Disorganized attachment is characterized by an intense pendulum swing from anxious attachment to avoidant attachment and then back again, sometimes with unprovoked anger outbursts to boot. 

Disorganized attachment patterns are difficult and painful for someone to have. Additionally, they’re emotionally taxing for your lover, family or friends to witness.

But the important thing to remember here is that your attachment patterns are not your fault.

This doesn’t mean you are free from the burden of healing from them, it just means I don’t believe you are the one at fault.

So don’t blame yourself. 

Things To Know

• Disorganized attachment is characterized by a negative view of yourself and a negative view of others.
• People with disorganized attachment struggle with deep feelings of loneliness.
• Those with disorganized attachment harbor deep shame that not only drives their anxiety-ridden actions, it then further adds to their already-existing anxiety.
• Disorganized attachment patterns are characterized by intense anxiety and anger, both of which are a response to the fear of loss.
  

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The Spectrum of Attachment Patterns: Where Does Disorganized Attachment Style Fit In?

Remember that the attachment styles are on a spectrum, rather than being a set of categories.

John Bowlby began his pioneering work on attachment theory in the 1950’s. 

It was Mary Ainsworth who later explored the theory further and performed her famous experiment “the strange situation”. 

Through this experiment, she identified three attachment styles:

1. Secure
2. Anxious-Ambivalent
3. Avoidant.

Disorganized attachment is an arm of the attachment style that has been developed more recently.

And that’s where the attachment styles got a little more confusing, because disorganized isn’t a necessary “category” of attachment. 

When it comes to understanding disorganized attachment, I want you to see it as more of a sub-category.

It’s a recently discovered classification that I believe is not entirely necessary for understanding your attachment patterns. (I know, bear with me.)

Instead, see disorganized attachment as a sub-category designed for people to relate to when they can’t personally identify with very avoidant patterns or very anxious patterns.

With disorganized attachment, mental health challenges or behavioral problems are combined with the typical behaviors of anxious or avoidant people.

This is why disorganized is also given the name “unresolved” attachment style.

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Disorganized Attachment: The “Unresolved” Attachment style

If you’ve been raised in a highly abusive, traumatic and scary environment, you might have developed severe mental health problems on top of insecure attachment, such as: 

• Dissociative disorders
• Anxiety disorders; and
• Other serious behavioural problems that cloud your ability to fully relate to avoidant or anxious attachment.

When you have such mental health problems, it’s more confusing for you and anyone who tries to help you to come up with a diagnosis, because what they see in your actions is erratic, sometimes scary, unpredictable behavior.

But your underlying attachment “style” still lies on the original spectrum. 

Simply put, you are an anxiously attached individual who is also avoidant. 

Everything you do as a human with disorganized attachment is born of anxiousness.

Thus, sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that disorganized attachment is somehow standout, or “special” in that it’s rare.

It’s not ‘special’ insofar as it’s considered an attachment style, because it is anxious and it is avoidant.

MORE: Dating An Avoidant Man: What It’s Like, What Do They Want & FAQ.

Consider this:

• It’s normal for anxiously attached individuals to become avoidant, and 
• It’s possible for people who have avoidant attachment to show anxious attachment.

How Disorganized Attachment Patterns Are Formed

Let’s rewind to before your first birthday. 

At this point in your early life, you likely spent a lot of time crying.

When I say ‘a lot’, I mean much more than you do now as an adult, obviously. 

This crying served a crucial function: to signal distress to your mom or dad and to inspire them to come and hold you, comfort you and make you feel attached to them and therefore, safe.

This is what you and I, and every other baby is programmed to do as soon as we come out of the womb.

John Bowlby called it “the attachment gene”. 

“He has a nice, strong cry”, is what my midwife said to me when my first son was born.

That is to say, a strong cry is a sign of health. Babies should cry when they need something, even if that ‘something’ is just to be close to mom.

(As a small side note, please know that if parents say their child “never, ever cries”, it’s not because they are superior parents. It’s because either they neglected their child, or the child had a health problem.)

