116. Avoidant Attachment: The Subtle Shutdown Your Nervous System Creates | Somatic Attachment Series Part 2

Have you ever met someone great, felt genuinely interested, and then suddenly... something just felt off? In this episode of Speak Honest, Jenn Noble takes you inside the somatic experience of avoidant attachment and what is actually happening in your body when you start to pull away. This is Part 2 of the Somatic Attachment Series, and Jenn slows everything down so you can finally understand why that "something's missing" feeling might not be clarity at all. It might just be your nervous system trying to keep you safe.

You might want to listen if:

• You keep losing interest in people who are actually good for you and you can't figure out why
• You find yourself pulling back the moment someone starts getting closer and it always feels completely justified
• You've convinced yourself you just haven't met the right person yet but something keeps not clicking
• You feel numbness or a kind of internal quiet when connection starts to deepen and you don't know what to do with it
• You are tired of mistaking your body's protective response for the truth about your relationships

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DISCLAIMER:  Speak Honest podcast content is informational, not professional or medical advice. Jenn is an ICF relationship coach, not a licensed therapist. Consult health professionals for specific concerns. Client opinions do not reflect Speak Honest’s stance. We aim for accuracy but are not liable for errors or outcomes from this information. 

Transcript

Welcome To Speak Honest

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Hello, and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal. What's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve? Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs, and boundaries without having it blow up in your face? Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths, and honest conversations. Now, let's dive in. Hello, ladies, and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. I am Jen Noble, your go-to relationship coach and author of the best-selling book, Dance of Attachment. And on today's episode, we are diving back into the world of somatic experiencing. In last week's episode, we started looking at what anxious attachment feels like in the body. We talked about that urgency, that tightness, and that feeling like you need to do something right now to stay connected. Today, though, we are going to start looking at a very different experience. I want to bring you into a moment that might feel familiar, but maybe you've never slowed down enough to really look at it. You meet someone, things are going well, and at first you feel interested. You're engaged with him. It's exciting. You're talking. It feels easy. But then something changes. He starts to get a little bit closer. Maybe he asks you deeper questions, wants to get a little bit more vulnerable. Maybe he wants to see you more. He starts having needs and expectations. Maybe he starts showing up more consistently. But instead of feeling more connected to him in this moment, something feels off. And it's really subtle. You find yourself in your head. You're analyzing more. You're not as excited to respond. Conversations that used to feel effortless now feel like effort. And then the thought comes in. You're thinking to yourself, I don't know, something's just missing. And that's usually where the story ends. You assure it's him. Wait, try again. You assume it's him. You assume it's the connection. You assume it's the lack of chemistry. But what most people don't stop to notice is what's happening in your body in that moment. Because when we actually slow this down, it's not nothing. There's a heaviness. There's a kind of numbness. Sometimes it feels like there's a pit in your stomach, or like everything is just going quiet. And instead of it feeling like anxiety, it feels like disconnection. So you start pulling back. You respond a little slower. You create some more space. You suddenly get more busy at work or with other things going on in your life. You convince yourself this probably isn't it. And the confusing part is that feels true to you. It doesn't feel reactive. It feels like clarity. But what if that feeling isn't clarity? What if instead it's protection? And that's the part I want to slow down with you today. Because just like anxious attachment, this is not a thinking problem. This is a nervous system response. And if you don't understand what your body is doing in these moments, you will keep mistaking disconnection for discernment and pulling away from relationships that actually had potential. So what I want to do today is to slow this all the way down with you so you can start to see what's actually happening underneath that feeling of something's off. And I'll tell you more about how we go deeper into this work inside of the Speak Honest Academy at the end of the episode. But for now, as you're listening to today's episode, I want you to pay attention to these three things. First, notice when things start to feel off instead of intense. That subtle shift is your entry point. Second, notice the moment you start to pull away internally, even if nothing obvious has actually happened externally. And third, notice how quickly your mind creates a story that something is missing instead of getting curious about what your body is doing. Now, let's dive in. When we start thinking about someone with an avoidant attachment, we often think about what they do. And most of the time, this is coming from someone with an anxious attachment, someone who has been hurt by an avoidant. They