Thais Gibson

And then other days, maybe mom's an alcoholic.

And she's drinking more heavily and now she's angry, drunk and she's cruel and she's mean and she's unpredictable.

And a child is like, well, love is a really good thing, but it can also really hurt me.

It will be really harsh and critical and cruel sometimes to me.

And so they end up having very competing associations about the same thing.

They're like, love is both really good and really bad.

And then as adults, what ends up happening is they're the very hot and cold partner.

And they have a huge core wound around feeling betrayed.

That's the biggest wound we found from the new attachment theory perspective is like always waiting for the other shoe to drop, always waiting to be on high alert.

Like, is somebody going to hurt me?

And what happens to fearful avoidance is they get into relationships and love feels like a very bittersweet experience.

And I'll speak for myself because I was a fearful avoidant.

And I remember before doing a lot of deep inner work, my early serious relationships when I was much younger, feeling like I would fall in love and feeling like I loved the feeling of being in love and connecting and really wanted that depth and connection.

But it was also very bittersweet because the more I loved...

the more I was like, oh, you're for sure going to hurt me that much more.

Like this is going to be a really bad ending.

And there was this sort of belief that everything was going to inevitably be really bad and really painful.

So love feels so good, but it also feels like a threat and it's scary.

And it causes you in a relationship to be like, come get close, come get close.

Somebody gets closer, like get back.