They may have used the ‘cry it out’ method on their baby until he or she shut off their attachment needs altogether.

Convenient for the parents, but traumatic for the baby.

…That’s when you get the result of the child never crying, and seemingly becoming “an easy baby” or “easy child”.

But it’s not really an easy baby. It’s a fragile, traumatized, abandoned baby.

In fact, that easy baby will turn out to be an adult with severe issues relating to other humans, and they likely won’t even know why.

And this becomes what is known as avoidant attachment style, often confused with “confident and secure”, but really, it’s just traumatized and dissociated.

I’ll never forget what my mother’s best friend (who is likely an avoidant) said about raising her poor son:

“You should just lock babies and children away in a padded room to cry. Then parents can have peace.”

I’m not blaming her, because as they say, we’re all doing the best we know with the resources we have. But the result of such beliefs are dire.

…Now back to your first year of life.

If your caregivers responded to your cries sensitively round the clock, they would have made you feel attached and safe.

If this was your parents, you are blessed, as they would have gifted you with the best thing you can ever give a child: a ‘template’ of attachment known as secure.

This security then gave you ample inner resources to cope with adversity as you grew older.

If however, your mom and dad (or caregivers) only gave you irregular nurturing, you would have learned that you need to get very stressed very quickly, and signal that stress to your parents, in order to get nurturing as quickly as possible.

Essentially your body goes straight to a large and overwhelming stress response in an effort to recapture lost nurturing. 

…Otherwise there would be no hope of securing that nurturing and warmth. 

If this was your parents, you likely have what is known as an anxious attachment style. 

If you have an anxious attachment style, you will find that you often view yourself negatively, and others more positively in relationships.

(Also known as low self esteem, or negative view of self.)

You might often feel guilty, ashamed and believe that things are your fault.

This creates an unhealthy imbalance in your self-view in that according to yourself, you are “less than” or “unworthy”, and yet you see others as better (more worthy) than you.

But let’s say your parents responded to you inconsistently, and on top of that, they punished you for being vulnerable and needy.

This is where disorganized attachment, or fearful avoidant attachment comes in.

What you learned was that it is wrong to have (and express) your attachment needs.

In other words, you learned that it is unsafe to express a desire for intimacy and sensitivity from other humans.

And especially so if your parents hit you, shamed you, or caused physical and emotional trauma on top of that. 

Nonetheless, you are still a human and you have attachment needs. 

Just because you felt like having attachment needs was wrong, doesn’t mean you somehow ‘erased’ your human mechanism to desire intimacy.

What you did was you just suppressed them. 

Maybe you suppressed them out of fear of what your caregiver would do if you expressed a need for closeness.

But you can only suppress them for so long, and then you start to get angry.

…And many people with disorganized attachment have resorted to a huge and unprovoked anger outburst.

Unfortunately for whoever was in their line of fire at the time, it’s usually not proportional anger that’s expressed in a healthy way.

This is the unfortunate pattern of someone with disorganized attachment.

But please don’t despair if this is you. 

There is hope, and remember: it’s not your fault. No matter how big your shame and self blame is, this is not your fault.

The most heartbreaking part of having disorganized attachment patterns (and how it differs from those with primarily anxious attachment patterns) is that while anxious attachers see themselves negatively, you see yourself negatively, and others negatively.

So you have a negative view of yourself, and a negative view of other people.

This makes it extremely hard for you to truly get close to others, and to let others get close to you.

And this is why disorganized attachment patterns are so difficult to live with.

It’s because you’re constantly grappling with this negative view of others and a negative view of yourself.

In action, the internal feelings of having disorganized attachment is like putting your foot on the accelerator and the brakes at the same time. 

Nice.

If you’ve ever wondered why you get so angry, it’s because you were raised in a way that you couldn’t love or trust yourself, yet you couldn’t love or trust others either.

Why would you when you were punished for having basic human needs?

You were a helpless baby.

In the next section, we’re going to go through some typical signs and symptoms of disorganized attachment style. 

