Helpful Advice for a Commitment Fearing Avoidant Who Wants to Find Love

An insightful videoessay byThe School of Lifeoffers comforting advice for the recovering avoidant, specifically on how to find and maintain a healthy relationship despite their ingrained fear of commitment.

Avoidant' is the term usefully coined by attachment theorists to define those of us who, through no fault of our own but with full responsibility for our condition, have grave difficulties around intimate relationships.

This fear, while not completely debilitating, comes from a deeply rooted past lesson in disappointment.

Somewhere long in our pasts,our relationships with our caregivers did not go as they should have done. Someone let us down,someone implicitly taught us that love was not to be trusted... And so we learnt to associate distance and solitude with safety.

Despite this, the avoidant can make conscious choices to fight off their unconscious fear.

We can findhope in an important detail: that there is a substantial differencebetween acting avoidantly from unconsciousmotives on the one hand and on the other,feeling drawn to avoidant responses while being actively and preemptively aware ofwhat is going on.