Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Attachment Styles: A 4-Part Series Part 3 - Disorganized Attachment

Attachment Style’s Series: Part 3- Disorganized Attachment

Attachment Styles- Introduction & Definitions

Attachment Styles is a concept that helps us understand how our childhood brain wires to relate to our primary caregiver, and eventually others. This is for survival. We bond as we are helpless and need a lot of care. Attachment Style Research

Is this completely new for you? For more Definitions see Part 1 -Anxious Attachment blog

There are 4 main Attachment Styles: Anxious/Preoccupied, Avoidant/Dismissive, Disorganized/Ambivalent and Secure. We will review each one over this 4-part series.

Disorganized Attachment - How It Develops

Disorganized Attachment develops due to inconsistent parenting and/or caregiving. Whereas with Avoidant Attachment, a parent is emotionally unavailable, with Disorganized Attachment the key is inconsistent, possibly even dangerous, parenting.

This may be an abused child. This may be a child from an alcoholic home, with erratic expectations; when a parent is sober they are loving, but angry and abusive when drunk.

This may a traumatized parent that is terrified when their child has an emotional need. This may be a severely mentally ill parent Ex. unmanaged Schizophrenia.

This also can be an abusive and/or unresponsive, or even absent parent, and, as a result, the child also has/needs other important caregivers, Ex. A grandparent or foster parent that is loving and nurturing. This leads to a child feeling sometimes it is unsafe to be close to others and sometimes it is safe, confusing.

What if your parent is both your best friend, always there for you to advocate for and defend you in a “cruel world” but also your harshest abuser? Has no boundaries? We still have to learn to be close to that parent to survive. Remember that fundamentally Attachment is a script developed to survive in the reality you are born into, not an ideal one.

Disorganized Attachment includes an intense need to be close to others and then become fearful of them once the bond has been formed and, in turn, disconnect. In Disorganized Attachment there will be re-engagement, dis-engagement, vacillating as a child, and later adult, re-engaging when it is deemed safe to do so. This on/off again connection is key to this Attachment Style.

Disorganized Attachment - What It Looks Like In An Adult, Intimate Relationship

In an adult relationship Disorganized Attachment is the push-pull partner. This needs to be differentiated from the Avoidant partner than shows up and bonds in the beginning and then emotionally shuts down or physically disappears Ex. Travels for work all the time.

The Disorganized partner shows up and emotionally shuts down inconsistently. You don’t know what to expect and are not sure that they will be there for you when needed the most.  

This push-pull dynamic is directly related to Attachment fears. They crave connection/closeness with some intensity. Once closeness is established, fear is triggered and disconnection regulates this fear. Once grounded again, the desire to connect intensely surfaces, and they re-engage, creating the cycle.

This is confusing to be at the receiving end of as they can say the right things, be there for you, holding emotional space, seem to get the impact of their disconnection on you…and still withdraw after that emotionally intense conversation. When you are convinced they are gone…they come back and show up beautifully. Huh? They may seem to feel “all over the place”.

Disorganized Attachment is especially hard for those with an Anxious Attachment Style as these people fear abandonment and will feel continuously emotionally abandoned in a relationship with an unhealed Disorganized Attacher.

Disorganized Attachment - Flexibility

The best way to begin the healing process of a Disorganized Attachment Style is with a Securely Attached person. They will be less likely to personalize the disconnection need, and more trusting of the re-engagement that follows, and related cycling.

All Attachment Styles have the capacity to create a Secure Attachment under the right conditions or with someone with a compatible Attachment Style. Ex. An Avoidantly Attached person will tolerate the disconnection quite well,  it can even aid their regulation needs in intimacy.

However, identifying and communicating needs is so important here. Especially if a personal trauma history is something a Disorganized person grapples with (more likely with this Attachment Style) , possibly including Post Traumatic Stress (PTSD) symptoms. Trauma Page Trauma Blogs.

Disorganized Attachment - Healing and Treatment Considerations

The good news here is a person with Disorganized Attachment is not Dismissive of the connections in their life, as Avoidantly Attached people often are. Avoidant Blog

A Disorganized Attached person knows they need people and value them.

However, there may be a lot of wounds in which they feel they have lost people and minimize the pain they cause with their patterns. Once it is possible to see this impact, and the pain caused to others, healing can begin.

This often must include healing the pain of abandonment and abuse, the sources that led to complicated core beliefs and embodied fears of both craving and fearing intimacy with others.

Stay tuned for Secure Attachment in the next Blog in this 4-Part Series. 

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Lisa S.