Fearful/Disorganized Attachment 101

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2:41And my DMs were so flooded, guys, everything was ranging from like, sorry, what? Like what even is an attachment style? Is that different from a love language? And then all the way to like, Alex, please explain in detail what the hell it means to have anxious versus avoidant attachment. So to date, we have done an entire episode on anxious attachment. We then went to avoidant attachment, which has finally led us here today. We gather here today. What is that Nicole Kidman thing? That's us right now. It is officially time to tackle fearful slash disorganized attachment. And I'm going to be honest, this is probably the hardest attachment style to tackle because it is really, really complicated.

3:35It's like a two-for-one situation, okay? And if you have fearful attachment, most people think you're either needy, aka you could fall into the anxious category, or you're really cold, aka avoidant, and so you fall into that category. But actually, you're both. If you have fearful attachment, you are high anxiety and you are also high avoidance. So you kind of got like a dual package situation going on when it comes to attachment styles. You basically crave intimacy desperately, but you are terrified of it because you believe it will eventually destroy you. So daddy gang, if you are feeling like you are stuck in this like nonstop agonizing loop in your relationships of come here, I love you.

4:33Oh my God, get the hell away from me. You're ruining my life. You probably just have fearful attachment. It's also called disorganized attachment and it can be truly the most exhausting, chaotic relationship dynamic. So let's start with how did you even get here, right? How does one have fearful attachment? In order to understand this, we have to go back to the childhood, guys. So for comparison, people with secure attachment, their parents were a safe haven to them, right? When they cried, they got comfort. But for fearful attached people, your childhood home was essentially a minefield to you.

5:21And in psychology, they say that this attachment comes from fright without solution, aka what that means is the very people who were supposed to protect you and to keep you safe, your parents or your caregivers or whoever raised you, were also the source of your fear, your chaos and your instability. And so some people's houses may have kind of fit into this like Jekyll and Mr. Hyde parent situation. What that looks like is one minute, let's say your mom or your dad was so warm and loving and even smothering you with affection, right? And then the next minute they were screaming cold or just completely absent.

6:03And you kind of never knew which version of your parent you were getting when you walked through the front door. Some people also may relate more to the overwhelmed or the scary parent. Maybe there was addiction in the house or really intense fighting. Maybe there was physical abuse. And so essentially to survive, you had to become hyper aware of your surroundings at all times. And so you kind of learn to read these like really micro expressions of your parents' faces just to know if you were safe. Another environment to grow up in could have been the role reversal. So this basically means you had to grow up way too fast.

6:46You had to essentially parent your parent. Now, some of these situations may sound a little familiar to avoidance as well. If you guys watched the avoidant attachment style episode, some of these you could be like, oh, I feel like that kind of was avoidance too. And I think the easiest way to understand the difference between avoidant and fearful childhoods is to look at basically how the parents reacted to the child's distress. So someone who has primarily avoidant attachment, as a child, they learned that their emotions are basically useless. Whereas fearful attachment is when children learn that their emotions and their caregivers are dangerous.

7:35So for fearful children, the defining element of a fearfully attached person's childhood is fear without resolution. So when a child is scared, their biological instinct is to run to their caregiver for safety right you go to your mom you go to your dad you go to your grandmother whoever raised you right but then what happens when the caregiver is the source of fear so imagine how complicated that is right the child's brain essentially is short-circuiting because they want to run towards the parent for safety but then they are like oh wait no I think I need to run away from the parent to survive and so that literally leaves you nowhere to run as a child because you're a child you don't have money you don't have any other circumstances you can't choose where you live you can't choose who your caregivers are you're stuck and so you learn from a very young age that closeness equals danger.

8:41And so someone with fearful attachment, their caregiver growing up might have been very erratic, may have been frightening, or maybe that parent was also like highly traumatized themselves from their childhood. But this can look like physical and emotional abuse, right? It can present as, you know, this parent may have severe addiction. They may have untreated mental illness. They may have highly volatile, like hot and cold parenting. And so the implicit message this child receives at such a young age is, I love you, but I might hurt you. I might scream at you and I may disappear at any moment.

