How to Understand Your Disorganized Attachment Style

Transcript

This is episode seven of In The Messy Podcast. I'm your host Janette, a registered psychotherapist in Ontario, Canada. And this podcast exists because I envision a future where every relationship, no matter how messy it may seem, has the potential to evolve into something beautiful and thriving. And if you like this podcast, I'd love it if you could hit the subscribe button and if you would like to really make my day, please leave a review.

It's one of the only ways I can interact with you all. So today I'd like to talk about a huge topic in psychology or. What I see in social media over on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and today's episode is all about how to understand disorganize attachment style, what it is, what it isn't. Common signs that you or someone else in your life might have to disorganize attachment style and how to start your healing journey. Perhaps it could help you understand a loved one, your friend, or even those you work with, whether it's your coworker or your boss, or even yourself a little bit better.

So usually therapists don't really like to talk about themselves because it should all be about our clients. But I for one, want to say that there is no shame in having a disorganized attachment style because I am one of them. And before y'all start judging me, I just wanna say that there's often a gap between pop psychology and actual attachment research, especially when it comes to disorganized attachment, which is complex, easily misunderstood, and often oversimplified online.

So let's talk about what disorganized attachment isn't. So number one, one of the lies are that you are broken or incapable of love. So no attachment style means that you're unlovable or doomed. Disorganized attachment reflects learned patterns, not inherent flaws, and they can be unlearned with support and consistency. Another lie that I see on Instagram a lot of the time is that if you have trust issues, you're disorganized, and that is not necessarily true. Anxious and avoidant styles also struggle with trust, but they each have more consistent ways of managing closeness. Disorganized attachments specifically shows incoherence and internal conflict, just not mistrust and I'll talk a little bit more about this, further along in the episode. Another lie is that disorganized people are manipulative or toxic. And this harmful myth comes from misunderstanding trauma responses. Disorganized attachment can involve reactivity or what we call emotional outbursts, but these are productive survival strategies, not intentional manipulation. So it can feel like that, but when you look. Beneath the surface, usually find an inner child that is just trying to survive all by himself or herself. And this is the only way that he or she knows how to deal with the conflict within themselves. And another lie that I see is that you can fix it with affirmations or manifesting I think a part of it is, yes. You gotta fake it until you make it and at the same time, they don't address the root causes of attachment trauma. So you can say to yourself I can do better next time. I can affirm myself. I can support my healing and my growth journey by manifesting it out into the universe. Ultimately we can do that. But if we don't deal with the inner wounds, attachment wounds, the needs, and actually address those things, the affirmations can only go so far. It's almost like a bandaid compared to what you actually need, which may be stitches or even surgery. Healing disorganized attachment usually requires nervous system regulation.

Okay. Which we'll talk about the window of tolerance, relational repair, which means, how do I get better at connecting with people? How can I repair the wounds that have happened to me in the past? Is it even possible? Should I move forward? Should I set aside time just for myself and place boundaries to help myself grow and to heal.

And oftentimes you can do this all by yourself. Other people find it very helpful to have a guide that is often trauma-informed therapy. So that's what I do in my practice.

So we talked about what disorganized attachment isn't. So what is disorganized attachment based on the research? Number one is that it is conflicted attachment behaviors. If there's one thing I want. You all to take from this is that the characteristic of disorganized attachment is a push-pull dynamic. It's a simultaneous desire for closeness and an extreme fear of it. I don't know if you've ever experienced this before, but sometimes you're just like, I wanna connect, I want to repair the friendship, the relationship that I have, but something inside of me says, stay away, don't get too close or they're gonna hurt you again. Right? And it's that push and that pull that conflict inside of you. People with disorganized attachment may approach safe people, their community, maybe even their parents, whether it's their mom, dad, grandparents, or friends or your significant other. But when they approach, they almost immediately abandon their attempt to connect, and they show no consistent strategy for getting comfort. So sometimes it's you forgot about me. Why aren't you connecting with me? You should text me all the time. Why aren't you texting me? You don't care about me, et cetera, et cetera. And then when you actually do the thing that they want you to do, they're like, why didn't you do this before? I don't need you anymore. You're being annoying. Stop it. Why are you giving me attention now, if you gave me attention before then I wouldn't be this way. And it's the push and the pull. Like you're giving them what they want, but they're actually attacking you or they're actually being very disorganized in even their communication and that is something that is characteristic of disorganized attachment style. If you are dealing with somebody that has it or you yourself have it, I am gonna talk about what to do about it in the future.

