On Attachment

#205: How to Process a Sudden Break-Up (AKA the "Avoidant Discard")

• Stephanie Rigg • Season 1 • Episode 205

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When a relationship ends without warning, it’s common to feel blindsided, confused, and deeply hurt. This is often labelled the “avoidant discard” — but while that term might feel validating in the moment, it can also keep you stuck in a disempowering story.

In this episode, we’ll talk about how to process a sudden ending in a way that honours your pain without leaving you tethered to it. We’ll explore:

  • Why shock and lack of closure can intensify heartbreak
  • The difference between feeling discarded and being discarded
  • How villain/victim narratives can hold you back from real healing
  • The impact of online echo chambers on your recovery
  • Practical steps to reclaim your agency and move forward

This isn’t about minimising what you’ve been through. It’s about finding a more grounded, self-responsible way to engage with what happened — so you can process it fully, integrate the lessons, and step into your next chapter with clarity and self-respect.

🔥 Save 40% on my Healing Anxious Attachment course for 72 hours only! 🔥

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Speaker 2:

You are 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, I'm your host relationship coach Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here.

Stephanie Rigg:

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 flown 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 wanna share a slightly different take on that today. 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 gonna be sharing some thoughts on why I find terms like that really problematic and unhelpful. And why hanging out in the echo chambers of, you know, YouTube comment sections or Reddit threads where everyone's speaking that same language and pumping everyone up and, you know, fiercely nodding and telling everyone that they're in the right and the other person's the wrong and don't waste time on them and, you know, they're toxic and all of that like that may well be keeping you stuck. And so I'm gonna offer what another more I would say emotionally mature and self-responsible. Path forward might look like that I find to be a much more direct path to peace and acceptance than the one where we are swirling around and really kind of energetically tethered to the pain of that experience for much longer. Okay, so that's what we're gonna be talking about in today's episode. All of that, why it's so painful. And also why there might be more to the story than just feeling like you are the victim of someone's terrible behavior. Full stop, end of story. So lots of validation and lots of hard truths mixed in together in today's episode. Now before we get into that conversation, I do just wanna remind you about my free breakup training. So if you have been through a breakup recently or maybe not that recently, but you feel like there's still some stuff there for you to process, this new breakup training is really in depth and it goes into the things that might be keeping you stuck and three shifts that you can really, uh. Step back into your power after a breakup so that you can actually meaningfully heal and move forward and, you know, break the pattern, break the cycle that you might be in, if you keep ending up in the same kinds of relationships so that you can actually move forward and, and create a vision of a more healthy love. Because, you know, spoiler when we just swirl around in these stories of victimhood and low self-worth, and this is so unfair, and why does this always happen to me after a breakup? We're not actually engaging honestly and meaningfully with not only our role in it, but you know, what are we gonna do differently next time so that we can take steps towards what we really desire for ourselves and our relationship. So. I talk about all of that and more in my free breakup training, and I would love for you to check that out if that's something that you're working through at the moment, and you could use some extra support. And second quick announcement. This is the final call for my event in London that is happening this Saturday. So the 13th of September. If you wanna grab a last minute ticket, please do. I would love to see you there. I'm so. So looking forward to gathering with you in person, which does not happen very often. Obviously, me living in Australia in person things are very, very few and far between, so it's a rare opportunity to connect in person and I would love to see you there if you're free this weekend. Grab a last minute ticket. Grab a friend, come along. Okay, so let's talk about why sudden breakups hurt so much. Now. As I said in the introduction, breakups are painful almost always, and that makes sense because it's the loss of an attachment. And our attachment system is really designed to find safety and security in connection. And so when we lose that, even if the relationship was kind of dysfunctional or had its ups and downs and had its challenges, we are still ultimately losing a point of orientation in our lives. And that can be very, very challenging and can leave us feeling like we're just treading water and we don't know who we are. And you know, add into that all of the potential logistical considerations around a breakup if it was a longer term relationship and you're actually having to. You know, upend aspects of your life, your living circumstances, or just your day-to-day routines. You know, so many things