believe they've been discarded or gaslit or love-bombed. And into an avoidant, this could look like needing a lot of space or losing interest quickly, feeling like something is missing or pulling away when things start to get too intense. A lot of avoidant people describe themselves as independent, not overly emotional, or just someone who hasn't met the right person yet. And while that is part of the lived experience, it's not actually where this begins. It begins in your body. There's a moment that happens, and you might not even notice it at first because it doesn't feel intense the way anxiety does. But let's say you meet someone, things are going well, you're enjoying the conversation, you feel interested in them. And then something shifts. Maybe he starts asking deeper questions. Maybe he wants to spend more time with you. Maybe he starts showing up more consistently, sending you a good morning text every morning, and now those morning texts are starting to feel annoying. And instead of feeling more connection, something inside of you feels off. And it's subtle. You find yourself thinking more, analyzing more, feeling less excited to respond to him. Conversations that used to feel easy now feel like effort. And the thought that usually comes in is I don't know, something just doesn't feel right. I just not that attracted to him. And that thought, it might feel like the truth in the moment, but when we actually slow it down, it might just be that your body is already in a reaction mode. It might feel like a heaviness in your stomach. Sometimes it kind of feels like a numbness, like everything just goes quiet. Some people describe it as brain fog, like they can't quite access what they're feeling anymore. There can be tension in your jaw or your shoulders without even realizing it. And instead of it feeling like urgency, it feels like disconnection. And from a nervous system perspective, this also makes so much sense because your nervous system is still scanning for safety. But instead of moving towards connection when something feels uncertain, it creates space. You pull away. It wants to lower the intensity so you don't have to feel that much. So now your body reacts first and your mind comes in after and explains it. Oh, I I don't think this is it. Something's missing. I'm just not feeling it. They deserve better than me. I can't give them what they need. And if you don't understand what's happening in your body in that moment, you will keep mistaking this protection for clarity. So today we're going to walk through three key ways of looking at this, just like we did with anxious attachment, only this time from the avoidant perspective. All right, so let's start with identifying. The first key point here is learning how to identify what avoidant attachment actually feels like in your body. And I think the best way to explain this is to talk about my client, who I will call Brandy, who came in to see me after getting out of a long-term relationship. And she had started dating again, meeting some great guys, and on paper everything looks like it should have been working out, but nothing was sticking. Every time someone started to get a little bit closer to her, ooh, something would shift in her and things would start to feel off. She would say things to me like, I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. Something's just missing Jen. Like, I'm just not that attracted to him. I'm just not that into him anymore. And it always felt true to her. It never felt reactive. It felt like clarity. So one time during one of our sessions, I stopped her and I asked her the same question I usually ask everyone else. If you've ever worked with me, you know I ask this question a lot. And I say, What are you feeling in your body right now? And she just looked at me with that look that she gives me sometimes, and she was like, nothing. And that moment right there told me everything. Because for avoidant attachment, the experience is not always intense. It's often the absence of a feeling. It's numbness, disconnection, a kind of internal quiet that feels like there's nothing even there. So I just had her stay with it for a little bit longer and I asked her to scan her body. We started at the top of her head, slowly moving down her shoulders, to her torso, to her hips, her legs, and down to her toes. And she still wasn't really able to feel anything, but she did tell me that there's like a black hole in her chest. Wow. I loved that moment so much. She said it felt like everything was getting pulled inward. Now that right there was her somatic signature. Now, from a nervous system perspective, this is what we call deactivation. Instead of your system speeding up and moving towards connection, oftentimes like what happens with anxiously attached people, instead, for the avoidantly attached person, it slows down. It pulls away from it. That heaviness, that numbness, that loss of interest, it's not just random. It's your body creating space because closeness is registering as something that could feel overwhelming. So the work here is to slow that moment down and actually notice it. Where do you feel it? Is it heavy? Is it numb? Is it nothing? Is it tension? Is it a little bit? Is it a lot of bit? And that's your starting point. Because now, once you actually get a chance to identify what's going on, even if it doesn't feel like much, the next step is learning how to work with it. And this is where things can get a little uncomfortable, to be honest, because the instinct for an avoidantly attached person is to create space and less feeling as quickly as possible. So in Brandy's case, her pattern was to pull back, to respond less, and to