Attachment TheoryThe Library

Fearful-Avoidant

Attachment style

Deeply wants the closeness that also terrifies them. Accelerates and brakes at the same time.

Model of self

negative — “there is something wrong with me”

Model of the other

negative — “whoever gets close can hurt me”

Light

Rare emotional depth: someone who has lived both fears understands both sides of any bond.

Shadow

The back-and-forth — moving closer, getting scared, disappearing, coming back — confuses those who love them and exhausts the one who feels it.

In full

Fearful attachment has both systems switched on: the anxious hunger for closeness and the avoidant alarm against intimacy. The result is a zigzag bond — intense approach followed by abrupt retreat.

It usually grows out of care that was, at the same time, a source of affection and of fear. That’s why the work here is slower and gentler: building, with a few people and a lot of repetition, the experience of a closeness that doesn’t hurt.

This is a result of this lens — not a destiny. In the crossing, it gains or loses relief as the other eleven lenses agree with it or pull against it.

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