacy and freeze when it arrives.

Avoidant is not a verdict. It’s a defence. It’s the armour you built when comfort meant compromise and closeness came with conditions.

But there’s no prize for dying untouched. There’s no freedom in running forever.

So maybe you stay. Just for a minute longer this time. Maybe you let someone love you while you're still shaking.

And maybe, that’s where it starts.

xx Josi