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

Oh, if I could only un-weird things for you, I would 🙂

So, what is it exactly that seems very weird to you?

Hey Confused:

I will check her out tomorrow!

That you were never treated so lovingly before- explains to me why the overwhelm and shutdown happened.. too much of a good thing!

I mean, if you grow up with too little of a good thing (love, consistency) and too much of a bad thing (violence, chaos), you adjust to it best you can.

Makes sense?

🤔 Anita

Hey 👋 Confused:

I will look up Paulin Timmer tomorrow when I have the use of a 🖥

That feeling that something is missing or is not enough is a classic symptom of OCD. I am beginning to think that you may have what is called “pure OCD”, meaning the compulsions are mental (checing and re- checking what you’re feeling).

I am far from being a doctor or a professional in mental health, but maybe it’ll help you to look up “pure OCD”. There are online communities of the pure-ocd-ed and you might find commonality there, even answers.

From all that you shared over the last few months, she sounds like a lovely young woman who really likes 👍 you!

🍃🤍 Anita

Hey dear Contradictorily Confused, Confused (CCC):

May the dopamine- fused confusion, contradictions; bewilderment, perplexity and puzzlement be replaced with certainty, clarity, coherence (CCC), focus, and lucidity.

🌪️ 😵‍💫 🔥 ⚡💥😖 ==> ✨ 🌿 🌙 💡 🕊️ 🌼 Anita

Hi Kelly:

At the end of my last message to you I wrote that you don’t have to make big decisions right now. I want to elaborate on it this morning:

Making big decisions, like marriage and a much bigger decision, having children, is not something a person who’s already stressed and overwhelmed should think about.

The most important thing is for you, at this time, to minimize stress in your life.

Having mentioned children: imagine you had a stressed and overwhelmed little girl: would you pressure her to feel any particular way or do what would stress her even more?

I am guessing you won’t and that you’ll do your best to calm and soothe her- because you’d love her and have her best interest in heart.

Please 🙏 be as good to you as you. You matter.

🍃 🤍 Anita

* edit: M-26