Number two is that disorganized attachment is often linked to early trauma. Research by Maine and Solomon show that disorganized attachment often arises in environments with abuse, neglect, frightening or unpredictable caregiving. So the struggle for children is that their mom and dad should be their strong base in secure tower to run to in times of anxiety and stress. But actually mom and dad is a big reason why they're so scared. So it creates an internal conflict for the kid. They realize that mommy and daddy can give some kind of comfort, but they can also hurt me a lot. It's really the push and pull dynamic. I want to approach you, but I can't because if I do, you might hurt me even more. But then sometimes you can give me what I want. You can give me the comfort and the support. So it's always conflicting inside. So an example that I typically like to give is when a little kid scrapes his knee on the playground and he ripped his pants and it's bleeding and it hurts and when he goes to his mom, instead of comforting him because he's crying, she might yell at him for ruining his pants and not being careful and how could he do this? How could not he, he make mom feel so worried, right? And he cries even more because she's not comforting him, and then she tells him to shut up because he's causing a scene on the playground. So let's look beneath the surface at the Little Boy's attachment to his mom. How has mom behaved is actually quite typical normal. I see this all the time at the playground. She's probably freaking out that her sun fell and is just trying to wrap her brain around what just happened, what she saw. And again, like moms are going through so much, their brains are going a mile a minute, so I wanna normalize it. It's normal. Sometimes parents just overreact. But on the flip side. The son feels like it's his fault that mom reacted this way. Perhaps what he learned from this interaction is that sometimes I can approach mom when she's in a good mood, but other times I should just avoid her because she's going to make me cry and feel even worse. I just want to pause here because what a confusing message it sends to the kid, because mom, from a biological standpoint, is supposed to be his safe place in his secure base. Mom is supposed to be the person he runs to when he's not feeling okay. So you're starting to see the development of a disorganized attachment style. That it's not just one instance that this could happen, but it's accumulation of multiple instances and patterns throughout a child's life through their childhood years, teenage years, young adult years. We all know that in research, the brain is not developed until around age 25. That's like the average right now. So when we think about it, and parents, I just wanna say to you, it's okay, you haven't screwed up your child, it's not the end of the world. You can always fix things.

So the third thing is that disorganized attachment is associated with dissociation and emotional dysregulation. So what that basically means is that adults may experience intense fear of abandonment, but also panic or shut down when intimacy is offered, and it can include emotional flashbacks, confusion, dissociation and a feeling of being split or fragmented in relationships.

What do I mean by dissociation? Dissociation is not necessarily a bad thing. It's something that our brain does when we experience intense emotional distress. It's a mechanism for your brain to protect yourself. For example, if somebody goes through a trauma, they may have almost like an out of body experience where they're seeing themselves outside of themselves and they don't feel anything because they're outside of their body or they're feeling really numb. They're not in the moment, right here, right now. That's just a strategy for your brain to feel okay for your brain to just be like, something bad is happening, but I don't need to emotionally engage with this, I can actually disengage with it. It's a natural process that we go through.

We dissociate all the time. Imagine driving in your car, do you remember putting on your seatbelt? Nine times out of 10, you don't remember that you actually did that, because it's so automatic. Your brain is just so focused on what is the next step. You're not in the here and in the now.

