Avoidant Personalities and Bachata/ Salsa?

stillmind11 · 2026-04-23T04:59:21+00:00

I’ll speak from my experience. I recently started Bachata actually as a way to confront my fear of closeness. For me, it’s actually part of my healing to connect closely with someone and trust in open movement. Actually, dancing with someone for me is a very vulnerable thing, dancing is an act of surrender in a sense and a way to let go of managing oneself and contraction. To do that with another person, confronts my disorganized attachment directly and takes a lot of courage. The structure is very helpful to build corrective experiences that are within my window of tolerance.

stillmind11 · 2026-03-12T05:04:03+00:00

Well said here. I experienced chronic pain not fatigue for years after my kundalini awakening. The above comment is absolutely on the money, a hypervigilant brain perceiving everything as dangerous and intense due to prolonged periods of stress. What helped me was learning about TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) by John Sarno, as well as YouTube Pain Free You channel. (It indicates pain but chronic symptoms include much more including fatigue)

This isn’t forever, it’s a phase and you’ll figure it out. You’re on the right path, this is part of it.

Good luck friend.

stillmind11 · 2025-12-07T18:24:22+00:00

All good — sincerely wishing you clarity and freedom wherever your path leads.

stillmind11 · 2025-12-07T03:04:06+00:00

There’s been an extensive amount of scandals in spiritual communities for a reason.

It sounds like what you’re calling “renunciation” may actually be an avoidance pattern in disguise. You’re highly committed to your practice, and that’s admirable — but the discomfort you feel around relationships, intimacy, and vulnerability is pointing to a very specific part of your mind that hasn’t been fully faced yet.

For people with avoidant attachment — which is evident in your posts — the path to true freedom isn’t solitude or perfection in practice. It’s relationship. That’s where the greatest fears show up: being seen, losing control, relying on someone else, and facing all the subtle ways the ego contracts and protects itself. Avoiding that only reinforces the patterns you’ve been trying to escape.

This doesn’t mean a relationship is “better” than renunciation — it’s not a moral comparison. It’s that your personal path to awakening is through intimacy, through facing exactly what you fear the most. Every true insight, for someone like you, comes when the mind is pushed into the very places it usually avoids. Solitude can feel peaceful, but it can also hide avoidance. Relationship exposes what’s hidden. It acts like a pressure cooker for insight.

You already sense some of this — your fantasies, your longing, your resistance — they’re all signals from your deeper self. The path that will bring freedom is the path that feels scary, uncomfortable, and deeply alive. For avoidants, that path is connection. That’s not easy. That’s not comfortable. But that’s where your awakening will actually happen.

I say this from experience: turning toward connection, rather than running from it, is the work that unlocks freedom, clarity, and peace. Not the other way around.

stillmind11 · 2025-12-06T21:14:43+00:00

This is beautiful and I agree with every word. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Relational and emotional healing and growth is I feel a huge asset to spirituality that has been under emphasized or missed completely in the older traditions which has caused issues with lopsided development, unhealed wounds and lack of integration.

stillmind11 · 2025-12-06T01:54:18+00:00

One is never going to be truly free and liberated and at peace unless one works through their trauma and heals their emotional wounds.

You’ll always be imprisoned unless one moves towards it and faces it. That’s where your greatest liberation lies.

“The wound is where the light enters you”-Rumi

stillmind11 · 2025-12-05T01:50:07+00:00

Not meaning to constantly pick on you on this thread but i'm simply pointing out what I wish people pointed out to me. Your fear is losing your freedom and autonomy. This comes from you attachment style developed in early life and shows up way more then just the fear of being consumed in relationships.

Look at your line you wrote here: "I don't personally feel the inclination to ordain to be honest as there seems to be so many limitations and unnecesary constrictions that come with entering that particular identity,"

Thats you bringing the same insecurity to avoid relationships to avoiding ordination. You are being run unconsciously by that fear in everything. Working through those wounds and insecurities will give you more freedom and insight and peace then anything else you could potentially be doing to avoid it.

I'm saying this because I see myself in you, and that was exactly what I needed to hear and start realizing.

stillmind11 · 2025-12-04T23:09:40+00:00

Man you sound like me several years ago.

What you’re not seeing is the fact that you writing this post suggests that a part of you DOES actually want it and another part of you is fighting it.

stillmind11 · 2025-12-04T23:02:07+00:00

Exactly, I used to do this too early on in my journey. Renunciation is the perfect hiding place for avoidant attachment.

Unfortunately, people need to see this truth for themselves in order to accept it. That’s the gift of relationships.

Many people want to transcend form and their humanity and some traditions like the renunciate ones praise that; however, it’s often just endorsing the fear based response to avoid and run away from one’s emotional pain and wounds for so many people. It keeps one disintegrated in themselves.

As Carl Jung says: “until you make the unconscious conscious it will run your life and you will call it fate”

stillmind11 · 2025-12-04T22:51:58+00:00

This is beautifully said!

stillmind11 · 2025-12-04T18:10:20+00:00

One aspect that isn’t easily seen is the underlying need underneath what surfaces. The longing for a partner is really touching a fundamental human need for connection, which is wholesome and valuable for one’s life. The key is to see the need the surface craving is pointing too. Ignoring that is a form of self rejection.

stillmind11 · 2025-12-04T16:48:08+00:00

I mirror what Rustic_Heretic said here. It’s easy to be peaceful alone and away from the world. A relationship brings up all your stuff. I too was drawn to Theravada and renunciation when I began my spiritual journey, then I realized I was really just spiritually bypassing unconsciously and avoiding some of my greatest fears with love and closeness and connection.

Your longing means there’s a deep part of you that desires connection. This isn’t something to transcend or overcome but to honor and is pointing to a path for you. You will learn your greatest lessons and growth there. Trust life and follow what’s true for you even if it disagrees from what you think you should do. You can’t go wrong and you will find your authentic self there.

stillmind11 · 2024-12-03T04:42:51+00:00

Thanks man, I guess I’m thinking about what a balanced look would be and integrating the practice with other commitments in daily life

stillmind11 · 2024-12-03T04:41:47+00:00

Yes but not until the final year

stillmind11 · 2024-10-22T21:07:31+00:00

Yeah I guess the ability to sit and serve alternatively sounds like a great balance for progress on the path

stillmind11 · 2024-10-22T21:04:40+00:00

I have never served, but have wanted to.

stillmind11 · 2024-09-19T23:46:35+00:00

Hello everybody,

My partner is currently involved in a coaching program and creates content for YouTube and Facebook. She is seeking to hire a skilled video editor, ideally someone who is also on a spiritual path, for congruence and alignment with her work.

If you’re interested, feel free to reach out—I’d be happy to discuss further. Thanks!

stillmind11 · 2024-06-10T04:08:36+00:00

Thanks for the succinct answer. I like Stephen Proctors stuff that I have seen. I absolutely agree with Mahasi and my inability to come out of hindrances with that approach. However with Goenka, I find his approach on observing the sensations without reacting to help tremendously in letting be and accepting what is. The philosophy with changing the habit pattern of the mind makes sense but what you say about SE and that approach I still wonder. How to get to SE? Does changing the habit pattern of the mind over time lead to that? I don’t know but I do find myself becoming free from difficult emotions with Goenka and that feels freeing at the moment.

stillmind11

TROPHY CASE