can be thrown into disarray when a relationship ends. And frankly, even if it were a shorter term relationship, you just suddenly don't have that same person that you are maybe messaging throughout the day or when something happens, they're the person you tell or you know, the person to sit on the couch and watch Netflix with. Like the person that is your default person is suddenly no longer in that space. And the emptiness that can ensue is really challenging, of course very painful. And there's a lot of grief there. Now, when that happens, suddenly, naturally, we just don't have the emotional preparedness for it. And if we think about anxiety in the nervous system, really our nervous system is a predictive machine. And anxiety's role in that machine is to warn us about all of the bad things that could happen. And you know, I, I often talk about this. That when we're in that mode of overthinking and playing out all these worst case scenarios and catastrophizing as much as we can say, like that's a bad thing that our anxiety and our nervous system does. Really what that's trying to do is conjure up all of these, you know, intrusive thoughts, worst case things that could happen. And I dunno if you've noticed, when your brain does that, you almost summon the feelings that you would feel. Ahead of time. And I like to think of that as like your body, your nervous system, trying to prepare you for that eventuality so that you can feel the feelings now, you can feel the stress, you can feel the panic, you can feel the overwhelm, you can feel the fear. And it's almost like if I'm, you know, having a dress rehearsal for that ex. Now that I'm not gonna be caught off guard, and I think our anxiety has such great fear around being caught off guard, around being blindsided, around being unprepared for a difficult experience. And so it works in overtime and overdrive. To try and map out all of those eventualities to try and prepare us for every possible permutation of a scary, painful, stressful scenario so that we feel more ready, more armed and more able to protect ourselves. And so we can see that there's a really beautiful protective intent behind that. Now when despite all of that overworking, all of that anxiety, all of that, you know, over-functioning, we are blindsided, we are caught off guard. It can feel all the more terrifying and painful because that is the thing that we were desperately trying to prevent. And I think that that is true for a lot of. People with anxious attachment patterns, a sudden change that we were unprepared for is almost the thing that we fear most. Feeling like we've had the rug pulled out from underneath us and we didn't see it coming. We feel so intensely vulnerable and powerless in those moments because it's like, I've got nothing. Right? I, I have no way of protecting myself, of helping myself out of this. I haven't thought this through. I haven't prepared for it. And so that can feel really, really deeply disorienting and I think oftentimes can kind of catapult us back in time to a very like, young, vulnerable, powerless version of ourselves that just doesn't know how to deal with the situation. So naturally that's going to feel immensely painful and frightening and overwhelming. So I just really wanted to validate like why the suddenness, why the shock factor can feel so much worse, so much more painful than an ending that we maybe saw coming or that was like a slow burn to the end. Because we can almost start processing the ending while we're still in it, while we're marching towards it. Even while we're doing everything in our power to stop that from happening. A part of us is maybe resigned to that possibility. And to the fact that that's on the horizon. If we don't have that time to prepare naturally, there's gonna be a lot more grief and confusion and actually, you know, as I'm speaking, you could liken that to a sudden death verse, you know, someone passing away after a long illness. Those are very different grieving processes and you know, it can certainly bring up different emotions and that makes perfect sense. You know, we would never question that in the context of losing someone in that way. And yet when it comes to relationships and breakups, we tend to be a little harder on ourselves and you know, put pressure on ourselves to just get over it when really there is some very real pain and grieving that has to happen there. I think the other piece when it comes to suddenly being left by someone is that if we didn't see it coming, it can really hurt our self trust and going into the next relationship. Then, you know, particularly if we already had a piece around not really trusting in love, not really trusting in the steadiness of relationships, then there can be this sense of like. It only amplifies our hypervigilance next time. It only increases our sense of needing to be guarded or needing to be on high alert in our relationships because you just never know when danger is lurking. And I think for a lot of people with anxious attachment, that already feels true. So to have that as the base and then to feel like you almost failed in your really important job to predict and prevent something from suddenly happening and then going into the next relationship. Or if you've had those experiences in the past and naturally, you've now collected a very, very powerful piece of evidence that yes, I absolutely do need to be on high alert because people can leave at a moment's notice, uh, uh and you won't necessarily see it coming. So. It can certainly increase our sensitivity