Dissociation has this really bad rap of, oh you're in an out of body experience, this is a bad thing for you, but in reality it makes sense because your brain is trying to protect yourself and trying to speed through certain brain processes. And perhaps in the future I can talk about dissociation and we can talk about how trauma is connected with dissociation and how dissociation is the way in which people can survive in the here and now.

So a couple that I saw a few years ago came to me because for some reason after they got married, the wife started to lock herself in the office anytime she was triggered. So somehow her brain had associated her husband with her dad, even though they were completely opposite. Her dad was very authoritative, he was very patriarchal. He had this traditional view of what men and women should be doing in the household versus her husband, super chill, super accommodating, very kind, very loving, her secure base. And he was actually a secure attachment for her. Her dad used to beat her when she didn't do her duty as a daughter by washing the dishes, doing laundry, mowing the lawn, the list goes on and in this particular incident, her husband came home and just stated, oh, "the house is messy" and she took it as an attack on her character because that's what her dad did to her. When dad would come home and start screaming about the house being messy. He would throw a fit and he would say, "I worked so hard to come to this mess, what is this?"

And so to protect herself, she would dissociate, she would run into her room, cry and hide until dad calmed down or on the flip side, she didn't have enough time to run up there, so she would actually go into a frenzy cleaning everything that she could see just to appease her dad.

But the reality is that her husband is not her dad, and she's married. She's living with her husband who loves her so dearly. But somehow because of the trauma, when her husband said, "oh, the house is messy", she immediately was disregulated and she started dissociating. That's why she just went on autopilot. She locked herself in a room, started beating herself and crying. She could have said, "husband, I have a lot of trauma. I'm going through a hard time. I just need you to hold me. I need you to hug me. You're my safe place." But of course, like when somebody is going through a really traumatic experience and re-experiencing and having emotional flashbacks. It's very hard. It is very hard to take yourself out of that because her brain told her that it was not safe to show vulnerability, just like how it wasn't safe with dad, and that if she showed vulnerability, then her husband would reject her.

I worked a lot with this couple and helped the wife to see that she can process and move beyond her trauma, which later on helped her to trust in those very triggering moments that her husband loves her and will never abandon her, and now they're happily married and she's focusing on what she has versus what she used to have in her past. Okay, so this was a wonderful example of how, because of disorganized attachment, the wife started to dissociate and had emotional dysregulation, but over time, through therapy, through the love of her husband, time and time again, confirming to her over and over how much he loves her, how much he cares about her, that over time she's able to hear those words and actually process the trauma when her brain found that. This is safe, now I'm in a safe environment. I can actually process things.

Now another thing that I wanna share is that disorganized attachment isn't a personality trait, and as I shared before, attachments styles aren't either good or bad. They're neutral and there's simply strategies to get what you need to feel safe and secure. Disorganized attachment is an adaptation, not a permanent label or fixed personality type. Again, disorganized attachment is an adaptation. Your brain is just an incredible thing and it adapts over time. I want you to know that if you do have disorganized attachment or somebody you know has disorganized attachment, you are not screwed. You can shift it over time with healing, with support, and new relational experiences.

I had a client once that was so worried that she could never find love because she scares everyone away with her intense disorganized attachment style. And who could blame her? After so many failed relationships, she was just starting to wonder whether anyone could love her and I want to emphasize here that a disorganized attachment is an adaptation. It's not a life sentence, and you can help your brain to shift slowly but surely, and it can change through intentional time connecting with yourself. And if you would like with a therapist and being willing to work through the trauma, cause it is hard work. Change takes time. And I wish I could just wave a wand, heal everyone's hearts that have been broken, time and time again by our caregivers. But I promise you that if you just keep on going, keep on believing in the process, work on it one step at a time, you will get there. Okay. Don't give up on yourself. Don't give up on the people around you.

