Soon to disappear into this Mon 🌙 here, will be back tomorrow 🌄, Confused.

Good morning, Confused:

Paulien Timmer is a Dutch relationship and attachment‑style educator (She is not a psychologist or therapist). She positions herself as a Fearful Avoidant (FA) attachment expert and emphasizes that she healed her own FA attachment style and now teaches others how to do the same.

She runs the platform Healing the Fearful Avoidant and a YouTube channel, as well as a Dutch program called “Rust in de Liefde” (“Calm in Love”), which helps people who constantly doubt their feelings. She calls herself a “twijfelcoach” (doubt coach).

Paulien Timmer consistently teaches that FA attachment develops in childhood, and she talks about this connection in almost all of her content.

She repeatedly emphasizes that FA patterns come from inconsistent caregiving, emotional unpredictability, fear mixed with love, caregivers who were sometimes safe and sometimes frightening, and environments where the child couldn’t rely on anyone consistently.

She describes FA attachment as a childhood survival strategy that becomes an adult relationship pattern.

According to her teaching the FA Push comes from fear of being hurt, rejected, or overwhelmed, and the Pull comes from longing for closeness and connection. She explains that this internal conflict is rooted in childhood experiences where closeness felt unsafe and necessary at the same time.

Across her videos and programs, she mentions childhood experiences like being parentified, being emotionally responsible for a parent, chaotic or unstable environments, and caregivers who were loving one moment and frightening the next.

She frames FA as the result of a child learning: “I want closeness, but closeness is dangerous.”

She teaches that healing FA requires revisiting childhood patterns, understanding childhood triggers, healing emotional wounds from early life, and building internal safety.

She often says that FA healing is about giving yourself the safety you didn’t consistently receive as a child.

She doesn’t just describe FA patterns — she gives step‑by‑step things people can do to heal them:

1. Regulate your nervous system first — before doing anything else: grounding (looking around the room slowly, placing a hand on the chest, naming sensations, pausing before reacting), breathing (long exhales). She emphasizes that you cannot make good relational decisions from a dysregulated state.

2. Name the FA pattern in the moment- She teaches people to label what’s happening: “This is my fear talking.”, “This is my push response.”, “This is my shutdown.”, “This is my fear of hurting someone.”

Naming the pattern reduces shame and gives you a sense of choice.

3. Slow down decisions — especially big ones- FA people often panic and want to break up, run, withdraw, shut down, and/ or make a drastic choice.

She teaches the opposite: Slow everything down. Do not make decisions from fear. Wait until your body is calm.

This is one of her most repeated pieces of advice.

4. Share your internal experience in small, honest pieces- She encourages FA individuals to practice gentle, simple communication like: “I’m feeling overwhelmed.”, “I need a moment to calm down.”, “I’m scared, but I care about you.”, “I’m having a push response.”

Not dramatic confessions — just small, steady truths.

5. Repair after a shutdown or push‑away- She teaches that FA healing requires learning to come back after withdrawing. Her concrete steps: Regulate. Reflect. Return. Share a small truth. Reconnect slowly. This builds trust and reduces the partner’s fear.

6. Work on childhood wounds — but gently- She talks a lot about inner child work, re‑parenting, understanding the original source of fear, and giving yourself the safety you didn’t get.

But she emphasizes doing this slowly, not diving into trauma all at once.

7. Build internal safety- FA people often don’t feel safe inside themselves. She teaches practices like self‑soothing, self‑validation, emotional containment, and learning to sit with discomfort.

This reduces the urge to run or shut down.

8. Practice receiving love- This is a big one in her work. FA individuals often distrust affection, feel overwhelmed by closeness, and fear disappointing their partner. She teaches small steps like letting someone hug you, accepting a compliment, allowing closeness for a few seconds longer, noticing when you want to pull away. These micro‑moments build tolerance for intimacy.