9 Signs of Disorganized Attachment Patterns

1. Erratic and unpredictable behavior in relationships.
2. A strong need for intimacy coupled with a strong fear of rejection. This leaves you feeling immobilized in relationships. 
3. Unprovoked and uncontrollable anger outbursts, sometimes towards those whom you are closest to. 
4. Emotional dysregulation. Basically, you’re completely overwhelmed by your emotions (and unable to manage them).
5. Feeling very easily triggered when interacting with other anxious or avoidant people.
6. A desire to shame yourself or other people for needing connection or intimacy, because you never felt safe to ask for it yourself.
7. An immeasurable feeling of dread.
8. You self sabotage. A lot.
9. Deep yearning for your parents that is also tinged with anxiety, anger and hatred.

Disorganized Attachment Triggers

There are many triggers for disorganized attachment, but the overarching trigger for disorganized attachment is situations that stir up the fear of loss.

And that could be a lot of situations!

As someone who has struggled primarily with anxious attachment, I can share that I moved to disorganized patterns in two specific and predictable scenarios:

#1: Interacting With New People Who Seemed Anxious (…Or confusing.)

The first major trigger was on the rare occasions I was meeting and interacting with new people who seemed either avoidant, confusing or anxious, or both.

I’d cycle to disorganized attachment if those people also showed anxiety, or even just traits that would (slightly) remind me of my abusive mother.

It’s like I responded to their anxiety with a fear that:

1. They must not “approve” of me.
2. They must already be deciding that I was unworthy of befriending; or
3. Subconsciously I guess I feared they might “end” me somehow. (Lol. So rational, I know.)

I admit that I must have also been irrationally “seeing” early signs of their rejection or disapproval of me if they happened to look pensive or unintentionally dismissing of me.

And this is another symptom of disorganized attachment: seeing signs of rejection that don’t even exist.

Simply put, what I did was I assigned emotions and intent to these people before I even got close to them. 

I read emotions into them that weren’t even there. 

Poor people. They were just doing their thing and here I am assuming they will reject me.

Thankfully I know my patterns, so I just:

• Make myself do the things that cause me anxiety (yes. You read that right.)
• And in that process, I make myself keep valuing the connection over my fears.

It’s an effort, though. A lot of effort. Especially when you first start.

You have to retrain yourself to value connection and vulnerability.

On top of that, you need to train yourself to be ok with any awkwardness and silly mistakes that you’ll inevitably make as you begin that process of connecting. 

If You Can Relate, Here’s What You Need to Know:

If you can relate to the triggers I’ve described in myself, know that this is your way of protecting yourself from the abuse you endured.

Your anxiety has taught you to protect yourself early and prematurely by reading negative intent into simple things like facial expressions.

And now for the second scenario that I noticed easily triggered me to move to disorganized…

#2: Unusually Stressful Life Events that Triggered Feelings of Abandonment

For example:

• When I was homeless.
• More recently, the stress of constant travel – since I’m moving around every 1-3 months and have no secure home yet.

These life stressors brought up a very ancient awareness that I was not only abandoned at birth, I was then quickly entrusted to the care of two broken people.

Often the huge pendulum swing from deeply anxious to avoidant was most obvious for me during times when the above triggers presented themselves, because it reminded me of how alone I was as a child.

Honestly, there’s no trigger like that which brings to the surface the inner knowing that nobody cared enough when you were a child.

…And that nobody protected you.

And this is true of all people with disorganized attachment.

If you relate to the things I’m writing here, just know that you are not alone. 

There are people who understand you, relate to you and you are not unfixable.

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What Does Disorganized Attachment Feel Like?

For the person who has disorganized attachment, it can feel like a few different things, depending on the moment:

1. It feels like a physical blockage whereby you want to reach out to “get” connection and intimacy, yet you desperately need to push everyone away, just to stay safe.
2. It feels like you’re hooked up to an ancient memory of unworthiness and shame that follows you wherever you go.
3. It feels like overwhelming stress flooding your body.
4. It feels like you’re trapped. 
5. It feels like you need help.

