Why Avoidant Clients Are Misunderstood in Therapy: A Deeper Look at Attachment Styles in the Counseling Room

By Dr. Jacob Ambrose

In the therapy room, there’s often a subtle but deeply ingrained bias in how we perceive attachment styles. Clients with anxious attachment may be praised for their emotional vulnerability, while those with avoidant attachment may be perceived as resistant, guarded, or “not ready” for the work.

But what if the truth is far more nuanced? What if the therapy room itself—by design—creates a healing space for one attachment style and a dysregulating one for another?

Let’s talk about it.

Why Avoidantly Attached Clients May Seem “More Difficult” in Therapy

If you're an avoidantly attached client or therapist, you may have already noticed this dynamic: avoidant clients often seem more dysregulated in therapy, while anxious clients appear more emotionally attuned or eager to do the work.

This isn’t because avoidantly attached clients lack depth or care—it’s because therapy, as a process, often activates their nervous system.

Avoidant attachment is rooted in a deep need for distance, safety, and emotional space. When therapy asks a client to process emotion in real time, in direct contact with a person expecting vulnerability, it can easily trigger the fight or flight response. What looks like resistance or defensiveness may actually be a trauma response—a client protecting themselves in the only way they know how.

On the flip side, anxiously attached clients often feel regulated in therapy. That’s because anxious attachment is soothed by connection and communication. The structure of weekly, emotionally focused meetings actually provides the relief they’ve been seeking all along.

So what’s happening?

• Avoidant clients often experience the weight of their trauma in session.

• Anxious clients often experience the weight of their trauma outside of session, during silence or disconnection.

  
  

And that contrast creates an invisible but significant imbalance in how both clients experience therapy—and how they’re perceived by therapists.

Who Gets Seen More Favorably in Therapy?

Let’s be honest: anxious clients can look like the “ideal client.” They talk. They self-reflect. They seek reassurance and seem motivated. Avoidant clients, on the other hand, may come off as disengaged, intellectualizing, or “not trying.”

But this perception is often deeply unfair.

Therapists and partners are often getting the worst of the avoidant client in therapy—when they’re most dysregulated—and the best of the anxious client—when they finally feel safe enough to open up. That doesn't mean therapy isn’t painful for anxious clients (it absolutely can be), but the environment favors their style of coping.

In relationships, the opposite is often true. Anxious partners do the emotional heavy lifting, while avoidant partners may retreat.

That means:

• In session: Avoidants are carrying more emotional weight.

• Outside of session: Anxious partners carry more emotional weight.
  

When therapists aren’t attuned to this dynamic, they may unknowingly reinforce past wounding: praising emotional expressiveness while pathologizing emotional distance. But for many avoidant clients, showing up at all is an act of vulnerability.

A Call for Compassion & Balance in Attachment Healing

This isn’t about labeling one style as “better” or “worse.” In fact, when an anxiously attached person is partnered with someone avoidant who is not fully invested in therapy, it can recreate trauma in the therapy room. The anxious person may end up doing all the emotional work again, reinforcing a sense of abandonment and hopelessness.

But this dynamic isn’t fixed. Both styles hold weight in different ways, and both are worthy of compassion.

• Anxiously attached clients need to know: you are not responsible for carrying every relationship, including this one.

• Avoidantly attached clients need to know: healing may feel terrifying, but therapy can be a space to build safety on your own terms.
  

Therapy that is sensitive to these differences can radically shift the healing journey—especially when the approach includes both emotional space and emotional attunement.

If You’re an Avoidant or Anxious Client, Therapy Can Still Work for You

At Restore Psychology in San Diego, we offer attachment-informed therapy that makes room for all styles. Whether you are working through:

• Avoidant attachment issues

• Anxious-preoccupied attachment dynamics

• Couples therapy for mixed attachment styles

• Faith-integrated approaches through Christian counseling

• Or seeking online therapy

… we’re here to walk with you through the process.

You don’t have to carry it alone—especially if it’s never felt safe to carry with anyone else.

Reach out to Dr. Jacob Ambrose today at Restore Psychology to begin therapy that meets you where you are.