Dismissive Avoidant vs Fearful Avoidant Attachment: Key Differences and Similarities
It can be painful to feel shut out by your own child. Your teen may appear emotionally distant, isolate themselves, or seem to run “hot and cold” on you. They might reject any support you offer, even though you can clearly see that they are struggling.
If these issues seem familiar, you may be noticing signs of an avoidant attachment pattern, either dismissive avoidant or fearful avoidant.
Understanding the differences in these attachment styles can help you support your teen with insight, compassion, and patience. Professional support is often the most effective way to help a teen who is struggling, but this page can also provide valuable information by covering:
- The basics of avoidant attachment types in teens
- What dismissive avoidance in teens is
- What fearful avoidance in teens is
- Differences between dismissive and fearful avoidant attachment
- Mental health support for attachment
- Ways to support a teen’s insecure attachment at home
- Where to find professional help
Understanding Avoidant Attachment Types in Teens
Attachment styles form during early childhood and act like a template for how you relate to other people, as well as how you manage your moods and emotions.1 They can affect how you feel about yourself, family, friendships, and romantic relationships.
Which attachment style forms in the first few years of life depends on how safe and emotionally supported a child feels with their parents or caregivers. When their needs are met reliably and consistently, they can develop a secure attachment. However, if their needs aren’t met consistently, they may develop an insecure attachment style.
There are three types of insecure attachment:2
- Anxious
- Dismissive-avoidant
- Fearful-avoidant (also known as “disorganized” in childhood)
Research suggests that around 20% of American adults have a dismissive-avoidant attachment style, while 7-25% exhibit a fearful-avoidant type.3,4 This means that these percentages of people may have difficulties trusting others and forming close emotional bonds based on how their emotional needs were responded to as children.
Although the attachment style that forms as a child can act as a blueprint for patterns of relating, it isn’t set in stone. With the right support, it can be changed so that a healthier way of relating to others and themselves can occur.
Recognizing the type of avoidant attachment your teen may be experiencing is the first step toward understanding what’s underneath their behaviour and how to help them heal.
Dismissive Avoidant Attachment in Teens
One of the main signs of dismissive avoidant attachment in teens is advanced self-reliance and independence. They may appear as a “lone wolf,” seeming to prefer their own company over others. However, it isn’t so much that they dislike other people, but because they believe they can’t trust others to meet their needs. Thus, they learn to rely only on themselves.
Self-reliance and independence aren’t the only signs of dismissive avoidant attachment in teens. Other signs include the following.
Signs of Dismissive Avoidant Attachment:5,6
- Discomfort with intimacy and emotional closeness
- “Bottling up” feelings and coping alone
- Fear of rejection
- High self-esteem but a low sense of self-worth.
All of these signs may appear to others as being secretive, avoiding conversations, or “shutting down” around people.
How Avoidant Attachment Affects Friendships
As mentioned earlier, attachment styles affect how we relate to others. Teens with a dismissive avoidant attachment tend to have a negative view of others, often struggling with empathy and feeling unsure of how to provide comfort. Additionally, their fear of rejection means they might resist reaching out to others, even when they need help.
These factors, combined with a lack of trust, can make it extremely difficult for avoidant adolescents to form lasting relationships that provide emotional closeness. As a result, avoidant attachment and teen isolation can be very common.
Although it may seem that people with dismissive avoidant attachments don’t want to be around people, they still crave and yearn for love and closeness. Yet, unfortunately, they learned from a young age that the best way to protect themselves is to avoid vulnerability so that they don’t get hurt.
Therapy for dismissive avoidant behavior can help. It can support teens to change these habits of relating and to instead create healthier and happier connections with others in their lives. We’ll discuss therapy options later on this page.
Fearful Avoidant Attachment and Anxiety in Teens
The behaviors of people with fearful avoidant attachment can seem contradictory; wanting closeness and support one minute and then pulling away the next. This push-pull dynamic pattern of relating can seem chaotic and difficult to understand. However, it makes sense when framed as a protective strategy.
While they may crave emotional closeness and love, as soon as they’re about to get it, an intense fear of hurt can kick in, causing them to withdraw.
Other signs of fearful avoidant attachment include the following.
Signs of Fearful Avoidant Attachment:7,8
- Feeling anxious, stressed, or fearful
- Oscillating between trying to “parent” their caregiver and being defiant toward them
- Problems understanding and managing their emotions
- Impulsive behavior
- A negative self and other view
- Alternating between acting “clingy” in relationships and pushing people away
- Dissociation
It’s important to note that fearful avoidant attachment comes from a place of deep emotional wounds. Instead of only seeing caregivers as sources of love, people with this attachment style also saw them as sources of fear. Without healing emotional experiences, a teen can carry this contradictory belief about relationships into all other aspects of life.
Relationship Struggles and Avoidant Attachment
Teens with a fearful avoidant attachment style tend to have a negative view of both themselves and others, lacking awareness and understanding of their own and others’ feelings.
Additionally, they often struggle with boundaries in relationships and swing from wanting closeness to demanding space. Trust issues are typically at the root of these behaviors, along with an internal struggle between craving reassurance and needing complete independence.
These factors can make it difficult for adolescents to form and maintain healthy, lasting emotional connections with others, including those with family members, friends, and romantic partners.
Dismissive Avoidant vs Fearful Avoidant Explained
These two types of avoidant attachment can overlap in behaviors from time to time, but are caused by very different bonds. Therefore, it may be helpful to compare and contrast their main traits.
To do so, we’re going to look at three main areas: beliefs, behaviors, and view of self and other people.
Dismissive Avoidant:
- Beliefs: That they don’t need close relationships, are self-reliant, and that other people will reject them or are too demanding or “needy.”