And for the securely attached partner (or friend) who is witnessing the behavior of someone with disorganized attachment, it feels like:

• What the hell just happened?
• It will feel toxic at times.
• It may feel like your effort towards connecting doesn’t amount to anything.
• As my team member Sarah put it so perfectly, it feels like your partner is “being driven by an invisible narrative that has nothing to do with what’s actually happening in your relationship.”

How to Fix Disorganized Attachment Style?

First and foremost, fixing disorganized attachment style requires that you make it okay to feel and grieve.

The hardest part is making that grieving process okay. 

Why? For three main reasons:

1. Because it’s too painful.
2. Because you may not consciously (want to) acknowledge the gravity of which you were neglected.
3. Because your patterns are stronger than your memories. Like many people with disorganized attachment style, you likely have repressed memories due to trauma. 

If you can acknowledge the extent of the emotional and physical neglect you experienced and let yourself feel it to the fullest, you can begin to heal.

But what can you do if you can’t even remember, or are not conscious of those traumatic events?

• Talk to a friend or someone you trust about it. Ask them to listen while you just talk through the pain.
• Then try to remember. The more you acknowledge the pain, the more you will suddenly notice fragments of memories pop up.

What Is the Hardest Part of Healing Disorganized Attachment?

The hardest part is acknowledging and surrendering to the truth that you were neglected, especially if you grew up with money or a half-decent lifestyle. 

(People probably either didn’t believe you if you spoke about it or they envied you, thus you made your pain wrong.)

But you need to make it ok. Because it’s the truth.

Don’t pretend as though it’s not there. This is akin to abandoning yourself all over again.

You have to hold yourself and feel that pain. 

Say it out loud:

“Yes, I was neglected.”

And 

“No, I wasn’t heard.”

Obviously healing disorganized attachment is not an overnight process, but the worst thing you could do is to not grieve and to give up on yourself. 

I am planning to release a course on healing from insecure attachment. 

I’m not entirely sure if people want it though, so please let me know below if this is something you would find useful.

If not, I’ll just keep all the tools and strategies for healing from insecure attachment I’ve devised to myself.

Do the quiz: Which of these 8 feminine archetypes am i?

Which Attachment Style Is Hardest to Treat?

I’ve coached and worked with many different women over the years, and the hardest to treat for myself (and my husband), are those with severely avoidant attachment patterns.

This is primarily because you can barely even treat them. The more avoidant their patterns, the more unreachable they are.

They will make you wrong and hurt you just to keep you far, far away.

And it gets worse as they grow older and become more set in their ways.

There is always that chance that with age and the losses that we all face with old age will force them into a vulnerable spot, which then gives you the chance to get through to them.

But I don’t count on it.

At least people with disorganized attachment will sometimes be able to name their own patterns and identify their desire for connection, as well as their unconscious need to sabotage it.

If you’re trying to get through to an avoidant partner yourself, CLICK Here to Learn 11 Genius ways to Get Through to Them.

On Healing Disorganized Attachment 

I hope my article has made you feel seen, understood and heard in some way. 

Just remember that you didn’t get to this place by mistake: as a baby you were at the mercy of your caregivers, and this is the result of how they went about it.

Regardless of whose fault it was, this is the result, and this is what you have to deal with. 

I know it kind of sucks to realize this. 

But please remember:

Any step towards grieving for the lost nurture is positive progress. 

Believe me, I know first-hand that it doesn’t feel that way when you’re going through it.

That’s because, remember,  you’ve swung to avoidant attachment patterns that have made you minimize the pain associated with neglect.

So you may think you’re going backwards if you grieve. But you’re not. 

If you ever need further help, my husband David and I are offering coaching once again. It won’t be available for long though – we haven’t actually offered coaching in years.

But if you’d like us to walk you through the grieving process and to gain earned secure attachment, check out our coaching option.

But regardless, I wish you all the very best in life, love and in healing your disorganized attachment patterns.  

Over To You…

Did this article give you clarity or confusion? 

Either is good. Confusion means you’re about to have a breakthrough, and clarity is great for progress.

Let me know below if you have any questions, thoughts or requests. My team and I are here to connect with you and help you.

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