Avoidant attachment often develops as an adaptive, protective response to earlier relational environments or experiences where a child’s emotional needs were not consistently met or welcomed. While these survival strategies may have once been helpful, they can later create a great deal of chaos and confusion in relationships. Therapy for avoidant attachment can help clients understand their attachment patterns and develop new relational skills that support healthier connections.
THERAPY FOR DISMISSIVE AVOIDANT & FEARFUL AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT STYLES IN CHICAGO, IL
What is Avoidant Attachment?
Avoidant attachment describes relational patterns where vulnerability, closeness, and connection can feel overwhelming for someone’s nervous system. People with avoidant attachment styles often value their independence, and they may pull or shut down when relationships begin to feel “too real”. That being said, it's a lot more complicated than that. There are two forms of avoidant attachment: dismissive avoidant attachment and fearful avoidant attachment (also called disorganized attachment). While these styles share some qualities, they develop from different experiences and show up quite differently in relationships. It’s important to note that avoidant attachment patterns are not personality defects and are instead adaptive responses to early childhood environments where emotional needs were not met. Therapy can help people understand these patterns and gradually expand their capacity for connection in relationships.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AVOIDANCE & NARCISSISTIC TRAITS
Avoidant Attachment vs. Narcissism
Avoidant attachment often involves discomfort with vulnerability, while narcissistic patterns typically involve entitlement or lack of empathy.
Avoidant partners may withdraw when overwhelmed, whereas narcissistic partners often gaslight, shift blame, or dismiss concerns entirely.
Avoidant behavior usually reflects fear of closeness, whereas narcissistic dynamics more often revolve around exploitation, control, and coercion.
People with avoidant attachment may gradually develop insight through therapy, while narcissistic tendencies can make self-reflection more difficult at times.
THERAPY FOR DISMISSIVE AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT IN CHICAGO, IL
Can therapy help avoidant attachment?
Yes, avoidant folks can become securely attached. Therapy for avoidant attachment focuses on understanding the relational experiences that shaped these patterns while exploring core wounds and core needs to increase self-awareness. By gradually expanding a person’s capacity for self-reflection, vulnerability, and trust, the necessary relational skills develop. Two Lights Therapy Center utilizes an integrative, relational treatment approach that includes Schema Therapy and Somatic & Attachment-Focused EMDR (S.A.F.E. EMDR).
Rather than forcing vulnerability, this work often involves increasing awareness and developing new ways of responding when relationships feel overwhelming. Over time, many people with avoidant attachment begin to experience greater flexibility in how they relate to others. With schema-focused trauma processing work and consistent therapeutic support, patterns that once felt automatic can begin to shift.
The nervous system learns safety through relationships — even if it never had the chance before.
Somatic and Attachment-Focused EMDR (S.A.F.E. EMDR) can be a helpful approach for some individuals with avoidant attachment styles, particularly when traditional talk therapy feels overwhelming or difficult to engage with emotionally. Because our unique S.A.F.E. Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing protocol prioritizes an attachment lens and incorporates somatic awareness with the bilateral stimulation, it allows clients to process relational experiences without needing to verbally analyze every detail.
For individuals with fearful avoidant patterns and earlier attachment trauma, EMDR can help to gently access and reprocess experiences that shaped their relational patterns, even if the target memories are fuzzy or difficult to remember. Somatic or state-based EMDR targets often work well for our clients with very early trauma or Complex PTSD (CPTSD).
The Approach
Therapy for Dismissive Avoidants
- Develop deeper emotional awareness whilst maintaining & respecting autonomy
- Explore protective responses & deactivation patterns
- Expand relational flexibility and tolerance for closeness
- Replace negative self-beliefs with positive ones using Somatic EMDR
The Approach
Therapy for Fearful Avoidants
- Increase feelings of safety in the nervous system, building emotional regulation skills
- Identify and make sense of patterns & cycles
- Process relational trauma with Somatic EMDR & tend to betrayal wounds
- Limit reactivity and incongruent nervous system responses
