Have your relationships felt chaotic and difficult to navigate? You may feel a constant push-pull of desiring close relationships while at the same time feeling terrified of them. This dynamic is at the heart of the disorganized attachment style. Attachment styles are patterns of behavior that impact how we think, feel, and behave in relationships, and are rooted in early childhood interactions with our caregivers. The disorganized attachment style is marked by feelings of confusion, anxiety, and insecurity about relationships, which can feel like a never-ending emotional roller coaster. Understanding the roots of the disorganized attachment style is the first step toward gaining understanding into these patterns and building more secure relationships with yourself and others.
What Are Attachment Styles?
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth were pioneers in the field of attachment theory and laid the groundwork for how we understand attachment. John Bowlby was one of the first attachment theorists and proposed that infants are born with an innate need to form close attachments with caregiving figures. This is an instinctual process to ensure survival of the infant. Infants and children will display attachment seeking behaviors, like crying, clinging, or following, as a way to get their physical and emotional needs met by their caregiver. Bowlby also proposed the concept of caregivers acting as a “secure base” for their child, meaning the child feels safe to explore their environment because they know they have a trusted adult figure they can return to for safety and protection.
Mary Ainsworth, through the “strange situation” experiment, discovered different attachment styles by observing the response of infants when they were placed in a novel environment with their caregiver, separated from, and then reunited with their primary caregiver. Ainsworth observed four different types of attachment styles based on these experiments: secure, anxious-ambivalent, anxious-avoidant, and disorganized. Infants characterized by a disorganized attachment style showed no clear coping strategy when separated and reunited with their caregiver. Some exhibited fear toward their caregiver while others displayed a freeze response, which are both characteristic of an anxiety response. Some also displayed an approach-avoidance response where they initially started to approach their caregiver upon return before quickly withdrawing or turning away from them. Disorganized attachment will be described in more depth in the following sections.
Disorganized Attachment in Infancy and Childhood
The following are contributors of disorganized attachment and ways this attachment pattern can manifest in infancy and childhood:
- Family turmoil: Infants and children with this attachment style often grow up in environments where they are fearful of their caregiver. This could be due to experiencing childhood abuse, neglect or maltreatment, witnessing domestic violence, or being around caregivers who display heightened states of anger, rage, or panic. Family turmoil can be complicated by parental substance abuse or unresolved trauma.
- Emotion dysregulation/acting out behavior: Infants and children with a disorganized attachment style often have caregivers who display frightening behavior towards them or others in the household (i.e., anger, rage, high anxiety or dysregulation). These children vacillate between being in a state of fight or flight and shutting down and dissociating. The fight or flight response can manifest as emotional dysregulation, aggression, or acting out. Additionally, children develop emotion regulation skills by repeated exposure to their caregiver providing a safe and supportive environment for them to experience and express emotions, which is a process called co-regulation. Children with a disorganized attachment style often do not experience co-regulation from their caregivers which may result in failure to learn how to self-regulate and self-soothe when distressed or dysregulated.
- Freeze response: After expending energy due to being in a prolonged state of fight or flight, these children then disengage, freeze, or shut down. They may appear paralyzed or frozen when a caregiver enters a room due to heightened fear. These children may also dissociate, or disconnect from themselves and their emotions, to avoid feeling the pain, hurt, or fear associated with growing up in a dangerous or chaotic environment.
- Trouble making friends: These children are constantly on high alert for threats of danger and may read friendly cues as aggressive or threatening. Additionally, with a nervous system that is constantly on high alert for danger, they miss opportunities to develop the interpersonal and social skills needed to make and maintain friendships.
- Approach-avoidant responding: Children with a disorganized attachment style display mixed signals toward others when it comes to seeking connection and closeness. They may approach their caregiver in an attempt to get their need for connection met but may appear reluctant or fearful while doing so. These children perceive their caregivers as both a source of support and a source of fear which is confusing for the child to navigate and make sense of.
- Poor self-image: The foundation of our self-image forms through the relationship we have with our caregivers early in life. The way a parent interacts with and responds to a child forms the foundation of how the child will perceive and value themself as they develop. Children with a disorganized attachment style consistently see an image of fear, anger, disapproval, or rejection reflected back at them by their caregivers. This can create a foundation of viewing themselves in a negative light.
