why is it that we're seeing all of these stories of avoidance coming back after a no contact rule the no contact rule no contact rule no contact rule will work 99% of the time exactly why no contact always works well over the years I have found it incredibly useful to distill each of the insecure attachment Styles down to their core wound and doing this can actually give us an idea or a direction to head in into understanding why the no contact rule tends to be so effective on avoidance in particular so let's start with the
basics there are four core attachment Styles the secure attachment style the dismissive avoidant attachment style the anxious attachment style and the fearful avoidant attachment style but only three of those four attachment styles are considered insecure [Music] now each of these three insecure attachment Styles in my opinion has a specific core wound think of the core wound as the ultimate trigger when something brushes up against the core wound of an insecure attachment it will trigger that insecure attachment to become well more insecure so the core wound of a dismissive avoidant often revolves around this fear of
losing Independence an anxious person's core wound typically centers on the fear of loss or abandonment meanwhile someone with a fearful avoidant attachment style exhibits both of these core wounds but we're structuring this entire discussion about dismissive avoidance specifically as it relates to the no contct rule and for that we really need to take the dismissive avoidant core wound and pick it apart and really understand that there's an interesting Paradox that lies at the heart of almost every single avoidant individuals with this attachment style often emphasize their self-sufficiency and preference for emotional distance after all according
to page8 of attached avoidance mistakes self-reliance for Independence yet despite this they possess a deep and Rich inner life often filled with fantasies and idealizations of a perfect relationship now this aspect of avoidant behavior is often overshadowed by their outward Behavior which typically showcases the independence and Detachment yet inside they're constantly yarning for this idealized version of a relationship this Fantasy Life or this fantasy partner and I think that's what people get wrong about avoidance here I'll prove it to you this is one of the most popular videos I ever made on avoidance take a
look at the [Music] comments what's interesting is you're going to notice too many major themes emerge when you look at these comments stay away from avoidance because they will hurt you and yes sometimes that can be true getting ghosted can absolutely hurt but then sometimes you'll hear people say stay away from avoidance because they never want anything serious and it's this one that I'm not sure I actually agree with which is a wild thing to say but hear me out I think internally avoidance do want something serious they want that fantasy idealized version relationship more
than anything else it's just that their childhood has them so warped that they have turned that fantasy into a deactivation strategy and what I find really interesting about dismissive avoidance is they've often turned that fantasy into this makeb believe idealized perfect version of a partner that they can't ever seem to get and a little bit of this is by Design they don't want people to get close to them so they have this idealized version that they've placed on a pedestal so that no one can ever seem to measure up and this really plays into that
internal fantasy that they have going on here and this is really where the Phantom X concept kind of comes into play they're going to have an ex from their past who they can't get out of their mind it's called The Phantom X or he Compares me with his last ex whom appeared to have been perfect and every way officially the Phantom X is a past partner that you can't seem to stop thinking about so instead you hyperfocus on them and romanticize your time together about the fearful avoidant attachment style and the Phantom X so the
calling card of this is in relationships when they sense that someone is getting too close they often become triggered and part of that triggering involves comparing the partner with this idealized version of the life that they believe that they should have it really is the ultimate deactivation strategy the partner they are with never measures up and It ultimately leads to the Miss of avoidant pushing that partner away yet I think if you were to talk to an avoidant about what's actually going on in their head they would really sell you on the authenticity of their
Pursuit for finding the one they just haven't found the right person yet for them they don't look at it like they're deactivating even though they are they just look at it like they're on this endless treadmill this endless pursuit of looking for the perfect partner for them the goalposts always move and the reason I think the goalposts always move is they're always picking out a specific type of individual in their relationships in polling our audience we've learned two very important things number one most of the ex's that our clients are attempting to get back or
get over tend to have dismissive avoidant characteristics and number two most of our clients tend to have anxious preoccupied characteristics the crazy part about this pairing is that you couldn't wish for a worst one the avoidant person has a core wound that revolves around this insatiable need for Independence meanwhile the anxious person has a core wound that revolves around this insatiable fear of being abandoned and here's where we get down to business in my opinion the reason that the no Conta rule works so well on dismissive avoidance is that it's generally not the approach that
most anxious people who go through a breakup or get ghosted will take you see anxious individuals when confronted with with a breakup they try to fix the problem which ironically causes the avoidant to maintain their defenses in other words the anxious person does the opposite of no contact now let's contrast this with how a secure person might react to a breakup now a secure person might grieve a bit at first maybe act a little anxiously but then they give the avoidant space and it's in this space that causes an avoidant to be alone with their
