Biochemistry of Avoidant Attachment Style | Adam Lane Smith

I'm going to be very real with you. There are a lot of men out there, and now an increasing number of women as well, who have never experienced what it means to feel loved, not even as a child. And they don't really know that it's possible for them to even receive love. Now, they don't think that they don't deserve love. They don't think other people are ever going to give it to them. They don't think it's possible for them to receive love from another human being.

Now, this is avoidant attachment style, and it robs these people of the majority of their joy in life. But the sad part is that they don't even realize that they're missing out. They will tell you that they're just being practical, that they're being real. But in fact, they were raised in difficult circumstances that make them believe love is completely impossible.

I'm Adam Lane Smith. I am the attachment specialist. I focus on helping people overcome problems exactly like this one, to build fulfilling relationships, to finally find what they have missed.

Now, the research shows that an estimated 25% of Americans now have avoidant attachment style. Let that sink in. One and four. So this is an epidemic, okay, you guys? Way beyond anything else that we've seen. One and four. It's more common in men, but I am seeing an increased number of avoidant women rise because they're coming into my coaching practice, they're showing up online, I'm seeing a surge in it. You've heard more women are narcissistic than ever before. That often, but not always, can be a form of avoidant attachment. There's a few different forms here, okay? It's becoming more common across the board, so they're definitely represented.

So if you're watching this, you have a one-in-four chance of being avoidant yourself, or maybe of loving somebody who's avoidant. Maybe a good friend, maybe your partner, maybe your child, somebody in your life guaranteed is avoidantly attached. So if you want to learn what's happening here, the science behind avoidant attachment style, and how that science can lead you into fixing avoidant attachment style, maybe if you want to learn to give and receive love, even if you have avoidant attachment style, stick with me to the end of this video, and I'm going to show you exactly how.

So let's get right into it. Now, avoidantly attached people, they don't understand the feeling of what love is, to be loved. What does that feel like? Okay, avoidant attachment comes from childhood where your parents didn't give you love in a way that you perceived. Maybe they were yelling each other all the time, maybe they're screaming all the time, maybe they were disconnected. You didn't get the bonding that you needed, okay? We're going to talk about the bonding hormones and chemicals in a minute, but it didn't happen for you. Instead, you grew up seeing other people act badly toward each other. You grew up with people giving you arbitrary rules that you had to get around. You grew up understanding you had to manage other people instead of connect with them and trust them. You learned that conflict leads to confrontation every time, so you learn to avoid conflict. But to really avoid conflict and be able to get away, you also avoid deeper intimate connection and being vulnerable, possibly because it's been used against you before.

Now, the way that avoidant people grow from childhood into adult relationships, and how they think in those adult relationships, is that they stay safe from other people. They don't trust other people. Other people are not trustworthy. Other people will get stressed out and do the wrong thing. Other people will just not do the right thing or help you out. You have to manage other people. That means appeasing other people and making their feelings go better, or simply by staying away from other people so their feelings can never impact you.

Now, if you felt like nobody was ever trustworthy, like you had to run away, you had to maintain an open door to escape at any time, would you get into committed relationships? Would you jump in and share everything about yourself, or would you hold back? Would you maybe only disperse information carefully about yourself across your network instead of sharing completely with somebody? This is avoidant attachment style. It's the belief that they have to be ready to get away at any moment because somebody could try to hurt them, trap them. Unclear expectations really frighten them, so they run away first. They run away by appeasing at first, making you happy. They fill your happiness meter so that then down the line, you will do the right thing because your happiness meter is high, so you kind of owe them. Then they run away by not feeling as connected to you, by disconnecting, by taking space, by pulling away, by just hiding more. They might run away by saying, you know, it's, it's not you, it's me. I just, I just need some time away. But then they might run away by blaming you, by saying that it is your fault, by saying that you're too needy, you want too much, you connect too much, right? It scares them.

This is not about them being bad people. It's about them being very afraid people, very scared people. The issue here is that they never feel secure or safe in love. The sort of safety and bonding that requires vulnerability to open up to another person, right? When you have secure relationships, then you have a safe, secure life that feels good. Secure relationships equal secure life. When you have openness and bonding with people, when you can solve problems and you know that they'll solve them with you, when you know that people will work with you, when you know that people are trustworthy, when you know that you don't have to get away because people won't catch you, right? You feel safe and secure. You have opportunities. You don't, you have a safety net under you. You don't, you don't live on the edge of being trapped all the time. Secure relationships create a secure life where you're not going to get stuck or found out or hurt or betrayed because you have that security.