- Resistance to trying new activities: A poor self-image can be accompanied by beliefs of incompetence or failure. These children may feel reluctant to try new skills or activities because they expect to fail. Physiologically, they feel so overcome with fear which blocks their ability to think logically or creatively to solve problems.
Disorganized Attachment in Adulthood
The following are ways disorganized attachment manifests in adulthood:
- Need for control: Adults with this attachment pattern grew up in chaotic environments where they had limited control over their situations. This can create a strong need for control in adulthood. Having control in relationships can create a felt sense of safety but can also lead to tension and strife in relationships.
- Lack of impulse control: Converse to a need for control, adults with the disorganized attachment style may exhibit too little control over their emotions and impulses. They are likely to exhibit emotional outbursts, poor impulse control, or even aggression towards others.
- Difficulty with trust and intimacy: Adults who exhibit disorganized attachment have difficulty with trust and intimacy in relationships. They have a strong desire for connection but are also terrified that something may go horribly wrong. As a relationship grows more close or intimate, these adults may experience triggers that remind them of primary caregiving figures.These triggers can show up somatically or in explained feelings of fear or anxiety that may feel confusing for these individuals.
- Sense of failure: Similar to children with this attachment style, adults experience an ongoing sense of failure at work, in relationships, or in life in general.
- Negative beliefs about self: Adults with disorganized attachment may harbor deeply held beliefs that they are undeserving or unworthy of loving relationships. This may lead them to act in ways that confirm that belief, such as by self-sabotaging their relationships.
- Chaos feels safe: Growing up in a chaotic environment can lead individuals to feel safe when in chaos and unsafe when their environment is stable or poses no threat. These adults expect chaos and are familiar with how to respond to chaos or danger. When all is calm or quiet in their environment, these adults feel unsafe and are on high alert for the next threat they feel bound to encounter. They may intentionally pick fights with their partner or provoke conflict if conflict feels predictable and familiar to them. This can make it challenging for these individuals to feel relaxed, calm, or truly safe in their relationships.
- Freeze response: Similar to children with this attachment style, the freeze response can persist into adulthood when confronted with events that feel overwhelming, distressing, and remind us of the past. This can make it especially difficult to communicate what we are thinking and feeling, which can put further strain and tension on relationships.
Healing Disorganized Attachment
The disorganized attachment pattern can feel overwhelming, confusing, and exhausting but there are ways to heal and move toward feeling more secure and safe in relationships:
- Therapy: Seeking professional support from a therapist or counselor can help in understanding and repairing attachment wounds characterized by this attachment style. The therapeutic relationship can lay the foundation for what a safe and trusting relationship looks like. Therapy can also help one build skills to recognize, understand, and process emotions, thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and memories.
- Building awareness of defensive responses: Oftentimes, our defensive responses of freezing or responding with a fight or flight response are operating at an unconscious level that we are unaware of. Adults with this attachment style may freeze when others get too close physically, while others may respond by backing away or getting into a defensive position, braced for attack. Becoming more aware of these responses is the first step to understanding them and learning what safety feels like at a physiological level.
- Building self-awareness: Building awareness of what triggers you when you feel distressed or dysregulated in relationships can help you identify the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are operating underneath the surface of an interaction. You may practice self-awareness by journaling your thoughts and feelings, reflecting on past experiences that may be at the root of attachment wounds, and engaging in meditation or mindfulness activities. Building this awareness allows you to build a deeper, more authentic relationship with yourself by naming and getting curious about your own thoughts, feelings, and ways of being.
- Emotion regulation skills: Adults with the disorganized attachment style often experience emotions intensely, feel disconnected from their emotions, or vacillate between these two states without space for feelings of calm or relaxation. Learning skills to help you regulate your emotions and tolerate distress can help you feel more in control during situations that feel overwhelming. These skills can include breathing exercises, grounding techniques, and relaxation skills.
If you resonate with the above attachment pattern and are seeking to build more connection and safety in your relationships, therapy may be beneficial for you. Our team of specialized mental health professionals at Integrated Care Clinic are equipped with the knowledge and skills to help you build insight and understanding into your attachment patterns and gain skills that will help you have more fulfilling relationships. Reach out today to start the process.