9:24And also emphasis on like the I love you part is also questionable, which then obviously has this child in constant survival mode in their home, in the place that you're supposed to feel the safest. And so the child is forced into a state of just hypervigilance at all times. They cannot shut down their emotions, which again, an avoidant child, that's exactly what an avoidant child and then an adult does, right? An avoidant child, they just shut down their emotions. Fearfully attached, they can't shut down their emotions because the environment is too unpredictable and too dangerous to just ignore your emotions.

10:02so they must constantly scan. I'm looking at my parents' face. I'm looking for signs of danger. I'm reading the room. I'm listening. My parents are in the kitchen. Is the fight going to begin? Oh my God, I hear what's happening. You're just constantly in fight or flight and on guard. And so fast forward to when you are an adult, the result of this is that someone with fearful attachment, they crave love desperately because they never obviously got a stable version of it, but they view intimacy as a trap where they will inevitably get hurt or controlled or abandoned, right? And so also to clarify, an avoidant child, again, like we talked about last episode, was taught to deal with things alone.

10:55A fearful child was taught that the people who love them are inherently unsafe. Like the shutdown mechanisms can maybe look similar from the outside, but internally, it's a complete different situation going on.

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13:19You don't have to navigate life's changes alone. Sign up and get 10 % off at betterhelp.com slash daddy. That's betterhelp.com slash daddy. And this is also the part that actually breaks my heart for all of my Fearfully Attached. because when you have fearful attachment, basically your inner dialogue, it can be so brutal. It can be a really toxic place and almost creates two massive self-esteem wounds, okay? So the first one is you believe I am inherently defective and unlovable because your parents' love was conditional and chaotic and you internalized the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you.

14:08There has to be something wrong with me. You think if my own parents couldn't love me consistently, why would a partner, right? And then the second kind of core wound for your self-esteem is you believe people will always betray and abandon me because you don't trust anyone, right? Why would you? And if someone treats you well, you don't immediately think, oh my gosh, like, I really deserve this. Like, this is amazing. I'm turning things around. You think, what is their angle? Wait, wait a second. Like, what's the trick? What's the get? When is the other shoe going to drop? This can't be real.

14:48And this can lead to this horrible cycle of self-sabotage. You think you're protecting yourself by pushing people away before they can reject you. But really, you're just proving your own bad thoughts right. And so you break your own heart to save someone else the trouble. And then you sit there crying, thinking, see, I knew I was unlovable. Of course it didn't work out. And so everything that I was reading in my research and talking to friends who have experienced this, like, it's exhausting and it can be really, really lonely. And it can make you honestly feel like completely crazy, right? And so let's talk about what it's like to date as a fearfully attached person, right?

15:39So we kind of just talked about the childhood and then you have these self-esteem things going on understandably because of what your caregivers put you through. So when you have fearful attachment, the best analogy I have seen explain this kind of for your romantic life is that it feels like you are driving with one foot slammed on the gas and then the other is slamming on the brake and you're just constantly go you're like wait no go stop goes out and you're constantly caught in this like painful tug of war between a desperate craving for intimacy let's go let's go and then this intense primal terror of it and being like wait, stop.

16:21We're getting, oh my God, no, we can't do this. We can't do this. Again, understandably, very exhausting. And so the internal conflict, let's talk about how that kind of can play out and what does that look like for someone with fearful attachment. One example is the come here kind of tactic and then the go away cycle. It's like come here, go away. And a lot of fearfuls experience this. Basically, this is like the hallmark pattern of fearful attachment. You usually start dating someone and you're so excited, right? There's so much excitement. But the moment the relationship shifts from just like casual flirting to real emotional intimacy, a literal like switch flips in your brain.

17:06And to like go back to the driving the car analogy, it's basically like you start with the gas phase, right? You're like, here we go. you feel lonely so you're craving connection and you're going to pursue someone passionately you're like oh my gosh I think I found this person and then you enter the slamming the brakes phase which is the moment the person you're seeing opens up or expresses any serious you know interest in commitment your subconscious registers that closeness as danger and so you obviously you You feel suffocated. You, you know, the hyper focus is too much. So then you start to hyper focus on their flaws or you experience, you know, almost like immediate sudden loss of feelings.