So this video is all about the biochemistry of avoidant attachment. Now you understand what it looks like, what's going on under the hood with avoidantly attached people. Okay, there are five big brain chemicals we need to understand for people with avoidant attachment, okay? Five big brain chemicals that people with avoidant attachment really, really need to understand. The first is oxytocin. They probably didn't get much of this as a child, but when you get it, it's feeling warm and safe. It's that warm feeling in your chest when you're home. It's that feeling of walking into your own home, putting your keys down, taking off your shoes, and relaxing on your couch. It's feeling totally at peace, but also accepted, loved with other people, right? It's a great conversation. It's a peaceful walk with a companion, and it's the experience is enhanced because they're there. It's holding hands and feeling that warmth and enjoying it. That's oxytocin.

The next one springs from it, Gaba. Gamma-aminobutyric acid. Gaba. Gaba is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that shuts down the feelings of stress by reducing the length of a cortisol release, right? Or how severe the cortisol is, how much you feel of it. Gaba shuts down feelings of anxiety and depression, right? This is the cocktail right here of your brain saying, I don't have to be scared and upset because somebody loves me. Gaba also helps release melatonin at night to help you sleep. So if you're having chronic insomnia, often you might be missing one of these two, very possible. Gaba also helps with magnesium usage, so it makes your magnesium usage a little more efficient. People with low Gaba often have really stiff muscles, soreness, twitches because they don't get enough magnesium and they don't process it correctly, or they burn through it really fast. Oxytocin also helps with chronic pain, by the way, and heavy headaches and all that kind of stress. So these two things right here, huge for your relationships.

Next, vasopressin. Solving problems with other people. When you resolve stress together, when you solve a challenge together, you get vasopressin. But avoidant people, you guys, they avoid solving problems with other people. They avoid getting into relationships with other people, right? Just like in childhood, they didn't release much oxytocin or get much because it wasn't safe. They might actually avoid or be afraid of oxytocin and run away from it, which means they probably have low Gaba. They also don't trust other people to solve problems, so they solve them alone, so they don't get much vasopressin either.

Serotonin. Huge source of serotonin. Gigantic sources: your social connections, your relationships, your interactions, good memories, warm moments with other people, right? Great source of serotonin. When you don't have those things with other people, you don't get much of that either. A lot of people with avoidant attachment are very physically fit and they have this really great self-care routine because if they ever deviate from it, they are stressed and miserable and depressed because their serotonin is riding the drgs at the bottom all the time.

The last one to know about is dopamine. Now, dopamine is always your friend. Dopamine's always there. It's a, it's a sugar rush when you need one, right? Pornography, sugar, caffeine actually transforms some of your serotonin over into dopamine, so it makes you worse. This is why a lot of people with low serotonin and dopamine get really grumpy. They need that caffeine to live. This is why. But dopamine is always there. So when you have avoidant attachment, you don't have this. You have this: low oxytocin, low Gaba, very low vasopressin, very low serotonin, heavy dopamine binges all the time. I'm sad, all I have is dopamine. I'm scared, all I have is dopamine. I'm bored, all I have is dopamine. I'm lonely, all I have is dopamine. I have low motivation, all I have is dopamine. I'm feeling sick or tired or weak, all I have is dopamine. Endless dopamine binge. Okay, avoidant attachment is going into relationships like this.

Now, when they go into a relationship like this, the first six or seven months, you can get dopamine from the novelty, new person, new body, new experiences, new all kinds of stuff. But dopamine wears off, you guys. You need to escalate it. That's why people don't just stick with vanilla stuff, they go upward, pretty much, pretty hard. Dopamine, you get really resistant to it, okay? You have to escalate. But then the reality of relationship sets in, and they start feeling connected, and they start feeling the other person's connected, and they start feeling expectations, and unclear expectations, and now putting labels on things, and the other person wants this, but this is terrifying, okay? They might actually feel some oxytocin and run away in fear from it because they were hurt as a child by someone who gave them oxytocin, then hurt them. So your brain's like this.

