Love avoidance is the refusal to show love for someone out of fear of being hurt. Individuals who turned to love avoidance carefully guard themselves when in relationships. These individuals avoid intimacy to protect themselves from rejection, loss and the types of pain that accompany an intimate relationship.
People who suffer from love avoidance do everything they can to conceal their vulnerability from others, especially loved ones. Love avoidance does not mean avoiding love; rather it is an unhealthy way of reacting to relationship trauma. Love avoidants have past experiences of feeling unwanted or unloved, which result in a need for excessive acceptance, praise, and compliments from their spouses, partners or loved ones to enhance their self-esteem.
Love avoidants act in extremes, such as taking steps to avoid meeting sexual and emotional needs, which can lead to self-destruction. They become afraid of commitments and emotional attachments. Sometimes love avoidance is considered counter-dependent behavior.
Willow House’s Love Avoidance Program uncovers underlying issues which may not have been apparent to the patient before treatment, to begin the healing process at the root of the problem.
Our Love Avoidance Program doesn’t just address the symptoms; it also addresses the issues and factors that contributed to the condition in the first place.