You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships

and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships.

I'm your host, Relationship Coach Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment.

In today's episode, we are talking about how to navigate sudden breakups or sudden relationships

ending in a way that

feels really confusing and where you feel really blindsided and, you know, just kind of left in

a lurch, not knowing where that came from or what's going on. And obviously that can, you know,

significantly increase the pain that we experience when a relationship ends. And of course, breakups are

almost always painful and almost always involve a grieving process. But of course, when we add the

shock, the confusion to all of that, that can obviously make things go from bad to worse.

Now, what prompted me to record an episode on this is that I have noticed in the past six months or so a huge uptick in the term avoidant discard flying around.

I get questions about it all the time.

I get DMs about it all the time.

I have students posting about it in my course all the time.

And it's being thrown around as like an objective term. You know, people

say, I'm two weeks post-avoidant discard, as if that's just an objective truth. And I want to

share a slightly different take on that today that is in no way intended to invalidate the very

real hurt and pain that you may be experiencing

or may have experienced in the past if you were suddenly broken up with by an avoidant person

or anyone else. But I am going to be sharing some thoughts on why I find terms like that

really problematic and unhelpful and why hanging out in the echo chambers of YouTube comment

...