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The Empath And The Avoidant<br> · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to this first podcast of the series that has to do with the relationships between the empath and the avoidant.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we go any further, I want to make something very clear.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: We are talking about a relational dynamic that can take place in various types of relationships.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Very often these sorts of relationships are framed only in terms of intimate romantic relationships.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: And of course, whilst that is very common and there is a good deal of talk about it, we have to understand not just the origins of these attachment terms, but also we have to understand how they get played out in families where they were formed.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, when we look at these things, we we see that there's a generational pattern, and that you know we can go back to the parents' parents and beforehand and the family network and what kinds of relational patterns were evident and how they continue.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: So I know of families where some people don't talk to each other for years, nobody manages to bridge the gap, where people try really hard to overcome these things, other family members, and yet the situation remains the same.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: So the other thing to say is that of course I see this so much in the consulting room in one form or another.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: And what always strikes me is the enormous damage that the person with me has sustained.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: They talk about a constant noise that they can't switch off, that it's something which invades them, which in some ways is why I use the imagery that I do to uh sort of present the a forthcoming podcast.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: Very often it's to do with with these sorts of relationships, it's about conflict, it's about you know one person controlling the narrative, controlling the situation through their silence or their avoidance or reframing, and how people who will most often be empaths themselves enter into a state of perpetual turmoil because the way they're put together is quite different.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: So I should I should say that this is a series uh that some of you have requested, and it's a series that's about love and connection, or rather, a distorted picture of love that actually becomes a kind of disconnection.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about the kind of love we see portrayed in films and on TV.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: This is more about attachment, it's about wounds and survival, and about what happens when two people meet believing they've finally found the answers to their loneliness.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: So we're exploring a relational dynamic that often begins with extraordinary intensity, and the relationship between the empath and the avoidant is often like that.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: But let's clear something up from the outset.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: An empath is not someone with magical powers.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: An empath is simply someone who has become highly attuned to the emotional states of others.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: And they notice shifts, they anticipate needs, and they can end up feeling responsible for the emotional well-being of the other.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: And very often they will have learned this skill in early life because that was the way in which it was wise to be, because maybe they grew up in a household where keeping the peace was important, and perhaps they became emotional caretakers.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: So perhaps they learned that love was something they earned through understanding and supporting others, but of course at a cost.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: The avoidant, meanwhile, learned something very different.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: They learned that closeness was dangerous, and not necessarily because they didn't need people, but because needing people often led to disappointment or rejection or criticism or becoming emotionally overwhelmed.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: So somewhere along this line, vulnerability stopped feeling safe, and self-reliance became the solution.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's where things become fascinating, but it's important to understand something that this dynamic we're discussing doesn't begin in adulthood, it begins in families.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, many empaths grow up in families where emotional awareness does become a survival skill.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, perhaps there are parents whose moods are unpredictable, maybe there's conflict that nobody openly discusses, perhaps there is sadness that everyone feels but nobody names, and perhaps there are tensions that exist beneath the surface whilst everybody pretends everything is fine.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: Children are remarkably sensitive to these emotional undercurrents.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: And long before they understand psychology, they learn to read the rook, they learn to notice shifts in moods, they learn to anticipate distress, they learn to manage themselves around those emotional states and those emotional states of others.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: And over time, these children or some children become extraordinarily skilled at it.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Not because they're naturally empathic, but because empathy became adaptive, because paying attention to other people felt safer than paying attention to themselves.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, many avoidant patterns are also formed within families.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Families where emotional expression is discomfort, where vulnerability is met with, discouragement, families where difficult conversations are avoided, families where predictable and sometimes practical problems are seemingly solved, but the emotional problems are left untouched.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Families where children quickly learn that feelings create tension and self-sufficiency creates approval.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: In these environments, avoidance becomes adaptive.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: Distance becomes adaptive.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Needing less becomes adaptive.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: And what is particularly interesting is that these patterns often coexist within the same family.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: One child becomes the caretaker, another becomes the self-reliant survivor, one child becomes hyper-attuned, another learns to disconnect from emotional needs.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: One child learns to move towards the stress, the other learns to move away from it.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: And because these adaptations develop within the same emotional ecosystem, they often continue interacting long after childhood ends.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: So many adults listening today will very probably recognize this dynamic not only in their relationships but in their families.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: The daughter who manages everybody's feelings, the son who never talks about his own or vice versa.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: The sibling who is always rescuing, the parent who never discusses emotions or floods others with them, the family member who carries the emotional burden for everyone else, the relative who disappears whenever difficult conversations arrive.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: And when viewed through this lens, empathy and avoidance are not personality types, they are survival strategies.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: And understanding that distinction changes everything because if these strategies were learned, they can also be unlearned.