Then at six or seven months, the person starts saying, I don't feel good. No, I don't feel loved. I don't feel happy. Well, I'm going to keep giving to my partner again. They're not awful people. I'm going to keep giving, but I don't feel anything, man. This doesn't feel good. They start losing interest. They start pulling away. They start getting weird. The other person might become an, might be anxiously attached and chase them and then freak them out. But even if they don't, they just don't, don't feel right. You get to a year, and it's like, man, this really doesn't feel right. I, I don't know what to do. A lot of avoidant people by the year start looking at porn. They start thinking, they get a Tinder profile and just kind of flip through. They feel good about the matches they get. A little dopamine from the matches, a little dopamine from the porn. They start feeling a little better. But man, they just don't enjoy anything in the relationship anymore. Very, very common for avoidant attachment right here, guys.

This leads to all those relationship issues because you've run away from all the problems, you've run away from all the expectations, you've run away from having clear conversations about expectations, about the relationship bond, about the relationship contract, about anything that you could be doing together, right? You start breaking up. It starts getting bad. The avoidant person just starts losing that connection because they never shifted into long-term oxytocin bonding. If they're a female partner, the bedroom drive craters usually, because the female drive, especially long-term, is looking for that dopamine. If the male partner is avoidant, but the female partner is anxious, bedroom drive also sometimes can crater. The desire for it can crater. She might still be doing it, but then she's doing it mechanically. She's doing it so he won't leave her. Neither one's really enjoying it. It's becoming very transactional, really not fun. She's not as enthusiastic as she was before, okay? Neither is he because nobody really wants that. So it just doesn't feel good anymore.

Again, I, I want to stress here, the vast majority of avoidant people are not selfish, narcissistic, evil people. Right? There's a classification of very manipulative avoidant people. Those aren't who I'm talking about today. This is the type of avoidant person very few people talk about, but it's most, most of them. It's more like a nervous avoidant, like an anxious avoidant, a scared avoidant. I call it ethical avoidant. They don't want to cheat on anybody or manipulate or hurt anybody. They just don't feel connected. They don't know love and they don't feel love. They don't feel loved almost ever. When I do this, this is usually where the partners say, that's why it's that way. That's why they're never connected to me. They don't feel it. They've never understood it. They're not evil, they just don't understand. That's a game changer. A lot of avoidant people, when I walk them through this, they're like, okay, I thought you were being weird, but now, like, that's making too much sense. Like, yeah, I've always felt that, always. The dopamine really drains off. I'm just looking for dopamine binge. You mean there's more? What does more feel like?

Okay, avoidant partners, if you're watching this, and I hope you are, um, the number one thing I want you to take from this is that this is an abnormal survival state that your brain slips into when you grow up in an environment where nobody is likely to share with you or cooperate with you, okay? It's a survival mechanism. Vikings have burned your town to the ground, you're going to have to fight for survival, okay? Avoiding attachment makes sense. Not necessarily in modern-day world where we're all trying to find love and connection and the Vikings are not really here, right? Doesn't make as much sense. And other people won't understand when your brain is doing this. They'll say, what's wrong with you? Why don't you ever want to connect? I don't know. I, I just can't. I work with a lot of avoidant people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, even 70s, and they've lived like this their whole life, and now they want to feel this. And they say, why did I waste so much time? It's not wasted. You appreciate it more than anybody else does.

But look, you can experience love even if you've never experienced it or felt it before, okay? This is the fulfillment that you have been chasing, but you thought it wasn't for you. You just wondered why other people felt it and you didn't understand where they were getting it from, where it came from, what made them do this, okay? You didn't understand. Now you do.