and our hypervigilance going forward to the possibility of being abandoned, of being rejected, of people leaving and us feeling powerless to stop With all of that being said, and I do really wanna emphasize that, like that pain is so real and much sense. Okay, so now that we've got that piece kind of established that like, yes, it's so painful and it makes so much sense that it's so painful when a relationship ends suddenly. I do wanna talk a little bit more about this avoidant discard thing, the language, the label, why I'm not a huge fan of it, and what I would encourage you to focus on instead of just going into those internet rabbit holes. Now, for anyone who has not come across this term. I admit I literally had to Google it recently to try and get myself up to speed because as I said, I'd been seeing it everywhere and I really had to ask the question of like, you know, who's teaching this? And like, where is it coming from and why is everyone saying it all of a sudden? And lo and behold, there are so many results of people who are using this term and. It's essentially from what I can gauge you know, being used to describe circumstances where someone with avoidant attachment leaves a relationship very suddenly just ends it out of nowhere, out of the blue deactivates pulls away which, you know, can happen of course, that someone can end a relationship suddenly. And you know, someone with avoidant attachment, if they get overwhelmed and decide that the relationship is not for them and, and they break it off and maybe they do so very unskillfully. Certainly that can happen. My issue with the avoidant discard language is that it treats that as the objective truth rather than a subjective experience. And I think it's much more self-responsible to say, I feel discarded. I feel blindsided rather than I was discarded. Can you notice the tone difference there? I was discarded feel so emotionally charged and there is this inherent villain, victim dynamic baked into that. We are painting them as this cold, heartless person, you know? How could you do that to me? You discarded me like I was nothing. Again, of course it can feel that way. It can feel immensely painful but it is much more emotionally mature and self-responsible to say, I feel discarded. I feel unimportant. I feel confused and hurt and lost and lonely. That is a much more honest engagement with what's actually happening there rather than describing the facts of the situation with very emotionally charged, projecting kind of language, like saying I was discarded by them. And it's really not just about the choice of words, it's about the story that we've attached to that and the meaning that we are making. Because I think the person who's saying I was discarded is the person who is actually creating all of these stories around I am worthless, I am valueless. People always leave me. Nobody loves me, like I love them. People are so unreliable. People can't be trusted. Like all of those stories spring from I was discarded. Whereas if we're saying, I'm feeling discarded, we open up this whole other possibility to engage with our emotional landscape in a way that actually allows us to tend to and heal those wounds and the pain that might be sitting underneath the surface that we've been brought into contact with as a result of someone's may be very unskillful way of going about ending a relationship. I think, you know, the other thing that needs to be said around this language is that it sits in amongst this whole world of echo chambers online, places like Reddit places like YouTube, comments sections, even Instagram and TikTok where you will get a whole pile on of people cheering you on and saying like, yeah, you are in the right and they're in the wrong and just forget about them because they're toxic and all of those sorts of value judgements that again, can make you feel momentarily better. And I do wanna just acknowledge, I should have said this at the start. I get it. Because that used to be appealing to me as well, once upon a time. When I was really deep in, in my pain and overwhelm in a relationship with someone who was pretty avoidant and whose behavior I couldn't make sense of gravitating towards content like that, that placed the blame squarely on their shoulders that like that was juicy. Right. That was exactly what I wanted to hear was that it was not my fault, it was his fault that it wasn't something I was doing. It was just that he was, you know, unavailable or that he was dysfunctional or that they were his issues. Right. But the problem with that kind of content is that you are sitting trolling the internet, watching videos for hours and hours on end talking about how someone else is the problem. And so while that might feel like it's liberating you in some way from your own shame and self blame, it's actually keeping you stuck in the pattern because you're still obsessing over them. You're still, you know, so hyper fixated on them and understanding their behavior and why they did it, like, you're still so deep in it when you're engaging with that kind of content and when you're, you know, having those back and forths with anonymous strangers on the internet, again, I know that it can feel temporarily soothing or reassuring to feel like. It's not you and you're not alone. And I'm certainly not saying just to be clear that it is you and that it's your fault instead. I'm just saying that there's always more to the story than a very one-sided you know, villain victim. Good, bad, right, wrong kind of painting of the picture. So what does a more