u/Bright_Worth_2401

Affect: inhibited, feels "nothing" consciously, driven towards "nothing" (alexithymia plus avolition), body affected unconsciously (chronic sickness, stress, tremors...), functions via compulsions

Compulsions towards isolation and hyper-independence OR Compulsions towards surface-level socialization without reliance on others

Once self-reliance is reached/ensured, tends towards inaction

Relational dangers: closeness, being "truly seen", making mistakes in front of others (lower danger), sympathy and especially pity from others, others trying to help (high danger), being perceived as helpless (high danger)

Relational dangers typically not felt as fear/shame, instead create compulsions to further isolate or become self-reliant, sometimes revulsion/disgust/offense response

In some: potential intrusions of forbidden negative affect: in rare situations spontaneously explodes outwardly/inwardly with negative feelings and quickly forgets about it OR ruminates about the episode and compulsively isolates further

Natural repellent of A6 in others is: A3 compulsive caregiving/attending. Why? A3 violate boundaries to compulsively "help", A6 unconsciously perceive all "help" as danger, especially compulsive, A3 depend on others being needy/dependent on them to function, A6 depend on being completely autonomous and opaque to function, incompatible strategies

Yes or not really?

If a neural circuit was being reinforced over and over again your entire life, acting against it WILL feel painful, disorienting and maybe even depressing

This is normal, this pain is a good sign

The pain doesn't define WHO you are, only what wiring is within you

You are unconsciously severed from your own affect. That's feelings, needs, drives, instinct even

Ever thought why you can instantly process someone else's feelings but your own feelings come delayed in weird bursts later than they should? Or why you fixate on others but forget your own self?

Someone long ago punished or ran away from your true affect long enough and early enough for your brain to do everything possible to sink it into the unconscious, but you needed that person for survival, so you learned to either obey or take care of them or both

Now the only motivation is in servitude to others or maybe even "for their own good" but it keeps backfiring and harming and crippling both you and others and if anyone sees your true affect you end up unintentionally acting in chaotic or even destructive ways when your unconscious attempts to obfuscate it (as it is Forbidden to you on a deep level to have the affect) and end up unfortunately hurting healthy people during that process

You aren't doomed, just like I wasn't doomed, that affect still affects you physically and you still can reconnect with it through your body and through deeper channels like attachment, I managed to and now I have intrinsic motivation

Boundaries come naturally once the affect is restored, FOG is a side effect of the unconscious program, but your own affect will push it out once you do reconnect with it... although it will be an intense overcorrection at first with not being able to tolerate FOG at all for a while LOL

Oh and it will hurt a lot at first... there will be great grief and despair and anger to wade through... all that wasn't processed... but that's temporary!

It's on a deeper level than emotions and even trauma, it's closer to "crossed wires" if you dive into the neuroscience research for attachment, talking about feelings and communicating needs is simply not enough (or even backfires, from my experience)

I was an extremely severe (and unaware) dismissive avoidant attacher that would lose all interest in people if they showed me any authentic warmth. I stayed only in codependent relationships where I was treated like an object/trophy/instrument/mommy/free therapist without being seen or loved for my truth (being seen felt like dying and caused immediate semi-permanent deactivation)

The only thing that actually worked to stop that was "acting against" my urges by literally trying to bind myself to my partner like a baby would: I would literally bite and clutch my partner any time deactivation (including nitpicking, phantomizing, shutdowns, icks, empathy loss, intense stress, etc.) would come up, for years. That's it. Nothing else worked for me. Literally nothing that online coaches say one should do reached that deep level of wiring for me and I really tried

I have no idea why no one is talking about the deeper-than-somatic solution, when it worked for me, and all I did was think about how babies bond to their parents. Why is it not more obvious?