- Behaviors: Suppressing emotions, avoiding intimacy, prioritizing independence, and coming across as distant or cold.
- View of self and others: Positive view of self, negative view of others.
Fearful Avoidant:
- Beliefs: That they want close relationships, intimacy will lead to hurt, they’re unworthy of love, and others can’t be trusted.
- Behaviors: “Push-and-pull” pattern of acting (craving closeness and pushing it away), emotional dysregulation such as anger outbursts, and mood swings.
- View of self and others: Negative view of both self and others.
It’s important to note that these beliefs, behaviors, and views are defensive mechanisms designed to protect oneself from further hurt or rejection in relationships.
Mental Health Support for Avoidant Teens
Unfortunately, although not always the case, avoidant attachments often go hand-in-hand with mental health issues. Teens with fearful or dismissive avoidant patterns have a higher risk of developing stress, anxiety, and depression compared to those with secure attachment patterns.3,9,10
When it comes to healing attachment insecurity in teens, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that attachment issues don’t just disappear or get better on their own. But the good news is that they can be treated.
This is why recognizing the signs of avoidant attachments is so important. If some of the behaviors described earlier are present in your teen, they may have an avoidant attachment style. Insecure attachment can be treated effectively through therapy, allowing your teen to look forward to a future with more emotional depth, security, and love.
In the next section, we explore the main treatments available for promoting a healthy, secure attachment in adolescents.
Treatment for Insecure Avoidant Attachment
If you suspect your teenager has signs of an avoidant attachment style, take heart in knowing that with the right support, they can work toward a more secure attachment. Talking therapy – individual and family – can bring about positive, lasting changes. The following information looks at these options in more detail.
CBT for Avoidant Teens
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a structured type of one-to-one therapy. It enables teens to understand their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors better. By recognizing the patterns in what they think and do, they can learn to challenge any unhelpful thoughts or actions. A therapist can also help them explore their beliefs and learn new coping techniques to manage their emotions. The understanding and skills learnt during CBT sessions can then be taken out into the world and used to help teens live a life with more fulfilling emotional connections.
Attachment-Focused Therapy for Avoidant Patterns
Attachment-based family counseling for avoidant teens is also a structured type of therapy, but involves the family as a unit. The therapy focuses on rebuilding trustworthy, stable family connections, fostering a sense of safety, and improving open communication between family members. Sessions are designed to heal and repair the bonds that were disrupted during early childhood, so that adolescents can move forward with healthier patterns for connecting with others.
Avoidant Attachment Healing Strategies for Home
The teenage years can be a struggle for teens and parents alike. As a parent or caregiver, supporting your child may feel challenging, especially if they have a tendency to pull away. However, there are strategies you can follow to promote a more secure attachment with your teen.
The following are suggestions to help you create a stronger emotional bond with your child:
- Make home a safe space: Having a safe space can help teens relax and start to feel more secure. Creating routines and setting clear boundaries can bring a sense of predictability, which also fosters a sense of safety. Minimize stress where possible, and let your teenager know that home is a place where it is safe to be themselves.
- Promote trust: Some adolescents may not have learned how to trust others, or may have had their trust broken many times. Show your teen that you are trustworthy through your words and actions. If you make a promise, be sure to keep it.
- Be available and consistent: When a teen has learned that they cannot trust others, a consistent approach is key. It’s important not to alternate back and forth between extremes of behavior or availability.
- Help them improve their emotional intelligence: Teens with avoidant attachment usually struggle with recognizing emotions, both in themselves and others. Help them develop this skill by asking how they are feeling, and also by talking about how you feel. This way, you are modeling that open discussions about emotions are OK, allowing them to recognize those of their own and others, and promoting reflection on how they feel.
Healing Avoidant Attachment With Mission Prep
If your teen is showing signs of an avoidant attachment style, know that change is possible. With the right support, teenagers can learn to trust, connect, and grow emotionally. And they don’t have to go on this journey alone.
At Mission Prep, our expert team provides compassionate, evidence-based therapy designed to help avoidant teens heal and shift towards a more secure way of relating to others. To learn more about therapy options, counseling, or intensive support, reach out to us today. Together, we can support your teen on the road to recovery.
References
- McGarvie, S., PhD. (2025, March 27). Attachment Theory, Bowlby’s Stages & Attachment Styles. PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/attachment-theory/
- Ainsworth, M. D. S., & Bell, S. M. (1970). Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation. Child Development, 41(1), 49–67. https://doi.org/10.2307/1127388
- Levine, H. (2025, January 17). What is avoidant attachment? WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/parenting/what-is-avoidant-attachment
- Vinney, C. (2023, November 2). How a fearful avoidant attachment style can affect your life. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-fearful-avoidant-attachment-5207986
- Haghighi, A. S. (2025, April 25). What is avoidant attachment? Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/avoidant-attachment
- Drescher, A. (2025, May 13). Avoidant attachment style. https://www.simplypsychology.org/avoidant-attachment-style.html
- Moore, M. (2023, August 21). Understanding disorganized attachment. Psych Central. https://psychcentral.com/health/disorganized-attachment
- Sutton, J. (2025, April 8). Can a disorganized attachment style be overcome? PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/disorganized-attachment/
- Doyle, C., & Cicchetti, D. (2017). From the cradle to the grave: The effect of adverse caregiving environments on attachment and relationships throughout the lifespan. Clinical Psychology Science and Practice, 24(2), 203–217. https://doi.org/10.1111/cpsp.12192
- Hornor, G. (2019). Attachment disorders. Journal of Pediatric Health Care, 33(5), 612–622. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedhc.2019.04.017
