What Is Disorganized Attachment In Adults: Characteristics And How To Treat It

According to J. Bowly’s attachment theory, the attachment is a instinctive behavior that occurs in the newborn with respect to their mother (or primary caregiver) as a biological survival mechanism. The baby seeks emotional protection from his mother that will allow him, later, to safely venture out to explore the world. exist four types attachment:

1. secure attachment: shows separation anxiety but when the attachment figure returns he calms down.
2. Anxious-avoidant attachment: shows little anxiety in the face of separation and little interest in the return of the attachment figure.
3. Anxious-ambivalent-resistant attachment: He shows anxiety about separation but when the mother returns he shows his anger, despite wanting to be with her.
4. Disorganized-disoriented attachment: He appears confused about the separation but does not approach the attachment figure as soon as he returns. It is the type of attachment that will be analyzed in this article.

Here you can see in detail the types of attachment and their consequences.

Disorganized attachment is a insecure attachment pattern that arises as a result of a childhood experience of confusion regarding the behavior of their parents. Their behavior is unpredictable, which generates sensations of uncertainty, fear and lack of coherence and order. This type of attachment usually develops in individuals who have grown up in environments with domestic violence, where violent behaviors alternate with others of affection or fear and insecurity in the parents themselves.

Examples of disorganized attachment

So that you can identify it, below we show you some examples of disorganized attachment:

• Seeking comfort and then rejecting it: running to someone you trust for comfort after getting hurt, but when approached, rejecting help.
• Respond in a contradictory way to danger: alternating states of passivity and aggressiveness when facing stressful situations. For example, paralyzing when faced with something dangerous, or showing a violent attitude.
• Stare blankly laughing inappropriately, or appearing absent from where you are.
• Change your mood suddenly: going from being affectionate to being distant and cold for no apparent reason.

People with disorganized attachment have the following characteristics:

• Issue contradictory behaviors towards caregivers: approach, seeking their care, and avoidance, out of fear.
• Little or no exploration of the environment. They have generalized the experience with their parents so that they perceive the world as threatening
• This limitation in their experimentation of the environment along with the consequences of the traumatic experience itself hinders their cognitive development (deficits in attention, concentration and memory; poor, disorganized and redundant verbal expression; etc.).
• Low self-esteem a result of the undervaluation received from their caregivers.
• Dissociation: They lose contact with reality due to their desire and impossibility of wanting to escape.

The consequences in the life of the child, adolescent or adult in cases in which a disorganized attachment is established are quite negative, due to the emotional and psychological consequences that it causes in those affected. Specifically, the most common consequences of disorganized attachment are:

• Aggressiveness: These are people who isolate themselves socially or establish toxic relationships and remain on the defensive so, in the slightest situation of conflict, they may respond aggressively. It is a response that reflects the expression of anger contained by the traumatic experience and, at the same time, the emission of learned behavior in one’s environment as a measure of conflict resolution.
• Low self-esteem: They internalize a discourse based on that emitted by their parents (mostly negative) and on their own deductions of “worthlessness” as a way of justifying and rationalizing the mistreatment received. Here you can see the characteristics of people with low self-esteem.
• Behavior problems: They tend to manifest antisocial, aggressive and challenging behaviors as a result, as we mentioned, of learned models and contained anger.
• Depression: the result of the entire experience, and despite their apparent strength manifested through their aggressiveness, they are people with a great inner emotional void. As a result of this, they often adopt addictive behaviors as a method of “emotional anesthesia.” Here you can see tips to help a person with depression.

Regarding the treatment of disorganized attachment in adults, J. Bowly proposes in his book “A secure base”⁽¹⁾five tasks to include in the process of therapeutic work on disorganized attachment:

1. Establish a climate of trust that allows the patient to begin a secure relationship with the therapist. This relationship of trust will allow you to delve into the darkest aspects of your life to explore the reasons that cause your current life difficulties.
2. Accompany you in raising awareness how you currently create and maintain your personal relationships: what expectations you have of your behavior and of others; what behaviors it emits automatically and unconsciously (approach, avoidance, blocking, etc.); what responses it generates to the first results of the interactions (calm, fear, frustration and anger, flight,…); etc
3. Analyze the relationship with the therapist himself, which will offer valuable information about how he creates relationships with attachment figures, a result of his previous experiences in childhood.
4. Help you become aware to what extent his current thoughts, feelings and behaviors are conditioned by the relationship he had in the past with his parents and by the discourse he internalized about himself, about others and about the world from said relationship.
5. Based on the recognition of these mental schemes created from your childhood experience, look for alternatives that allow you to heal those childhood wounds and create a new reality fairer with himself and with his possibility of personal development

These are complex therapeutic processes that generate defense mechanisms to avoid facing pain and remaining, at least, in what is known, that is, the comfort zone. However, despite how hard the process may be, it is necessary to go through it if we want to eliminate the symptoms or clinical conditions that led us to the consultation (anxiety, depression, aggression, antisocial behavior, etc.).

Is about heal the wound from the root so that it stops leading to symptoms, conflicts or future illnesses. Otherwise, the wound of disorganized attachment will look for the paths it finds to continue manifesting.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is disorganized attachment in adults: characteristics and how to treat it we recommend that you enter our Clinical Psychology category.