Lost in the Fog: How Avoidant Attachment Keeps Us at Arm’s Length – from Ourselves

Matthew Davies

May 5, 2025

1. What Avoidance Really Avoids

Avoidant attachment is one of the primary patterns described in attachment theory—a framework for understanding how early relationships with caregivers shape our expectations of closeness and connection throughout life. People with an avoidant attachment style tend to value independence and self-sufficiency, often steering away from emotional intimacy, even when they desire it. They may find it difficult to trust others or depend on them, and may downplay the importance of close relationships as a way of protecting themselves from disappointment or vulnerability.

Avoidant attachment isn’t about disinterest. It’s about defence. On the surface, it can look like independence, emotional self-sufficiency, or simply preferring your own company. But beneath that surface lies something more human, more familiar: fear. Fear of being too much, of needing too much. Fear that if we come too close, we might be seen—and worse, that we might be left.

Avoidance, in this sense, is less a personality trait and more a survival strategy. One learned early, often quietly, without dramatic trauma. The child who reaches out and finds a caregiver distant,

distracted, or chronically overwhelmed learns a subtle truth: closeness is unreliable. Better, then, to retreat. To rely on oneself. To feel less.

But we don’t stop needing connection just because we’ve stopped asking for it. We just get better at not noticing.

2. The Logic of Distance: Why Closeness Feels Threatening

For someone with avoidant tendencies, intimacy can feel like standing too close to a fire. Warmth is there, yes. But so is the risk of getting burned. So they keep a safe distance—not out of malice or coldness, but because proximity feels overwhelming.

It helps to think of emotional closeness as a muscle. If you haven’t used it much, it aches when stretched. For some avoidant individuals, closeness triggers a kind of quiet panic. Not always visible, but deeply felt. The heart speeds up, the skin prickles, the mind looks for an exit.

Why? Because early in life, closeness came with cost. Maybe it meant enmeshment. Maybe it meant obligation. Maybe it just never lasted. So now, the grown-up version of that child keeps a calculated distance. Just enough to maintain connection. Never enough to truly rely.

3. Fog as a Defence: Numbing, Withdrawing, and the Art of Looking Fine

Avoidance doesn’t always look like avoidance. Often, it looks like functioning.

Many clients who lean avoidant are doing quite well by external measures. They’re productive. Reliable. Often praised for their independence and composure. But emotionally, they live in fog.

The fog isn’t depression exactly. It’s a kind of emotional muting. A deliberate, unconscious dulling of the senses. Feelings are flattened. Needs are minimised. Pain is tucked away, carefully out of reach.

Metaphorically, it’s like keeping the volume low on the inner stereo—not because there’s nothing playing, but because loudness feels unsafe. So relationships stay on low volume too. Close, but not too close. Intimate, but never quite exposed.

4. The Paradox of Longing

Here’s the irony: most avoidantly attached individuals deeply want connection. But the way they protect themselves makes that connection hard to reach. They want to be known, but fear being overwhelmed. They want to be loved, but dread the dependency love invites.

They often show up in relationships with the brakes half-pressed—moving forward, then pulling back. Not because they don’t care, but because ambivalence feels safer than risk. It’s a bit like trying to learn a dance while also keeping one foot firmly planted outside the studio. You never fully stumble, but you never fully move, either.

This push-pull dynamic can be confusing for both parties. For therapists, for partners, even for the individual themselves. “Why do I sabotage intimacy? Why do I shut down when I get close?” The answers aren’t always logical. But they make perfect emotional sense.

Photo of a young family playing board games together on the floor of their home

“The child who reaches out and finds a caregiver distant, distracted, or chronically overwhelmed learns a subtle truth: closeness is unreliable”

5. “I’m Fine”: The Problem with Functional Avoidance

Functional avoidance is seductive. After all, what’s wrong with being capable? Isn’t self-sufficiency a virtue?

In many ways, yes. But when capability becomes a shield, it also becomes a prison. Clients who excel at life often do so while carrying silent burdens. They care for others but rarely let others care for them. They meet expectations but avoid vulnerability. And when feelings arise—grief, fear, need— they tuck them away under a neat layer of competence.

Imagine a house that’s immaculate on the outside but has entire rooms locked from view. Functional avoidance is like that. Therapy, at its best, is about gently unlocking those rooms. Not flinging the doors open. Just noticing what’s there.

6. Coming Back Into Contact

So what does it look like to come out of the fog?

Not dramatic catharsis. Not radical transformation. Just a slow, steady warming. Learning to name feelings. To stay in the room a few minutes longer when things feel intimate. To let someone reach out and not instinctively pull away.

Therapy offers a space where closeness doesn’t come with pressure. Where connection can unfold at your pace. Where it’s safe to practice the unfamiliar without fear of engulfment.

Avoidant attachment isn’t a life sentence. It’s a pattern. And like all patterns, it can shift—not by force, but through trust. Through presence. Through gently learning that closeness, when safe, doesn’t have to mean losing yourself.

The fog lifts slowly. But it does lift.