4 Stages of Healing from an Avoidant Breakup

A full (unofficial) guide for moving on from an avoidant

If you have ever experienced an avoidant breakup, you know that even referring to it with the blanket term “breakup” doesn’t do it justice. The abrupt ending and extreme emotional rollercoaster often make them way more excruciating than a typical breakup.

In the aftermath of these relationships, we often find ourselves lost and unsure of how to start the healing journey. We may want to make sure we don’t repeat the same patterns as a protective strategy, and learning to recognize and avoid dating people with insecure attachments is the first step to achieving that. But unlike what it may seem, we can’t automatically switch to choosing securely attached people and even if we do, we will more likely not be ready to handle a “secure” relationship as they will activate our own attachment wounds now.

The way out of this is to embark on a healing journey that puts us in the best possible position to date someone secure. Here’s the breakdown of the five steps that take place when healing from an insecurely attached breakup.

Stage 1- Denial

You’ll often find that most healing journeys, whether it be from grief or loss of any kind, start with a version of denial.

In this case, denial doesn’t mean that we don’t accept the breakup but rather that we are in denial of the fact that we have any underlying issues or unresolved traumas that led us to that relationship or situation, to begin with.

We may even try anything in our power to continue that dysfunctionality as a coping mechanism to avoid any disruption to our nervous system. In order to move past this stage, we have to start looking internally and audit our patterns of interpersonal relationships.

The denial stage could be going on for years or decades without us ever addressing it and a sudden shift or heartbreak can act as a catalyst to trigger a shift from this stage.

Stage 2- Rock bottom

Whether you’re avoidant, anxious, or disorganized, rock bottom can be a result of a bad breakup or a bad experience where your fear of abandonment rises to the surface making you feel a sense of loss or even a form of identity crisis. Most people reach this stage shortly after their breakup with an avoidant and as devastating as this stage is, it often is what opens us to receiving help and being eager to change.

We become more aware of our symptoms of co-dependency that lead us to this situation, to begin with, and start to build the foundation for healing.

Stage 3- Acceptance & Working On Our Attachment

This phase is where we have accepted and recognized the childhood traumas and experiences that carved the path and start to actively work on learning and researching about our past, in hopes of finding the roots of attachment wounds.

In my own experience going through an avoidant breakup, I found this stage incredibly therapeutic and empowering as it helped me make sense of what had happened. Avoidants tend to end things abruptly with little to no sense of closure so diving deep to learn more about attachment theory and getting a better sense of understanding for both my partner and my own background and upbringing, was a huge push in the right direction.

In this stage, we start to recognize and work through our triggers and defense mechanisms (fight flight freeze fawn) and learn to respond to them in the healthiest form possible.

This is the beginning of a long journey of recognizing the part we played in the relationship and not as a way to shift blame, but rather to empower us with the chance to take control and avoid falling into the victimhood trap.

At the end of the day, no matter how unfair the avoidant breakup may have been, and there is no doubt that it often is, it’s best to use the experience to put ourselves in a position where we can be in charge of our lives and take control of the direction it goes towards post-breakup. Only we have the power to do that and that realization is priceless.

Regardless of where your attachment style falls on the anxious-to-avoidant spectrum, the goal is to become more baseline and ultimately more secure in our interpersonal relationships.

For those of us leaning more toward anxiety, this may mean practicing to be more independent, and for the avoidants, this could mean learning to be more open about your feelings and leaning on others. We begin to audit our own behavior and challenge the belief systems that are the root of feelings of unworthiness, unlovability, and guilt.

Stage 4- Horror

This may sound extremely discouraging but bear with me — the fourth and final stage is realizing that even after you did some reading and work on yourself, you may still find yourself attracted to the same type of people or people of the opposite attachment.

This may seem shocking and frankly, scary at first, but it’s a perfectly normal result and the key is to not be disheartened by the process. Our attachment patterns and wounds are deeper rooted than what we may have first perceived, and getting to this stage is ultimately what leads us to a deep dive into inner child work.

You can’t access this stage of healing without going through the previous work so don’t be alarmed with the amount of childhood trauma that comes to the surface. If you have access to a therapist or counselor, I highly recommend starting to work with one at this stage as it allows you to access new depths of healing that would be harder to reach without a licensed professional guide.

Slowly but surely, you will notice a shift in your patterns and will start to consciously choose to override your attachment voice. You no longer find your typical attachment type “attractive” and start to ask yourself what is inside of me that wants more of these people? Why am I choosing this over a more healthy, secure partner?

With time and practice, we start to grow vulnerability, learn to establish clear boundaries, and choose people who align with our stage of the healing journey to avoid slipping back into codependency.

This stage also makes us more conscious of other areas of our lives, not just romantic partners. We begin to get more selective with the people with choose to engage in whether that be friends, family, or work connections.

We grow to become less concerned about abandonment and more focused on what our ideal wants and needs are in the people we surround ourselves with and walk away from those who are not capable of meeting us there.

At the end of the day, a lot of us fall somewhere on the insecure attachment spectrum, some more extreme than others, but we can lead with compassion knowing that there is a path to becoming more secure.

Think of attachment wounds as a set of strings, all tangled up and attached to a heavy load that is the core of your trauma. The goal of healing is to slowly untie some and cut other strings one by one to release yourself from the burden of childhood wounds holding you back and freely float into a world filled with vulnerability and authentic connections.