LEARN ACCEPTANCE: TO FORGIVE ONESELF AND OTHERS
Avoidants need to learn to be kinder and more forgiving both to themselves and others. In the vernacular, they need to cut themselves and others some slack, using a “so what?” approach that involves relinquishing that uncompromising, perfectionistic, all-or-none attitude about relationships that causes them to pull back if they or others make even one little mistake, and without giving all concerned a second chance. Avoidants should remind themselves that most relationships are neither all good nor all bad, but somewhere in between those two extremes, and strive to get relationship grades that, though not perfect, are at least passing.
INTERRUPT VICIOUS CYCLES
Avoidants need to interrupt vicious cycles characterized by the following:
• A given relationship doesn’t work out, intensifying their self-critical tendencies, lowering their self-esteem, leaving them even more hypersensitive to criticism, predictably increasing their self-critical tendencies, and thus lowering their self-esteem even further.
• Their fear of rejection leads them to distance themselves protectively, resulting in their actually being rejected, leading to more fear of rejection and further distancing, as displays of unreasonable fearful timidity and shyness create negative feedback in others, who think not “he is afraid of me,” but “he doesn’t like me,” or even “she hates me,” prompting further withdrawal and further retaliative rejection from others.
• They avoid because they are depressed, and they are depressed because they have avoided.
• They do not seek interpersonal gains for fear of experiencing interpersonal losses, leading to defensive disengagement that creates the very losses they are attempting to avert.
• They feel shame that leads to avoidance, which leads to more shame about having been avoidant.
INURE YOURSELF TO CRITICISM
How to do this is discussed at length in chapter 17. I find a helpful mantra consists of reminding oneself that behind every criticism of another is a self-criticism, which is not surprising considering how people, especially these days, are mostly, if not only, talking about themselves, which they are doing even when they seem to be referring to/addressing others.
IDENTIFY AND CORRECT SPECIFIC COGNITIVE ERRORS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
This process is discussed in detail in chapters 7 and 11. Perhaps the most common cognitive errors avoidants make is to confound some with all, for example, ambivalence (he has mixed feelings about me) with rejection (she rejects me totally and completely).
ANALYZE YOUR DREAMS
Avoidants should analyze their dreams to see if they shed light on their dysphoric feelings and irrational negativistic beliefs. An example of dream analysis is offered in chapter 7.
CHANGE YOUR RELATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
Lonely individuals who consciously complain about relationship difficulties but unconsciously remain aloof from close relationships offered, or rupture actual close relationships that promise, really threaten, to work, often do so because philosophically they believe that isolation is splendid. Instead, they should make enemies with their avoidant value system before “I like being alone” becomes “and besides, I have no other choice.” They must convince themselves once and for all that isolation, rarely splendid, is rather mostly an unpleasant and even dangerous condition. They should refuse to allow themselves to be carried away by siren songs about the pleasures of being alone. They should put intellect before passion, putting the recognitions that “it’s not better to be alone than to be in a relationship” and “relationships are worth whatever trouble it takes to sustain them” in place like a helpful alarm, warning them that such beliefs as “the single life is for me,” “I can get along better without you from now on,” “life will be better after you’ve gone,” and “I will be in great shape when you die and leave me your armoire” are not satisfying personal mantras, but self-destructive personal constructs. In other words, avoidants should follow Freud’s advice—“where Id was, there Ego shall be”3—and distinguish preference from compulsion: their true ideal, and what they really want out of life, from their automatic thoughts and behaviors that effectively order them to be anxious.
Keeping all this in mind, avoidants should try to answer the following questions truthfully, and, depending on whether the answer is nonavoidant or avoidant, remind themselves of the answers daily:
• Do I want to be alone or do I fear commitment and intimacy?
• Do I really believe that isolation is splendid, or does something inside warn me of the terrors of connecting and strongly suggest that I stay out of a relationship because my dreams of intimacy will never come true, or actually be nightmares?
• Do I really want to “do my own thing,” or am I afraid of “doing my thing with you”?
• Do I truly like my fantasies of walking alone into the distance through swirling mists, or am I conjuring up those mists in order to hide from myself and others, to keep myself from getting into a close, warm, loving relationship?
• Do I truly identify with songs that speak of being a rock and an island, tell me I should be glad that I am single, and proclaim that never, never, will I marry, so that I really want to be insular, or am I really afraid of “singing another tune,” ’ by analogy, leaving my avoidant island, taking the nonavoidant plunge, and swimming to shore?
Avoidants can help distinguish preference from compulsion by looking back over their lives to see if they can spot the exact (historic) moment when approach became avoidance, as desire to relate turned into a fear of closeness and intimacy due to beginning, and still active, conflicts between approach (desire) and avoidance (fear). Avoidants should identify present-day wish-fear/desire-guilt/ rebellion-submission conflicts within themselves in order to determine if it is these, not freewill, that are prompting their so-called philosophy of splendid isolation, one that is in fact the product not of a search for desirable splendor, but of the taking up of heroic, defensive measures to meet the, for them, avoidant irrational threat of welcoming others into their lives, homes, and families.
Avoidants can better relinquish their avoidant value systems and resultant avoidant positions if they
• identify with others whose beliefs and ways are less avoidant— emulating people they admire for their social abilities and successes, whose nonavoidant philosophy has led to real-life social connectivity
• take a more sanguine view of human nature, one that emphasizes the positive and welcoming aspects of people they presently view in a mostly negative and forbidding light
• disentangle themselves from overly repressive family relationships that are the product of and lead to/enhance/fix their avoidant beliefs such as the belief that family always comes first, and newly break as free as they can from families who won’t let go, but instead resolutely infantilize and smother them
• become more willing to give up something to get something and so make the necessary sacrifices for relationships, as they accept some anxiety in exchange for a degree of accomplishment; willingly sacrifice a degree of self-pride, autonomy, independence, and the need to express oneself completely and honestly to a newly developing closeness; relinquish the pleasures of getting revenge
on those who have presumably been rejecting of them; and give up at least some of their treasured identity, and instead of being “me,” become “us,” along the lines of Joni Mitchell’s reminder that when it comes to love, “some loss of self is inevitable.”4