Connor Beaton breaks down disorganized attachment: how unpredictable caregiving in childhood creates confusion about staying or leaving, craving intimacy while fearing it, and hypervigilance to small relationship shifts. Healing starts with somatic therapies and body-based practices to rebuild a felt sense of safety.
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All right, everybody, welcome back to the Mantalk show. Connor Beaton here today we're going to be talking about disorganized attachment. I'm going to tell you about how it gets formed, what actually creates that disorganized attachment, how it shows up in your life or in your partner's life or in somebody's life that you know. And then what do you do? How do you actually begin to work with and move through your disorganized attachment style? Now, admittedly, this is a challenging attachment style for a number of reasons. Just as in the title, as in the name of it, it's disorganized. The person really struggles to stay connected to any type of intimacy and relationship. There's a desire and a fear of intimacy. There is a desire for closeness, but a fear of abandonment. So the way I like to break it down is I don't know how to be in relationship. That's this sort of moniker or narrative going on inside of an individual with disorganized attachment. You could also put on the sort of title of I deeply crave intimacy in relationship, but I'm also afraid of it, and I don't know how to make it happen. So for the disorganized person, there is one real big component that is different from almost every other attachment style, whether it's avoidant fearful, avoidant anxious, etc. Which is that there is a kind of hyper vigilance towards any small relational changes, any changes within their partner, any change within the relationship itself can send that disorganized person into a bit of a spiral. I'll just give you a quick example and then we'll. We'll dive in a little bit deeper. But imagine that you're a kid and you bring a book or a toy to your parent and they smile at you, right? You're two, you're three years old. They smile at you and they take the book from you and they start reading the book and then you get off their lap and you walk away and you go grab another book and they, you bring back the book to your parent and they smack the book out of the. Out of your hand and they yell at you. And you know, you, you, you start crying and you're forced to go away and leave them. That's very much the case from a lot of disorganized attached people in their childhood. They were surrounded by inconsistencies. One moment a caregiver would be loving and kind and connected, and the next moment they'd be abusive and yelling or cold and shut down. And there would kind of be this unpredictable cycle that would play home where the child never really got any type of grounding or foundation of what to expect in relationship. The disorganized attachment can really be identified as a mix of fear and confusion. Confusion is a big, big, big player when it comes to the disorganized person. They're very confused. They're confused about how to create intimacy. They're confused about how to get their needs met. They're confused about whether or not they should stay or go. Now that's, you know, a lot of people experience that. So just know that if you are thinking about, I don't know if I should stay or go in a relationship, that doesn't mean that you're disorganized, attached. But for the disorganized, attached person, this is a pattern. It's like they just deeply have this sense of, I don't know if I'm in the right relationship. I don't know if I should stay in this relationship. I don't know if I'm good enough to be in this relationship. They're confused. Sometimes disorganized, attached people are confused about why the other person would even choose to be with them. So confusion is a really big, big, big part of this. Because remember, disorganized attachment. The hallmark of it is unpredictability. I'm going to drive this home a couple times because I haven't heard enough people talk about this. Because in the wounding is the remedy, right? In the wounding is the remedy. All right, what are some of the signs? Number one is fear, fear of intimacy coupled with a very deep fear of abandonment. So this is where the disorganized person has a kind of conundrum, right? I'm afraid of intimacy. I want it. I'm afraid of it because it's been inconsistent or it's been dangerous or it's been unhealthy or abusive or traumatic. But I'm also afraid of being abandoned. And so that's where the disorganized person is constantly sort of dancing between these two sides. I don't want you to leave me, but I also don't want to get close enough to you. You to actually feel the depth of love and connection and relaxation and ease that could come from consistent connected intimacy. So the person may desire the close relationship, but simultaneously fear being hurt. And so they could, you know, as soon as you start to get close and you feel like things are going well, they pick a fight and blow things up. My good friend and Mentor, Dewey Freeman. He's been working with attachment for 40 plus years. That's what I am trained in. And it is a beautiful modality. It's very, very important to work with somebody that understands attachment and somatic therapy, some type of somatic processing, because again, a lot of that hypervigilance, a lot of the confusion that you experience, a lot of the yo, yo, push, pull stuff that happens, it is what's called pre verbal. It's not a rational process that's unfolding. It is something that is ingrained into your nervous system and your. And it's something that is in your unconscious and it's something that is somatically baked in that you need to begin to work with. So very, very important that you begin to work with somebody that knows how to help you get into the body, develop safety in the body, be able to work with your body in a way that is effective. Okay, super, super important. The next thing is rediscover safety with the self first and with the other second. So very important. A lot of disorganized, attached people, they lack a felt sense of safety in their body. So there's, there's this constant state of like, am I okay? Am I all right? And they maybe feel okay if things are fine in their relationship or fine in their external environment. But the minute that any of that changes, they lose any kind of internal sense of safety. So beginning to develop systems where you can regulate yourself, breath work, meditation.
Maybe getting into like qigong or tai chi, some forms of yoga can be very helpful for you to actually get into your physical body and begin to work on what does safety actually feel like for me? Because as I said, a lot of the things that contributed to your disorganized attachment style are less memories in your mind and more memories of the body. All right, thank you very much for tuning into this. Please don't forget to man it forward. Share this episode with somebody that you know will enjoy it. I hope you got a tremendous amount of value out of this. If I can ever do anything to support you, let me know. And there is a, an attachment guide that is in the comment section below in the, in the caption as well. And so don't forget to check that out. That might be of some service to you. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.