Another thing is that disorganized attachment can exist alongside other attachment styles. Many adults with disorganized attachment show signs of both anxious and avoidant behaviors, and it's less clear about the categories and more about how the system breaks down under stress, and that's why I will never do a quiz of what is your attachment style? Because nine times out of 10 it's incorrect. It changes every time, different seasons, different stresses, right? Think about it like when we're dating, versus when we are engaged, versus when we are married, versus when we have a child or two, or three or four, and how we deal with in-laws and how we deal with bosses in different stages of our lives. It's all dynamic. So not one size fits all, you can't take a quiz at time one and say, I'm disorganized attachment style. And for the rest of your life you don't change. No that's, not possible because as I shared before, your brain is an adaptation device, it changes over time. You can have secure attachments style with your significant other. But an avoidant one with your boss. Different circumstances require different adaptations, and that's the beauty of human psychology. Understanding a disorganized attachment style can be deeply healing and empowering, and the style often forms early in life through inconsistent, chaotic, or even traumatic relationships with caregivers. But now, you can change that. You can be in better relationships, more secure. You have more choice and more say in what you do with your life, who you connect with. That's the beauty once again.

And so some common signs that you or someone else in your life might have a disorganized attachment style is number one, Bolded highlighted. Is that fear of abandonment or fear of engulfment at the same time. There's also fluctuating between clinginess and emotional withdrawal. Intense, unstable relationships. Difficulty making sense of your emotions or behavior. Deep self-doubt or identity confusion. Trouble feeling safe even in close relationships.

Again, don't worry whether you fit one or all of these characteristics. I 100% have experienced all of these, and yet I'm so much better compared to 10 years ago. And as I keep on working on myself, I will be better in the future. And it doesn't matter where you are on your journey. The most important part is just to take one step forward, no matter how small it seems. Healing from disorganized attachment and moving towards secure attachment is possible. And over time with intention and support, you can learn to tolerate closeness without fear, develop a coherent sense of self, feel safer in your own body, in emotions, and build secure, nourishing relationships. But you're probably asking yourself like, what, where do I start? What do I do? How do I do it, Janette? Just tell me. Give me a blueprint and I will be on my way.

The first part of it is to start building self-awareness. Learn to recognize your triggers and attachment patterns, and I love the idea of journaling. Journaling for me has been such a blessing because I can go back into 2017 or 2015 or even during COVID. What was going on inside my brain? Inside my heart, and where was I then and where am I now?

Another thing that you can try doing to build self-awareness is also to talk to a therapist, and I hope your therapist is really good to be that mirror for you so you can see yourself as you are. Your therapist, a good one, can help you track moments of conflict or anxiety in your relationships. They'll be able to look beneath the surface and to understand that vulnerability and help you grow from that and be aware of what are your triggers? What is the trauma? Where does your behavior come from, et cetera, et cetera.

The next thing is to develop emotion regulation skills. So what that means is we gotta stay within our window of tolerance, where we're feeling calm, where we're feeling like, okay, yes, I can be emotional, and I, can also be logical and reasonable and bringing those together is what we call the wise mind.

So we need to practice mindfulness, being mindful of what's going on inside. Let me just check in with myself. What am I feeling? There's also grounding exercises that you can do. You can just search them up online and there's also resources on YouTube that you can check out as well.

There's also breathing techniques to just to help you stay in the moment, stay present. You can also learn to pause before reacting emotionally. In those charged moments, and sometimes what you can do is just take a deep breath in before you even react, or you can even say to the person or even to yourself. Right now, I'm just gonna take a moment, give me a few seconds and I'll be right back with you. I'm just emotionally regulating myself.

Another thing is to start seeking safe and secure relationships. They could be romantic or platonic. Seek relationships with people who are number one, consistent, number two, patient and number three, emotionally available. Those three things are really important. We talked about ARE: accessible, responsive, and engaged. That is very important to create safe and secure attachment styles and and relationships. So allow yourself to go slow, build the trust over time, test the waters to see, can I trust this person? Are they available? Are they responsive to me? Are they engaged to me? And am I doing that for them as well? Can I be that secure person even though inside of me is going through a lot?