17:55That's also that can happen. And so what do you do? You press on the brake so hard and you just pull away or you ghost them. But then you after that are also susceptible to what they basically refer to as this like panic phase, which is if someone matches your energy, if you do this to someone you're seeing and they walk away too, your fear of abandonment immediately is triggered. And you suddenly flip back to like high anxiety. You're like, wait, wait, I was abandoning you. Why are you abandoning me now? And then you're chasing them and you're begging for reassurance and you're wanting them back.

18:35So if you were just like on a date and you're like, I need to, this is getting too serious and I pull away and they're like, okay. You're like, wait, wait, no, you're not going to fight for me. You're not going to like it. There's so much getting triggered in that moment. Another thing that is really prevalent when dating as a fearfully attached person is because your childhood environment was unpredictable, your nervous system kind of like grew accustomed to this baseline of stress and drama and trauma. And so fast forward to adulthood, you essentially unconsciously equate that really high stress emotional roller coaster with passion, right?

19:21And you can basically mistake chaos for chemistry. Another dynamic at play is that fearful avoidance kind of possessed like this very incredible sensitive radar for shifts in their partner's mood or behavior. Because again, remember I mentioned we were talking about childhood. It's like this was a survival skill learned in childhood. Like you may have gotten so good that you knew the sound of the creaks in the floorboard for which person and you're like, oh my God, this is about to happen. or you knew the sound in your mother's voice when it was gonna start or the drinking or your father when it would become, like whatever it was.

20:03And most people, if they were in that room with you, would be like, literally, what are you talking about? And you're like, oh no, you didn't see that on his face. Like the lip quiver or the eye twit, like whatever it is. You are so acutely aware of all of these little things. And so then all of a sudden you get into adulthood, right? And so in a relationship, you bring that into adulthood, this can manifest as just you have this extreme hypervigilance. But unfortunately, a lot of it is now potentially misreading cues. So an example is like, I don't know, let's say your partner sounds, they're a little tired on the phone.

20:43You call them, they're a little tired. Maybe you guys are texting, they use a different emoji than normal. or maybe they need an evening to themselves because they're just like burnt out from work, whatever it is, your brain instantly jumps to the worst case scenario. Oh my God, they're falling out of love with me. Or, oh my God, they're about to dump me. It's over. And so you're constantly looking for evidence that the relationship is failing so you can protect yourself before it happens. And that is where the self-sabotage really begins because your core belief again is that everyone eventually leaves or betrays you.

21:20So you are often gonna destroy a good relationship from the inside out to try to regain that sense of control. When meanwhile, the emoji was just him being like, oh, this is like a cute new emoji that I've never noticed, let me send this. And it's like, you're misreading it sometimes, right? It's like your subconscious logic is telling you if I break up with them first, or if I cheat, or if I pick a massive fight and I make them leave me, at least I'm the one controlling the ending. They didn't get to reject the real me. They didn't get to hurt me. This isn't as dangerous if I'm in control. If I force the hand, if I make the big move, then everything's good, right?

22:07And that I think is the most heartbreaking part of this attachment style. It's like you're breaking your own heart because it feels safer to a fearful avoidant than trusting someone else with the power to break it. Again, understandably, you don't want to re-experience what your caregivers put you through. Also, something that's interesting and maybe is like a little bit of an unexpected outcome, that fearfully attached experience often, is while yes, fearful avoidance, you know, fearfully attached people will run away from healthy, secure partners in those moments. And they can be more known to stay in toxic relationships for a long time.

22:57And that is because this extreme, intense, dangerous environment you grew up in childhood has affected your self-esteem. and again you believe you are inherently defective this is not your fault this is again a product of your childhood and I think on top of that something that I was reading in my research is like the constant highs and lows of a toxic relationship do obviously match your internal blueprint of love right again not your fault this is exactly what you were shown when you were younger And so it makes it really, really difficult then to break that trauma bond essentially that you have with this toxic person, which I do want to talk a little bit more about for a second because, first of all, no one should have to suffer an abusive or toxic relationship.