thoughts and that's when the the interesting stuff really starts to happen so why is the no contact rule so effective on avoidance well I think the obvious surface level answer is that once an ex partner becomes unavailable either through the end of a relationship or a lack of contact avoidant individuals usually start to experience suppressed feelings of attachment now according to one of my favorite avoidant resources free to attached.com this shift occurs because their deactivation systems are no longer triggered there's no interaction with an anxious person or any other kind of partner to trigger them
and this longing for an ex partner only intensifies when an avoidant fails to establish an emotional bond with new partners and this often occurs well after the initial relationship has become stale so in my mind there are two criteria that truly explain why the no contact rule is so effective number one you have to leave the avoidant alone which obviously the no contact rule addresses and number two they need to realize I that the dating landscape out there without you is pretty Barren now when these two criteria are met that's when the avoidant allows themselves
to reminisce and feel Nostalgia now I've pointed this out in multiple videos that I've done avoidants are free to long for an X once that X is out of communication and out of contact basically that X is unavailable and really I've used this as like my calling card to clients to basically teach them that instead of trying to get your ex back which you so desperately want to do the best way to achieve that goal is to actually use a no contact rule and try to get over your ex during that no contact rule now
most people don't take this advice they think they know better yet it does work but don't take it just for me take a look at some of our success stories but there are other elements in my opinion that can make the no contact rule such an effective strategy to use on an avoidant let's start start with the obvious one there's this idealization of a past relationship as I mentioned of wance all have these inner fantasies about how things are supposed to be and how they're supposed to feel now part of this is a deactivation strategy
they use it to keep you at an arm's length however with time and distance avoidance might start to idealize the past relationship remembering only the positive aspects this selective memory can cause them down the road to to be interested in rekindling things with you I'm actually going to talk a lot about this later in the video with the peak end rule so stick around for that but for now let's move on to the second big thing there's this element of a changed perspective now we are often slaves to our thoughts feelings experiences Etc I've noticed
that a lot of my clients act incredibly anxiously after a breakup which if you look at the polls is not exactly a shock where it really gets clients in trouble though is they're often breaking the no contact rule constantly look at this this is an interview I did with Sophie and by her own admission she did literally everything wrong I'm not doing that so you're out of no contact at this point um my first one yes and then I'm trying to remember I think I broke no contact now this Behavior especially when dealing with an
avoidant causes them to put up walls and when they have these walls put up it causes them to form a specific perception about the person who they put the walls up to guard from but what if you were to do the opposite What If instead of begging and breaking the no contact rule consistently you implemented the no contact rule and stuck to it this could change an avoidant perspective of how they expected you to react after all an ex- partner moving on and becoming unavailable suddenly causes the avoidant to put their walls down the avoidant
no longer fears getting close to the anxious person or their past partner and their unavailability removes the immediate risk of engulfment making the ex- partner seem ultimately more desirable yet the one consistent theme that emerges when researching why the no contact rule is so effective on avoidance has a lot to do with this anxious and avoidant dynamic as I said earlier our av client tends to have an anxious attachment style while our average client's X tends to have an avoidant attachment style and I think this Dynamic is really a core function into understanding how the
no contact rule works with the avoidant mentality let's pull out attached again on page 157 of attached Amir LaVine and Rachel sfer explained that people in anxious avoidant relationships find it particularly hard to move towards security primarily because they are trapped in a cycle of exacerbating each other's insecurities all right you know I have to do it let's take a look at the avoidant death wheel now I talk about the avoidant death wheel in pretty much every single attachment related discussion I've ever had on this YouTube channel and really the death wheel is meant to
help you understand the dynamic behind how avoidance in general operate in relationships there are eight main stages to it the Desiring Love Stage which basically has them starting off wanting someone to love them and it really correlates to that internal fantasy that we were talking about this idealization of this perfect relationship that they've never been able to achieve before stage two of course is the honeymoon period they start dating someone new they enter a relationship and experience this brief idealization phase where they think they have finally found the one then stage three things start to
go downhill they start noticing some worrying signs concerns arise this often triggers their deactivation stress strategies and causes them to get more anxious stage four is where they start thinking of leaving the relationship not a ton to dive into there they just start thinking of leaving typically you'll notice that their partner starts doubling down trying to figure out what's wrong the avoidant doesn't really talk much about it and then stage five they actually do leave the relationship a breakup ends up occurring stage six is the separation Elation stage remember a core wound of an avoidant
has a lot to do with this need for Independence well they've just gotten their independence back and so they're elated by this fact stage seven is loneliness and self-pity they start to feel lonely then they feel sorry for themselves which often leads to a depression and then stage eight basically the cycle repeats leads them back to the beginning and around and around we go but here's something that a lot of people don't talk about or think about when it comes to the death wheel the anxious person also has their own death wheel so the anxious
