A Guide to Overcoming the Challenges of Disorganized Attachment
Disorganized attachment style, also known as fearful-avoidant attachment, is one of the four main attachment styles that describe how people relate to others in relationships, particularly intimate or close ones. This attachment style often develops in childhood due to inconsistent, unpredictable, or traumatic caregiving experiences (trauma, neglect, or abuse), where the child’s primary caregiver is both a source of comfort and a source of fear or distress.
Learning to heal from a disorganized attachment style isn’t about fixing yourself per se, but more about understanding how and why you react the way you do, and changing how you respond so you can become more secure in yourself and in your relationship.
7 Characteristics of Disorganized Attachment Style
Fear of Closeness and Rejection: You often have a strong desire for closeness and connection but simultaneously fear intimacy and rejection, leading to push-pull dynamics in relationships. This can lead to confusion in relationships, as you send mixed messages.
Inconsistent Behavior: Your behavior in relationships can be erratic and confusing; they may act needy or clingy one moment and distant or aloof the next. This inconsistency stems from unresolved fears and conflicting emotions.
High Anxiety and Avoidance: You have high levels of anxiety and avoidance. You fear being hurt by others, but also fear being alone.
Difficulty Trusting Others: You have trust issues as you often struggle to feel safe and secure in relationships due to their early experiences with unreliable caregivers.
Emotional Dysregulation: You may have intense emotional responses and struggle to regulate your emotions, often feeling overwhelmed by your own feelings. This can feel like an emotional roller coaster. Your intense emotions make you feel that you are ‘all over the place’ unable to sort out your emotions and thoughts.
Negative Self-View: You may have a poor self-image and may believe you are unworthy of love, stemming from internalized messages received during childhood.
Trauma Responses: This attachment style is strongly linked with a history of trauma, such as abuse, neglect, or witnessing frightening behavior from your parents/caregivers.
Impact on Relationships:
Challenges with Stability: Relationships may feel chaotic or unstable due to the inner conflict between wanting closeness and fearing it. You may flip back and forth from loving your partner to hating them and find that you self-sabotage the relationship. You push for closeness because deep down you want to feel loved and safe.
Frequent Misunderstandings: You may misinterpret your partners’ intentions, leading to frequent misunderstandings and conflicts. During these conflicts, you might see your relationship as threatening.
Patterns of Self-Sabotage: Fear of vulnerability often leads to self-sabotaging behaviors, like pushing partners away when things get too close. You constantly look for signs of rejection or betrayal.
Trust issues: You struggle to believe your partner when they say they love you or support you. This often leads to mistrust in the relationship and not trusting what they are saying is true. You feel unloveable or unworthy of love, affection, and a healthy relationship.
Lack of vulnerability: You find it difficult and painful to open up and be vulnerable with your partner or create emotional intimacy.
Emotional dysregulation: You respond to emotional situations with angry outbursts or behave unpredictably when faced with an emotional situation. This often occurs when you feel over stimulated or overwhelmed with emotion. It’s like that fight, flight, or freeze response that we all have.
Healing from Disorganized Attachment:
Become aware: Self-awareness means educating yourself on your triggers and how your system is primed to react to these triggers in certain ways. Awareness also means understanding your attachment style, how it developed, and the steps you need to take to overcome it so you can become more secure not only in relationships but with yourself.
Build Trust: Learn to build trust gradually and intentionally in your relationship. This can help shift your disorganized attachment pattern to becoming more secure. Three ways to start this process:
Take the time to communicate openly with your partner about your attachment style and how it influences your feelings and behaviors. Discuss any fears of abandonment or intimacy you might have. Vulnerability can help your partner understand you better.
Set Realistic Expectations by understanding that trust building is a gradual process. Be patient both with yourself and your partner. And remember that all relationships have ups and downs and to avoid all or nothing thinking. Focus on the small positive interactions and bids for connections rather than seeking perfection.
