Disorganized, What?
The frozen one. The chaotic one. The misunderstood one. And to some, the scary one. This is disorganized attachment. Founded in trauma where those that love us also scare us, disorganized attachment is the most misunderstood style. It’s the one that’s rarely claimed up front. It’s the one that’s hard to name and hard to see. It’s the one that’s rarely reflected in social media posts or books we may be reading.
Also called the “fearful-avoidant” style, disorganized attachment is born from trauma. It comes in when contact with ourselves is not allowed or not useful for survival. Think of a bunny in a field when a potential predator comes up behind it. It hears the footsteps and it knows it must freeze immediately out of self protection. It doesn’t have time to remember the sweetness of the grass it was just chewing, it must go into a frozen self protected state to escape even the potential of a predator.
Disorganized attachment is characterized by the freeze response. It is bracing for trouble. It is
a scanning for threat. The place where love and fear meet. Some characteristics of the style are as follows but not limited to:
-oscillating between shame, rage, and numbness
-disappearing from interactions without warning or seeming reason
-feeling foggy around how to proceed relationally when things become stressful
-losing contact with one’s boundaries and preferences in relationship
-being anxious and avoidant simultaneously
-pushing people away when they get too close
-feeling intimacy as threat or potential control
Freeze state puts us into a place of confusion where we lose contact with who we are and what we need. Folks who have a good chunk of the disorganized style may find themselves attracted to dangerous situations, settings, or people. If this was the style in which you grew up, your nervous system is likely set to hypervigilant settings. You may find that you feel best in chaos and try to keep the water you swim in as chaotic as possible. Even if you know it’s not what serves you.
Take a deep breath. This, is. A lot.
The good news is that the disorganized style, like the other styles is an adaptation. Something you used to survive. Something that helped you get through what you needed to and come out the other side. It is not your essential nature.
If this is you, check out our next workshop where we go deep into this style, its origins, its mechanisms, and how to develop compassion for this adaptation. Check it out here.