death wheel starts essentially the exact same way that the avoidant death wheel starts and really it starts to diverge around stage three so where the avoidant starts noticing some worrying signs the anxious person instead of noticing those worrying signs becomes completely codependent on the avoidant they focus overly too much on them this causes the avoidant to put the walls up and stage four then commence they start doubling down when they sense a potential breakup about to occur then stage five they ultimately get left by the avoidant then stage six they do everything they can to
win the avoidant back and that is where most of the people watching this video are probably in right now and ultimately this is where they fail to implement the no contact rule which often exacerbates the situation attached discusses this really fascinating study which is an experiment that has a lot to do with separating rat pups from their rat mothers it was conducted by myON Hofer of Colombia University what he found was that basically when rat pups are separated from their mothers a number of physiological responses can occur number one their activity level goes down number
two their heart rate goes down and number three so does their growth hormone level so here's what Hofer decided to do he decided that he was going to gradually replace every maternal attribute with a substitute so he decided he was going going to warm the rat pups with a heating pad he was going to feed them so their stomachs were full he was going to Pat them with a brush to imitate mother licking them and what he found is that each intervention helped only one aspect of their separation anxiety the only thing that helped alleviate
all the symptoms at once was a reunion with their mothers human attachment Works similarly after a breakup our attachment system will go into overdrive we're going to yearn to have the anxiety that we're feeling fixed and in my opinion this is what happens during stage six of the anxious death wheel an anxious person instinctually understands that the only way they can alleviate all of the anxiety depression stress that they're feeling after this breakup is to reunite with that ex because that will take care of the whole thing at once the result I think I did
everything wrong though I had you know confrontation with the only the other woman I had um it's it's interesting so we're seeing the anxious Behavior sort of take root here you know yeah yeah I went full Panic cuz I didn't know what to do and he was pretty upset with me for that I thought it was genius I was like I'll stay in his life by being invited to everything by his friends and he was so pissed about that he was like I need time so he reached out to me about a month that after
the breakup here's perhaps the worst part of the anxious death wheel this inability to ultimately Implement a no contact rule leads to a lot of negative selft talk so by the time you get to stages s and 8 in that anxious death wheel it's not going so well I feel so alone will I ever find someone you've broken down so much that you start actually believing you're the problem you start with all of this negative selft talk that's why in my mind doing the no contact rule is so important the key though is you need
to do the no contact rule not to try to get your ex back but to try to actually get over them which has the weird benefit of making the x potentially want you back but also it helps prevent that negative selft talk on page 162 of attached there's an interesting quote in conflicts the anxious person often loses more ground in in tense disputes between anxious and avoidant partners without secure checks and balances those with anxious attachment Styles tend to be overwhelmed by negative emotions when hurt they may react in extreme ways including threatening to leave
a behavior known as protest Behavior this actually corresponds with stages three and four of the anxious death wheel in case you were wondering however once they calm down an anxious person is flooded with positive memories and regret this often leads them to reach out to the avoidant partner for a Reconciliation now this attempt is often met with hostility from avoidant Partners who in contrast shut off attachment related memories and recall only the worst aspects of their partner this Dynamic results in a chaotic situation where after a conflict the anxious partner remembers the good times while
the avoidant partner dwells on the bad however there is a counterargument to this with sufficient time apart such as during a no contact rule avoidance you may find shift their negative thoughts about their ex towards more positive ones assuming they're left alone and this phenomenon really aligns a lot with the peak end Rule now if you're not familiar the peak end rule is something you definitely should learn about in a nutshell basically it suggests that an event is remembered not by the entirety of the experience but by by significant moments or snapshots the peak moments
and the end moments avoidance if they're not given space tend to focus on those end negative moments specifically towards the end of the relationship however with the implementation of a no contact rule and the passage of time you may find that they gradually start reminiscing about the peak moments much like the anxious individuals who after a conflict tend to focus on the positive memories and the research supports this you give and avoidant enough space an environment they perceive as nonthreatening they start to fantasize about their ex partner and this is why I tend to advocate
for longer periods of the no contact rule for anyone who's trying it out for the first time I actually interviewed a therapist a few weeks ago named Julia Christina where I asked her Point Blank how long she thought a no contact rule should be okay so I'm in this off of Science in other areas but I'm going to say 90 days when you think about 90 days is the probationary period at a new job that's how long it takes you know to kind of get your handle on what's going on in a new job to
start feeling settled understand what's happening when it's you know that whole level of newness so she thinks 90 days but I believe in a little bit more of a flexible approach I think of it as 45-day check-ins with yourself so you start out thinking I'm going to do the no contact for 45 days and during those 45 days I'm going to do everything I can to try to get over my ex and after those 45 days are up if you feel you're in a place emotionally where you are over your ex then you can try
to maybe reach out to them if you're not in a place where you feel like you're emotionally you're not ready to contact your ex or you're not over them then it's maybe time to extend the no contact period another 45 days