So at this point, watching so far, you have questions like, how to fix this, right? How to go from this to this, okay? How to biohack and get fulfilled from here to here, okay? Good couple places. The words you're looking for are, how do I get secure attachment? How do I go from insecurely attached, with anxious attachment specifically, to secure attachment like this? Now, secure attachment is about connecting more openly with a select number of trustworthy people who have proven they are trustworthy, who will cooperate with you invariably, will cooperate with you in every circumstance, will not use things against you, will care for you as they care for themselves, and are worthy of your respect, trust, and relaxation, okay? So you need to learn number one, filtering criteria for the people who are secure, which means learning about secure attachment and learning the big four criteria for trust, okay? Next, what you need to understand is how to open up on purpose. How to connect with those people. How to have those conversations with them. These are skills you never learned as a child. Your parents should have trained you into these naturally. Here's how to trust somebody, and then here's how to open up to them. You should have learned this. You didn't. These are skills that are missing. And then fear that it's not possible. Later on top of that, okay? Once you've learned to open up on purpose, you need to learn to form a mutually reciprocal conversation and relationship. I mean relationship where you bond with the other person by mutually sharing. When you do that, your brain chemicals start going like this, and frankly, so do theirs. Both of your brain chemicals do this mutually together. And that's the experience of love is taking care of each other's brain chemicals by taking care of each other's hearts. That's the experience of love. If you want to break it down to its most jaded, pessimistic view, at least that can help you understand what that is. That's what's been missing for you, and that's what other people actually want from you.

Now, those secure relationships then lead to a more secure relation, secure life. Because as your brain does this, you sleep better, and you produce melat, you manage melatonin better. Your actually physical pain will go down. Your stress levels will decrease. You will be more productive. Instead of being hyper survival-based, you will be opportunity-minded and be enhancing your experiences with other people. You'll also be building relationships that are enduring for when you are weak. You won't get eaten, eaten alive by jackal people. People will care for you, and you'll care for them. You'll feel fulfilled. You'll feel content. You know that feeling how you can say, I've never truly felt content and joyful in my life? You will this way. These are the chemicals that make you feel that.

Now, if you want to make this switch, or if you want to make your partner make this switch, or help them, I should say, help them make this switch, change is possible. Avoidant attachment is not a lifelong sentence. I will just always be avoidantly attached forever. That's not how it works, you guys, okay? Secure attachment is the answer. When you build secure attachment, you build this secure life. Better chemicals, better quality of life, better relationships, better fulfillment. All those pieces that have been missing, they stop missing. They fill in. The picture becomes clear. You enjoy your life so much more.

So I'm not here to say that people of avoidant attachment are bad, or that their life is awful, or that they're broken, or not to trust them. There's enough of that crap on the internet. I am here to say that avoidant attachment is fixable. It is reducing your quality of life to like 20% of what you could experience, and you can 100% overcome it if you want to, okay? If you need some help, I've got tons of resources on how to do that here on this channel. But I want today to make sure that anxiously attached people see what their partners are going through, and that avoidant attached people see the truth about avoidant attachment. I'm here to help. I have coaching, I have a course, I have a group, I have a book, I have all kinds of materials for you guys, okay?

Avoidant people, here's the number one thing I want to say. Most people who have avoidant attachment style don't believe at first that it exists. They think that I'm scamming, okay? That everybody is scamming. They think everybody is out here talking about emotions that don't really exist. They say it's stupid to believe that you could have more. They think that they're very practical, and you're in that survival mode, so breaking that feels like it's going to kill you. No judgment, judgment here, zero. Be safe. Do your research. Most avoidant people float around me for six months to a year before they'll even leave a comment to see if I'm fake, or if I'm going to have a scandal, or try to steal money from your pockets, or pry gold teeth out of your mouth. They wait for that because that's what they're used to. And I don't judge for that. Take your time, but I'm here when you're ready. When you want to have a conversation, reach out in the comments or my emails, let me know, okay?

Avoidant attachment is something that starts early, so you never know the difference. Hopefully, through this video, now you see the difference in the brain chemicals and the experiences and the outcomes and the relationships that you have, right? This is the change that needs to happen if you want to have a secure life. And everybody who's out there, if you want to love an avoidant partner, this is the change that you can help them achieve openly, transparently, clearly, not with social engineering, help them achieve this if it's something they want together. You can build secure relationships, which equal a secure life. Secure relationship equals secure life, you guys. Build a secure life and finally embrace all that fulfillment that's available to you.

I am Adam Lane Smith. I'm the attachment specialist. I help make relationships better. I show you all the pieces you have missed that nobody else taught you, okay? And if you need more information on how attachment issues impact your life, check out one of the two next videos, either how to love an avoidant man or how to love an avoidant woman, part one, depending who you're aiming for, okay? Check it out and start giving love in the way that people need it. I'll see you there.