9. Stop interpreting anxiety as “lack of feelings”- This is one of her most important teachings.

She says FA people often mistake fear, overwhelm, shutdown, and numbness …for “I don’t love them” or “I should leave.”

She teaches that numbness is a protective response, not a truth.

10. Take relationships slowly and steadily- She encourages pacing, boundaries, gradual intimacy, consistent communication, and avoiding extremes.

FA healing is about consistency, not intensity.

* I need to give the computer away, will post again using my phone.

Anita

Developing my thoughts in regard to craving and fearing closeness/love, best I understand it as it applies to me:

I imagine that as a child, I felt loving closeness with my mother. I am sure I did, although I don’t have a single memory of such.

What happened, what must have happened is comparable to let’s say, you feel very close to your dog who loves you, you pet him and he responds affectionately. But then, out of nowhere, he bites you and you bleed, and it happens repeatedly.

You stop petting him because you’re afraid of another bite. And over time, you forget there was ever affection and closeness, and you figure you’re safer away from the dog, away from closeness.

Because in your mind, closeness gets associated with being bitten.

And then, this association appears with other people- so you stay away (avoidant), or if you get close (because, being human,you crave closeness), you enjoy it for a little while, but then you remember the biting ( even without being aware of the memory) and you get scared and withdraw ( fearful-avoidant)

So, it’s a tug of war between needing closeness-love (a human.. and Canine need) and getting scared of another bite.

🐕 😱 😍 😱 😍 😱 Anita

I was wondering about you stopping the meds, Confused. Maybe it would have been better to increase the dosage for better effect than to quit it altogether. I’m in a bit of a rush now, I’ll write later, probably in a few- 5 hours from now. I hope that you feel better soon.

Hey Dear Confused:

Had more time than anticipated 🙂

Confused, I hear you. The dog example is something we can understand with the thinking mind — it’s a conscious explanation.

But what you’re feeling right now isn’t happening in the thinking mind at all. It’s happening in the body.

When you say it ‘feels like something else,’ that’s actually very accurate.

FA patterns — especially the numbness, the emptiness, the lack of love or sadness — come from a deeper, older place than logic. They’re not intellectual. They’re nervous‑system reactions that were formed long before you had words for anything.

So even if the explanation makes sense, the felt experience can still feel foreign, heavy, or unreachable.
That doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It means you’re in a shutdown state, not a thinking state.

Shutdown is not a choice and it’s not a sign that you don’t care. It’s the body protecting itself when it feels overwhelmed.

And when you’re in that state, it’s almost impossible to ‘apply tools.’ Not because you don’t want to — but because your system is offline.

For now, the most important thing is to be gentle with yourself. You’re not supposed to feel love or clarity or motivation when you’re in shutdown. Your only job in moments like this is to take things slowly and let your system settle.

You’re not alone in this, and nothing you described is strange or wrong. It’s a state — not who you are.

🌿 🤍 Anita

Hey anita

Is it this though? I am questioning everything haha, here are some thoughts:

Was i myself in this relationship? (i think so, since i’ve been enjoying it so much!)
Is this a shutdown due to fear? Burnout? Depression? Because i remember telling some friends of mine “i feel like i dont want anything and my romantic feelings are off” when i woke up like this.
Am i refusing to accept the truth? If so, how come it happened so suddenly and violently?
Was i using this girl to fill my void?

Today the new therapist also noticed (she’s the third one saying this), that it seemed i was afraid of the deeper connection/intimacy and i am treading on unknown waters (healthier relationship than my past ones), also i realized i’ve never spoken to any of my parents about my feelings, they havent either.

About the med, i took it for 10 days, i am 12 days off, is it really that long of an adjustment?

Its so exhausting, how do i come out of this state?

B Back 2 u in a few hours (going to the taproom)

🍷 Anita

Hey anita

Yes i always try to see things logically because i cant make sense otherwise.

Hmm,i think i need alone time and a break? I am not sure..