Someone gets close. They’re kind to you, they show up, they seem to actually like you.
And something in you starts to pull back. You go quiet. You get busy. You find something wrong with them. You pick a fight you don’t even care about. Or you leave before they get the chance to.
Afterwards you can see it. You might even know it’s happening while it happens. And you still can’t seem to stop it.
If that’s you, there’s nothing wrong with you. Something in you is doing exactly what it learned to do.
It isn’t a decision
Most people describe pushing people away as something they do. It feels more accurate to say it’s something that happens to them.
That’s because it isn’t coming from the part of you that makes decisions. It’s coming from your subconscious.
Your subconscious is the part of your mind that runs without you thinking about it. It records everything, and it creates programs out of what you experience and feel the most. That’s what programming is: something repeated until it became automatic.
Your thinking will match your programming. If your programming says people are out to get you, it will keep making you think people are out to get you, even when they aren’t.
That’s why you can be pulling back before you’ve decided anything.
What it’s responding to
It usually isn’t the person in front of you. It’s a feeling. Getting close to someone brings up a feeling you’ve felt before, much earlier in your life.
Only you know what that feeling is, and nobody can tell you from the outside. The questions below will help you find it, in your own words.
Whatever it is, pulling away became the way to get out of that feeling. At the time, it probably worked. That’s why the closer things get, the stronger the urge to leave.
Why knowing your attachment style hasn’t fixed it
If you’ve already read about this, you may have a label for it. Avoidant. Fearful-avoidant. Commitment issues.
A label can be a relief. It tells you you’re not the only one.
But a label describes what you do. It doesn’t tell you which feeling sets it off in you, or where you first learned to respond to it this way. And without that, the program keeps running, because the label never reaches the place the program lives.
Knowing why you do something and being able to stop are two different things. I wrote more about that in I Know Why I Do It, But I Still Do It.
How to find the feeling underneath
You can start this on your own today. It comes down to four questions.
1. Pick one recent time you pulled back from someone. What had they said or done?
2. What did it feel like it was saying about you?
This is the step most people rush, so here’s what I mean. Not the name of an emotion. “Angry,” “anxious” or “hurt” are too broad. Everyone feels those, and they don’t point anywhere. I mean what the moment felt like it was saying about you.
Say someone you care about doesn’t call you back. “I was annoyed” is the emotion. “It felt like I wasn’t worth calling back” is the feeling. Or say someone you’re seeing plans a weekend away with you. “I felt anxious” is the emotion. “It felt like I was about to get trapped” is the feeling.
That second kind of sentence is the one you’re looking for. It’s usually short, and usually a little uncomfortable to say. Put yours in your own words, even if they’re messy.
3. Has anyone else ever made you feel exactly that way?
Not something similar. That exact feeling, with someone else. If someone comes to mind, you’re not looking at one bad moment with one person. You’re looking at a program: a feeling your subconscious has repeated so often that it brings it back on its own, with different people, even over small things.
4. When is the earliest time you remember feeling exactly like that?
Don’t force an answer. Let a memory come up. It’s often smaller and more ordinary than you’d expect. That earliest memory is usually where the program started, and that’s where the work is.
What changes it
Catching yourself sooner helps. Each time you notice the urge to pull back while it’s happening, rather than a week later, you get a moment to choose.
But noticing doesn’t remove the program. What changes it is going back to the version of you who learned it, and giving that younger you the understanding and love they didn’t get at the time. That’s inner child work, and I’ve written out how I do it in What Do You Say to Your Inner Child?.
When it works, you’ll notice it in ordinary moments. Someone is kind to you and the urge to leave doesn’t come, or it comes and it’s quieter. You stay a little longer than you used to. Closeness starts to feel like closeness again.
What I can’t tell you
I can’t tell you what your feeling is. Only you can find that, and it won’t be the same as anyone else’s.
I can’t tell you it’s always one memory. Usually a program like this is built from many moments that felt the same way.
And I can’t tell you the people you’ve pushed away will come back. What I can tell you is the next person doesn’t have to meet the same program.
Start with the feeling. The free quiz takes about three minutes and helps you see which feeling keeps coming back, in your own words. No email needed.