Okay, the next one is to work with a therapist, and I was just gonna plug it in there. The reason why you're listening to this podcast is because you're listening to a therapist.

Trauma-informed therapy is something that you can't necessarily do on yourself. You need a guide. You need somebody that has that experience and has that professional training that is covered under a board. So in Ontario there is the CRPO, the College of Registered Psychotherapist of Ontario, to make sure that us as psychotherapists, we're doing our due diligence to be as awesome therapists as we can be, so that you actually see change in your life.

And some trauma-informed therapy models such as EMDR: eye Movement desensitization and reprocessing. Fantastic for trauma therapy. Internal family systems: so IFS talks about, what are the different parts of you? So there's that inner child, maybe there's a inner critic, and. How can we integrate all of these different parts? Maybe there's the perfectionistic part, the procrastination part, all of these parts that are trying to control you as a person, and how can we understand and come alongside all of these parts that have helped you to survive the traumas that you've gone through. There's also EFT, emotionally focused therapy that focuses on the emotions first and foremost, and when we can calm your emotions down, when we can validate, when we can go deeper to the traumas, then we can engage with the parts of us that long to be loved, long to be held, long to feel safe and secure. So that's a little bit of EFT. And then there's also somatic experiencing. And what somatic experiencing is sometimes when we go through trauma, our brains are disconnected from our bodies. So somatic work or bodily work helps our brains to connect back to our body. That could just increase our awareness of what's going on inside and help us do even more of that inner healing work. So again, E-M-D-R, I-F-S, E-F-T, Somatic experience on top of other types of therapy modalities can help reprocess painful early experiences. Again, not just in the past, but also in the present, because sometimes our daily life can be traumatic as we go through chronic stress, chronic anxiety, chronic depression. That is also considered too be very painful experience for everybody. So attachment based therapies help build internal security.

So if you want a good combination of all of that. I recommend you find somebody that has EFT experience, IFS, and EMDR. That's like for myself, I find that's the perfect sweet spot to work on the attachment wounds and also reprocess the trauma that comes from it.

And the last thing is to practice self-compassion. A disorganized attachment is not your fault, and I just wanna repeat this. A disorganized attachment is not your fault. As a child, you didn't have the skills, you didn't have the tools to protect yourself, and this is the only way that your brain knew how to do what it needed to do to survive. It's an adaptation to an unsafe environment, so just letting you know if it's for yourself or for others. In their lives, in your life, it's not your fault. What is in your control is what you do about it. Whether you decide to heal from it or not. So I want you even today to speak to yourself kindly, validate your emotional experiences, get the help that you need. Find safe and secure relationships that are, ARE accessible, responsive, and engaged, develop emotional regulation skills, grounding, mindfulness, breathing techniques, everything that you need. Build self-awareness. And then you just go from there. There's so much about healing your attach ment style that I love to talk to you about, but this is gonna be hours and hours.

So even though I wanna keep going, I feel like this is enough information for you for now. Just to recap, we talked all about disorganized attachment style, what it is, what it isn't, and also how to start the healing journey. And on another note, I have some very exciting news for you. I'm opening up my waitlist this September, 2025.

So. If you're in the province of Ontario and would love to work with me, you can put yourself on the waitlist at Stan Do Store slash Janette Chu, and I'll spell that out. Stan, STAN store, S-T-O-R-E forward-slash, and then my name, so Janette, J-A-N-E-T-T-E C-H-U. And everything will be in the show notes if you miss it.

Again, I wanna thank you all for your time and your interest in attachment science, and it always brings me so much joy to hear how this podcast has helped you in your journey. And until next time, find beauty in the messy.

As a disclaimer in the Messy Podcast aims to provide general information only and does not serve as a substitute for psychotherapy, counseling, or any other professional healthcare service. It is our personal mission to offer relationship insights so that you can have a thriving romantic relationship of your dreams.