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: So when in later life these two these two types meet, they often feel an immediate and powerful attraction.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: The empath sees someone who appears seemingly calm, seemingly independent, confident, and emotionally self-contained.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: That's the first impression.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: The avoidance sees someone who is warm, accepting, emotionally intelligent, and deeply caring.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: That's their first impression.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: Although with the empath, that impression is constantly reinforced.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: But each sees in the other something they themselves struggle to access.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: And initially, it feels wonderful.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: The empath feels chosen, the avoidant feels accepted.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: The empath believes they have finally found someone worth investing in.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: The avoidant believes they have found someone who doesn't demand too much.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And for a while, everything appears to fit.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: The empath admires the avoidant strength.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: The avoidant admires the empath's warmth.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Both believe they've found home.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: But there is something else happening beneath the surface.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: Something neither fully understands.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: They're not simply attracted to each other.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: They're attracted to the relief that each provides from their own wounds.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: The empath feels safer because someone finally seems stable.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: The avoidant feels safer because someone finally seems understanding.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: The relationship becomes a place where both can briefly stop feeling alone, and that can create an extraordinary bond or the illusion of an extraordinary bond.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: The difficulty is that neither person's deeper attachment patterns have disappeared.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: They've simply gone quiet for now.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Because eventually relationships require more than attraction, they require intimacy.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: And intimacy has a way of exposing every unfinished piece of ourselves.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: As emotional closeness grows, the empath naturally begins seeking deeper connection, more vulnerability, more openness, more emotional availability.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: This is healthy.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: But this is often the point where the abor the avoidant begins to experience something very different.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Not because the empath has done anything wrong, and not because the avoidant is necessarily uncaring, but because genuine intimacy activates old fears the fear of dependence, the fear of losing autonomy, the fear of being consumed, the fear of being hurt.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: And so slowly and often unconsciously, distance begins to emerge.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: It's not dramatic distance, although sometimes it can be.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: That might show up in the form of a change in communication of frequency, a cancelled plan, an emotional conversation avoided, a difficult subject reframed and redirected.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Nothing catastrophic, just small movements away from vulnerability, and the empath notices immediately, because empaths always notice.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes they will go to extraordinary lengths to do this.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: They will explain in fine details, they will try and reassure the person the the way that the the the avoidant has interpreted or experienced something was not what was intended.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: And they the empath will clarify and re-clarify.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: However, it makes no difference.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: Let's be open.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: But for the avoidant, by definition, that is not something they do because they don't control the narrative.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: They're having to be open, and that makes them feel vulnerable.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: So what feels like self-protection to the avoidant is going to feel like rejection and judgment to the empath.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: The cycle has now begun.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: And neither person yet understands what is happening because neither sees the wound beneath the behavior.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: In the next episode, we're going to examine that cycle in much greater detail, the dance between pursuit and withdrawal, the misunderstandings, the frustration, and the gradual erosion of security that occurs when two people keep trying to love each other through the lens of old survival strategies.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: People don't bring their pasts into relationships because they choose to.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: They bring it because it remains unresolved.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: And healing and recovery begins when not when we blame ourselves or each other, but when we become curious about the story beneath the behavior.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, and I've heard this on a number of occasions, the both parties will say things like, Why do I always pick people who, or why do I always behave this way when?
14:57
SPEAKER_00: And I remember somebody saying they just couldn't cope with people who were kind to them.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think that was an honest statement.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: But to me that's a starting point, because it points towards.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: So if you have that awareness, where do you go next?
15:17
SPEAKER_00: Because that can't that can't work.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: And that will mean that when people are naturally kind and when they are caring and genuine, you will lose them, either because you can't cope and walk away, or because they're baffled and worn out and they will walk away.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: But the same is true for the empath.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: The empath tends to be someone who goes beyond reasonable boundaries, and by which I mean the extraordinary lengths that they will go to in order to try to recapture that that first sense of high intensity attraction is something which, of course, is an illusion, which they later realize.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, they're trying to satisfy something that the other person simply isn't capable of.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: And then they have to ask themselves the question I saw the signs.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Why did I stay?
16:30
SPEAKER_00: What is it about me?
16:32
SPEAKER_00: What did I miss?
16:34
SPEAKER_00: Because that to me represents the beginning of insight and awareness.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: And regardless of the answers, the awareness of the pattern and the resolve to do things differently means that when they do leave those situations, they are in a better position to actually have the boundaries that are required and the terms that make relationships work so long as they're with someone who works on the same or similar basis.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: For now, thank you for listening, and I'll come back shortly with the next episode.