23:54That is a fact. But what is so hard in this situation is that when a fearfully attached person is in a toxic relationship, they aren't just unhappy, but they are caught in this like addictive, agonizing, psychological loop that I know even if you don't have fearful attachment, that happens to people. And then there's another layer for these fearfully attached people because their childhood taught them that love is chaotic, painful, and inconsistent. So a toxic relationship, it can actually feel like home to their nervous system, right? Like it literally can trigger a chemical and in this like emotional storm inside of this person's body that is really incredibly difficult to escape because nature versus nurture.

24:50It's like, yes, we can all look back and be like, oh, I recognize I didn't like this in my childhood. But I remember I said this in a different episode. It's like sometimes we crave the familiar over what actually is good for us because familiar is from day one. You came out of the womb. You're in this world. you're experiencing it. This is what you grew up around. This is the normal for you. So anything that goes against the grain, anything in life like that is always going to be a little uncomfortable. So for fearfully attached people, going against the grain would be accepting love and experiencing healthiness and a toxic relationship.

25:23They're like, oh, I got this. Because as we know, in a toxic relationship, the partner is usually hot and cold. They shower you with affection. They're love bombing you. And then suddenly they become cruel and withholding. Right. But this is, again, so similar to what you experienced in childhood that you actually kind of know immediately how to survive. You know how to placate with like, you're like, oh, this environment, this is this is home. This I've got this. And so the result of when a toxic partner gaslights or blames or mistreats a fearfully attached person, the fearful avoidance core shame, it just instantly activates because your self-esteem is already low.

26:16So you don't think, wow, this person is treating me really terribly. You actually think, okay, if I were just better, if I was quieter, if I was more attractive or more patient, They wouldn't treat me this way. And so you kind of internalize their bad behavior as proof of your defectiveness. And you feel this deep, suffocating sense of worthlessness.

26:49And the amount of empathy I want to give to anyone listening right now who can relate to anything I am saying is endless because it's so much. This is understandably so painful. It's so complicated. And here's the catch and why I think empathy is so important for anyone. If you have friends or family members or yourself, if you are a fearfully attached person. This is the catch if you are in a toxic situation. If you stay in this toxic relationship, you feel like you are slowly losing your mind and you're losing your dignity and your sense of self, right? But if you leave, your primal fear of abandonment immediately triggers understandably this panic that is so severe and so because both options feel like basically they're going to destroy you you feel completely trapped and you feel paralyzed by this you're you feel this terrifying helplessness right if either way i'm losing and it's such a mind fuck that a toxic relationship can feel safer to your subconscious than a healthy one right In a healthy relationship, you're terrified that you will eventually ruin it or that they will discover that you are unlovable and they're going to leave you.

28:23And that, though, is so unknown. Again, the unknown of that is so scary because you've never experienced it. So that's almost more terrifying than a toxic relationship. Because in a toxic relationship in your brain, you're like, but the worst has already happened.

28:41because the relationship is already broken you kind of don't have to worry in your head about losing a perfect thing the chaos is miserable yes but it's predictable and that predictability it does give you a false sense of control and so I hope even just me describing that gives some clarity again to anyone experiencing it or anyone that has anyone in their life that is going through this because I can imagine as a friend it's really really hard when you're like I literally don't know how to help this person it's like you are battling decades and decades and decades of this person's literal internal nervous system and their upbringing working against you just be like but just go with the healthy guy just be happy like babe that is that's not even almost an option in their head because this this feels like they're finally in control for the first time in their life they understand what an abusive situation looks like and finally they could actually be in control of it and so I also think it's really important to clarify that like breaking a trauma bond, breaking a trauma bond when you have a fearful avoidant attachment style is one of the hardest things you will ever do in your life because your brain is literally wired to associate chaos with survival.

30:08So leaving feels like you are willingly just like stepping off a cliff without a parachute. And so to just get out, you can't just rely on like, I feel ready your friends can't help you make the jump and be like all right we're gonna pack all your stuff like we've got this no