Seek Mutual Support by encouraging your partner to share your goals for the relationship and have them express and share theirs. Learn together by reading books, blogs, and articles on creating a healthier relationship.
Encourage greater self-compassion: Practice self-compassion and recognizing that your behaviors stem from past trauma rather than inherent flaws. This can foster healing. As I always suggest, treat yourself as you would your friend. This builds a stronger muscle for self-compassion and grace towards your sufferings and trauma.
We can often provide comfort, grace, love, and compassion towards others. The key in life is to do the same for yourself. Overtime, doing this, becomes easier and provides the comfort you need to heal.
Identify triggers: Learn to become more aware of your triggers that often focus on abandonment, inner child wounds, neglect and feeling broken. Write down your triggers in your emotion journal and think about ways you calm yourself when you start to experience a trigger. Communicate these triggers to your partner so you can work together to heal.
Improve your communication skills: You can start by improving how you communicate and use “I” statements rather than ‘you’ as this puts the other person in a defense mode. By taking your time, hitting the pause button, and expressing how you feel (not necessarily in the moment) will build your confidence in your ability to express yourself. This will also allow you to take responsibility for your emotions rather than putting that on your partner (not their job).
This will also help you learn how to address conflict in the beginning before it gets out of hand and feels overly dramatic. Read my eBook on communication skills here.
Learn self-regulation strategies: Learning how to manage your emotions and responses from a long-term or lifestyle perspective. It also means being proactive and thinking about how you want to respond (not react) in different situation that trigger you.
Over time, this will allow you to feel more confident in your ability to manage your emotions and feel safe expressing your needs and desires to your partner. This will also teach you to resist repressing your emotions. When you learn not to repress your feelings, you are also learning to respond in a healthy way and not explode in an angry and dismissive tone.
Stop self sabotaging. Learn to address your fears, your nick picking, resentment, and knee jerk response to run away. Doing these things keeps you in a heightened state of distress and doesn’t heal your wounds or improve your relationship. Self-sabotaging only reinforces the negative mindset that you have about yourself.
Build healthier boundaries. It is important to learn how to create emotional space in a relationship when a conflict is starting to escalate. This might mean being proactive and making a plan that when you start to feel ‘heated’ or ‘overwhelmed’ you take a time out for a designated period of time. Then when you have cooled down, you might be in a better place to return to the conversation. This is also part of healthy relationship communication.
Challenge your inner critic: Your inner critic is the internal dialogue that can be negative and filled with self-doubt and feelings of failure.
Ask yourself, "‘What do you tell yourself?’
Give your inner critic a name to make it feel less personal.
Learn to recognize where this voice came from so you can understand its roots and minimize its impact.
Recognize that the inner critic often focuses on flaws, mistakes, or inadequacies. A more constructive approach is self-reflection where you lear to assess situations more objectively and learn from them without harsh judgment.
Learn to challenge the critic. When you hear critical thoughts, ask yourself if they are truly valid or if they come from fear or insecurity and then replace the negative statements with more compassionate and realistic ones. Fore example, instead of saying, “I always mess up” try “I made a mistake but I can learn from it. Everyone makes mistakes”.
Final Thoughts
Overcoming a disorganized attachment style is a journey that requires patience, self-compassion, and commitment. By fostering self-awareness and understanding the roots of your attachment patterns, you can begin to reshape your emotional responses and build healthier relationships not just with a partner but with yourself.
Learning how to engage in open communication, practice emotional regulation (extremely important!), and seeking support can create a safer environment for connection and trust. And as you take gradual steps toward healing, remember that your journey is yours. It’s personal and no two people will experience this the same way.
Embracing the process, celebrating your progress, and cultivating a compassionate mindset will empower you to move forward and create meaningful, secure relationships in your life. Your journey is all about you - your process towards greater self-love and compassion, personal growth and development, healing, and thriving.
Take the attachment style quiz here!
