Photo by Javier Esteban
Disorganized and Fearful Attachment
This style is most commonly understood to come from parental abuse or neglect, and is estimated to show up in 5% of the US population.
The worst part about harsh parents is the confusion it creates within a child. One part of you wants to be close to your parents, because biologically, you are designed to go to them for safety and security. Another part of you knows there’s a risk of criticism, judgement or even violence. This is the plight of children who are abused — whether emotionally or physically. They find themselves caught between two strong drives: a longing for closeness that comes into direct conflict with the drive to stay safe. You can stay far and feel lonely, or you can get close and take the risk of being judged and criticized or hurt. Like a cold front meeting a warm front, we find ourselves in a tornado of conflicting emotions. There’s no true solution, just a choice between two bad options.
Imagine being a child who desperately wants closeness, but you know that getting close to mom includes the risk of harsh criticism or rejection. Sometimes you can get the affection you need, but many times you get just the opposite. Some days, you can talk with mom and everything is okay. But on the wrong day, mom will explode with vitriol, using whatever complaint is handy to give license for her internal rage to lash out at you: Why isn’t your room clean, you’re such a slob! Or just look at you, I told you if you kept eating that much you would get fat!
Fear Without Solution
Researchers have called this attachment style “fear without solution,” because children naturally turn to their parents during times of fear, but have no solution when the source of the fear is the parent themself.
Or imagine living with a parent who never outright says what you’ve done wrong. But when you step a toe out of line, dad ices you out, brimming with silent rage. Mom gets quiet too, and it’s like the whole world has stopped and you’re all alone in a terrifying place. In a split second, you find yourself stuck in a still-face moment for hours, and the silence says, I wish you weren’t here or worse, I wish you weren’t my child. To be clear, your dad might not be thinking those things, but the message comes across loud and clear to a child.
And how does a child get close to a parent that may be nurturing and loving one day, but drunk and violent the next? Without any need for words, the physical harm says, I despise you. Beyond the physical pain lies the excruciating suffering of feeling unwanted and disliked by the person who is supposed to delight in you and hold you close.
Then, there are children who never get the closeness for which they yearn. No abuse, but a soul-crushing absence of attention or care or comfort. Imagine being a child in a family where everyone seems happy enough, but nobody knows you at all. No one asks what your day was like, or has the time to get to understand your world. You don’t get your parent’s attention when you need it. The absence of connection tells you, You’re nothing but an inconvenience; you’re not worthy of connection or belonging.
And all of these interactions communicate a common message: I don’t want to be close to you because there is something wrong with you. The child then is caught in a catch-22. They can either isolate themselves to feel safe yet desperately lonely, or they can try to get the closeness they desire with the risk of painful message from their parent that they are broken and repulsive.
If these dynamics seem familiar, https://www.childwelfare.gov has definitions of childhood abuse for clarification. If these parent/child dynamics were present in your home growing up, contacting a local licensed mental health provider may provide clarity and steps forward in healing.
All Rotten Inside
These experiences create a sense that there is something wrong with us, a deep sense of shame. Dr. Karyn Purvis spent her life working with children who’d experienced the worst types of disconnection that the world can offer, dedicating her work to children “from hard places,” a term she coined for those in foster care or had experienced other forms of attachment trauma. She found that children often talked about feeling completely rotten inside, a sense that there’s something at their core that’s vile and disgusting. Others psychologists have talked about the feeling that “there’s something clearly and palpably bad about self, something that deserves judgment or disgust.” Attachment textbooks are full of vivid descriptions of this terrible feeling, “a sense of deformity, degradation, or worthlessness...ugliness and undesirability,” or feeling “revolting and untouchable ...unfit to live among other human beings.” When we get the message that we are not worthy of closeness, it creates a sense that there is something deeply wrong with us at our very core.
The worst part of the shame is that it provides us continual felt evidence that there’s something broken within that drives others away. It’s a feeling within that makes us feel disgusting. We can’t get close to others until the shame is gone — until we’re fixed. Yet, many of us lost hope long ago of ever being fixed, or good enough, to actually be close with those that we love.
Because this shame is both subtle and ever-present, it’s tough to even recognize. As I work with clients to put a name to this feeling, they often tell me they didn’t think to name it because they simply knew it as normal life. Like oxygen, it’d been there as long as they could remember, such a constant fixture throughout the years that it was hardly worth mentioning. It’s become such a part of our self-concept that there are moments it’s hard to look inside and see anything but a disgusting goo. Though hard to put a finger on, it drives our relational worlds in drastic and enduring ways.
It makes intimacy incredibly difficult, because of the fear that others will see what is inside you and be disgusted. Connection feels like the risk of others finding out how terrible you are, and running away — leaving you all alone. It puts you in a position of longing for closeness, but also fearing it at the same time.
We go through life condemning ourselves for being so selfish, or self-focused, or annoying, or dishonest, or whatever it is that makes us unworthy of love. We grow into adults, believing that these aspects of our personality make us unfit for relationships. If only we could change, maybe just a little bit more, then we could get the closeness we need. After all, that's the message we've gotten from parents: there's something wrong with you, and if you could just be a little less like yourself, I would like you more. We hate the parts of ourselves that keep us from love, precisely because we want so badly to be loved.
Even when it’s not a conscious thought, our body language actually communicates that we know we are unlovable. We self-isolate through shoulder slouches, looking at the floor, avoiding eye-contact. We don’t expect closeness, and our bodies show that we believe we don’t deserve embrace. And when others do come close, we get nervous that they will see that there’s something wrong with us.
Steps Toward Healing
We are harmed through relationships, and also healed through them. Find a safe, healthy community can be a great step out of shame. But it’s important to find communities that are aware of shame and trauma – unfortunately some spaces actually perpetuate rather than relieve shame.
Internal Family Systems therapy can be helpful for a fearful attachment style.
If you experience shame in your relationship to God Original Blessing by Danielle Shroyer is immensely helpful
Dr. Curt Thompson’s book The Soul of Shame is also a great read on shame, the heart of this attachment style.
Tara Brach’s Self-Compassion meditation can be a helpful daily practice for shame.
Personally, I’ve found Gentler God by Doug Frank and In the Shelter by Pádraig Ó. Tuama have been transformative for me in regard to the ways my fearful attachment shows up with God.
The Therapist Uncensored Podcast has this episode on Disorganized Attachment.