I no longer deactivate around my partner, and I finally enjoy closeness with him

Edit: I've had 14 years of somatic and such therapy and it has done nothing for my attachment behaviors, I now believe that attachment can only be changed within an attachment, on a deeper level than even somatic therapy

It's not a connection. It's not a connection. It's NOT a connection

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Your brain just detected someone who matches your childhood environment and, just like a bird imprinted onto a wrong thing, it latches onto an unhealthy partner

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That person you got butterflies, sparks and anxieties for is NOT a good partner, run

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This can be rewired over years being with someone healthy and (initially) "boring". It worked for me. You are NOT doomed

You can laugh all you want but at some point I really thought I couldn't be attracted to real life humans and needed to date a fictional demon due to my old tendency to either become codependent (but not attracted to) with an avoidant or throw out a secure partner ASAP

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Then I realized something was wrong with me and I figured out my anxious and avoidant activation triggers and simply wrote them down (back then I thought it was just codependency+ROCD, I didn't know what attachment styles were)

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Every time I felt like chasing or deactivated I trained myself to look at the list and if something matched I would do my damnedest to act against my internal state, just like in OCD recovery, I basically would untake space and unchase reassurance no matter how painful it got (just like what I did in OCD recovery for compulsions) and used the list to reality-check myself

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I also set up hourly notifications just in case I disassociated really badly because it could sneak up on me and alter my entire thinking, having my phone remind me of it didn't trigger my oppositional defiant behaviors like having an actual human do that would

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It took years of this but I no longer nitpick my partner's wrists and no longer flip out internally when he sets boundaries

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And oh gods did I nitpick his wrists to death at first the urge was overwhelming, but I managed to act against that by biting his wrists instead and rubbing them whenever I felt like nitpicking them

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Well, turns out I don't need a demon to enjoy someone LOL, and who cares about the wrists and the arms! It's sooo liberating to not deactivate anymore and so worth it

The ones that relied on your avoidance to replicate their childhood environment of deprivation will find your healed self not depriving them of intimacy and no longer matching their need for deprivation and will latch onto someone else

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The ones that relied on your self-abandonment will find your newfound personhood violating their coercive needs and will attempt to bulldoze over your boundaries and Nos and then leave once that fails

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The ones that relied on your compulsive caregiving-attending-free therapisting will feel abandoned and paint you black for no longer being an instrument

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The ones that relied on your ambiguity over boundaries, roleplay and obfuscation of your authenticity because that's their comfort zone, everyone masking, will bolt away like they were burnt, unable to have capacity for your authentic feelings

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The ones that relied on you being a sponge for chaos and your inconsistency of self-concept will drop off like flies and get bored with your newfound "boring" stability and differentiated selfhood

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It's good. All of this is a great filter that will allow you to become even healthier, we ARE influenced so much by the people we surround ourselves with

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And the more you change, the more attractive you become to stable healthy people that are truly aligned with your core self, as you start reminding them of THEIR childhood environments, people tend to attach to and gravitate to whatever is familiar

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The healthier you become, the more familiar you become to the healthy, and the less familiar you become to the not

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It's worth it it's so worth it, trust you won't regret it, it only hurts in the first years

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-A S

When someone knows you aren't fine when you say you are fine and refuses to continue whatever activity you said "yes" to when your body said no

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When someone can smell your stress when cuddling with you and stops and says that you are stressed

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When someone notices your discomfort with things and never asks again unless you ask yourself

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When someone points your hinting and indirect bids but doesn't act on them without your enthusiastic Yes

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When someone shares everything going on with them internally but also points out your internal state

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When someone knows when you're dysregulated and doesn't engage until you are stable and doesn't defend back when you get defensive

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When someone sees you deactivate more and more and stops all communication after 4 days of non-replies after communicating that it wasn't something they could accept and then finds someone else

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My question is, is the reaction extreme stress? If so, can severe disorganized attachers coexist with this at all or is it better to not interact even as friends in this situation? I'm considering completely cutting off a specific contact, as the semi-constant indirect social media hinting has started triggering my own discomfort and I don't like what my gut feels every time I see yet another time I get mirrored online by that individual