just slowly disconnect so she didn't have to feel that heaviness. And she was doing a great job. She was communicating with these men, she was breaking up with them in very healthy, secure ways, but she kept pulling back. So I wanted to challenge her. I asked her, instead of immediately acting on this feeling, could we just slow it down a little bit? I had her stay with the sensation in her body, not to force herself to feel more and not to make it go away or anything like that, just to actually be with it. And this is a lot harder for people with avoidant attachment than you might realize. Because for avoidant patterns, stillness can sometimes feel way too much. So in this moment I thought, you know what? Let's use movement. Walking, shifting her body, letting that energy move without leaving the situation completely. And now research about our nervous system shows us how important this truly is. When your system goes into that shutdown or freeze state, it's trying to reduce intensity. So instead of forcing connection, we create safety first. Movement, gentle awareness, naming what's happening without judging it. So instead of something's wrong with me, it becomes, oh, hey, I feel a numbness in my stomach right now. I wonder what that is. And that right there starts to create connection. And over time, your system starts to learn that closeness does not automatically mean engulfment, overwhelm, being trapped. And that leads us into the third part of this discussion today, which is integration. Because this is not just about what you do on your own. This is about how you show up in your relationships. See, Brandy didn't need to force herself to feel more or push herself into connection. What she needed was to stop automatically leaving the moment that feeling showed up. So instead of pulling away, she started practicing staying just a little longer. Staying in the conversation, staying present when someone asked a deeper question, letting herself feel that discomfort without immediately deciding the relationship wasn't right for her. We learned her need to pull away was because she was afraid to set boundaries, to speak up for what she needed and to share parts of herself. So once we started working on that together, her need for space started easing as well. And that's where all the power is. Because from a research perspective, this is how secure attachment develops, not by eliminating the response. It's never about getting rid of the feeling, but by creating new experiences where your body learns that connection can exist without losing yourself. So instead of constantly thinking something is missing or something is off, you start relating to that feeling differently. You feel it, you work with it, and then you choose how you want to show up instead of letting the pattern decide for you. And that is how you stop repeating it. Alright, so as we wrap up today's episode, I want you to really take this in. If you are someone who tends to feel that subtle shift, that something's off feeling, and your first instinct is to pull away or to create space or you lose interest, then that is exactly the work that we do inside of the Speak Honest Academy. This is where we take everything we talked about today and actually apply it in real time. We slow those moments down. We look at what is happening in your body and we build your ability to stay present in connection instead of automatically disconnecting from it. This is also where I teach my somatic affirmation practice, which is not just something you say in your head, it is something you learn to feel in your body. So you can start creating a different experience with closeness. Inside of the academy, you get access to both group coaching and one-on-one coaching with me. So you are not trying to figure this out on your own anymore. And if you are avoidant, if you find yourself pulling away when things start to feel real and you're constantly thinking something is missing, then this is where I help you slow that down and actually understand what your body is doing in those moments. Now, if you want to join us or you want to check it out, you can head over to speakhonestacademy.com. You can also scroll down to the link in the show notes to sign up. Just click on the link right there. And as a special gift for anyone who is following along in this somatic attachment series, I want you to be able to try us out. All right, try out the academy for a full month before deciding if it is right for you. I know how many programs and coaches are out there right now, and you guys are spoiled for choice. So as I always say, just try before you buy it. And I want you to come and try us out. You can use the code SECURESTART, all one word, when you're signing up. We meet every Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m., but you also get access to my one-on-one coaching as well as my signature dance of attachment course. And you can make all of that work for you so you can start feeling closer in your relationships. Now remember, you do not need to disconnect to feel safe. You just need to learn how to stay with yourself long enough to experience connection differently. All right, ladies, I will speak with you all next week. Take care. As we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination. And it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we covered today, be sure to head over to our show notes where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode right there. And please remember to rate, review, and subscribe if you enjoyed today's podcast. Your feedback means the world to us and helps others discover our podcast. Until next time, remember to speak up and speak honest.