empowered way of processing a sudden relationship ending look like? Now, as I've spoken about in other episodes more broadly about healing from a breakup, grief is gonna be a big part of that. And part of your grief is grieving the suddenness and the unfairness and you know, the conversations you didn't get to have, maybe the chances that you feel weren't afforded to you to make changes. You know, if someone just ended the relationship suddenly without. Saying that there was anything wrong, you know, there was no lead up to that. You might feel almost like a sense of injustice around that. Like, you didn't even give me an opportunity to make changes or to know how you were feeling. And that feels like, you know, you've been deprived of, of common courtesy almost. And all of that's totally valid again, but. What we wanna be focusing on is feeling our own frustration rather than projecting it outwards, whether that's, you know, on the internet in a random comment section, or by continuing to have at this person to try and convince them of their wrongness and why they shouldn't have done that. And you know, how they have to give us another chance or whatever else it might be. We really need to see these sudden endings, whether that's like in the form of ghosting, whether that's in the form of just a very out of the blue breakup that feels really kind of sudden and shocking and confusing. You need to see that not as evidence of someone's coldness or toxicity or whatever other labels you might wanna put on it, but as a function of their capacity, because no matter how it comes across to you. If someone pulls away from a relationship so suddenly and ends a relationship, so suddenly you can be certain that their system was in such a state of overwhelm and fear that that felt like the best option and maybe the only option they felt so out of their depths, that they felt so confused or so overwhelmed, or so afraid that having a conversation that bringing their concerns that. Sharing their hesitations. Any of those things clearly did not feel like viable options for them, or that there was so much discomfort or anxiety around raising those things that just pulling the pin, just cutting it off, just saying like, enough, I'm done. That was the only option that they really felt was available to them or that was the best option that they felt they had at their disposal. And you don't have to agree with that, right?'cause a lot of people will say, that's just childish. They need to learn to communicate and like. I get it. Right. Of course. Totally unskillful. No one is justifying that that was a good thing for them to do. It is just contextualizing the reality that if they did it, they felt it was the best option and that their capacity constraints are as they there is no point arguing with what someone's capacity is. And so while we can absolutely be hurt by someone's behavior, and while we can absolutely be angry that someone ended things in a way that feels terribly unfair and unskillful and, you know, lacking in respect or whatever else, right? All of that can be true, and it is always an expression of their capacity. And. Where their system was at in terms of feeling overwhelmed, feeling unsafe, feeling totally out of their debts. So both of those things can be true and will be true and that's why I think that having some curiosity and compassion is absolutely essential in a breakup as in a relationship. Now that doesn't mean that you then have to forgive them if you don't want to. Although. I think that naturally when we start to feel into what might they have been experiencing that I might not understand firsthand, that might be totally different to how I would've gone about it but nevertheless was very real for them. I think naturally that paves the way for, if not, you know, forgiveness, then at least acceptance and maybe a, making peace with the situation. To me I think that that is a much more constructive way of processing this than holding onto the blame and the how could you and all of that story that makes them a terrible person. Because I think that actually really feeds all of the cycle going forward. And again, what I alluded around like. We carry it into the next relationship. If we've got the story of, you know, people just can't be trusted rather than that person was struggling with their own stuff, uh, that led them to behave in this way that's a much easier thing to carry into another relationship than people just can't be trusted. And people always leave at the drop of a hat, you know, it's much easier to process what happened when we're engaging with that 360 degree view rather than just sitting in our seat of pain and hurt. Okay, I'm gonna leave it there. I hope that that has been validating for those of you who have experienced this as to why it's so painful, and I also hope that it has maybe gently challenged you if you have found yourself in those online rabbit holes or just in your own story of victimhood and blame that maybe that offers you another view and another way of relating to the pain and what happened that might ultimately be facilitative of you finding more peace around the ending so that you can move forward with more acceptance. Okay. Thanks so much for joining me, guys. I look forward to seeing you again next time.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things, attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram at Stephanie under Reig or@stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review on a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.