What is disorganised attachment?

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1:03Kimberley Wilson:Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberley Wilson. I'm a counselling psychologist and this is Complex. The psychology podcast that helps you make sense of the overwhelming world of mental health information. In today's episode, I'm exploring disorganised attachment. Have you wondered why some people seem to find relationships really easy while others struggle to connect or stay connected. Well a lot of that has to do with what we call attachment styles. Now these are patterns of relating that develop in early childhood and shape how we relate to each other as adults.

1:50Kimberley Wilson:Our regular listeners will be well aware that this isn't our first rodeo with attachment styles. If you haven't already, you can scroll back through the complex feed and check out our episodes on anxious and avoidant attachment. Since those episodes, we have been inundated with emails asking for more on attachment. And so we come to disorganized attachment, which research suggests affects 10 to 20 % of us, making it the least common, but actually the style that often requires the most support. So I'm bringing back Dr. Fatim Mata Jatta, who has become Complex's attachment style expert, our guru, and will be responding to a listener's email.

2:36Kimberley Wilson:So let me be your guide from the empty dance floor of misinformation to the festival headliner of Understanding.

2:48Kimberley Wilson:Hello again, Fatim Mata. Welcome back. Hi, Kimberly. So nice to see you again. We are delighted to have you here in the studio. And we're seeing a lot of talk, not just in our inbox, but online about attachment styles. Why do you think they are having such a moment right now? I think it just comes down to love is just so important for human beings, love and connection. And it just gives us a sense of belonging in this world, which is just fundamental to who we are. And so it preoccupies, you know, a lot of our thinking and time and attachment feeds very nicely into that because it explains a lot of the dynamics that people have in their relationships romantically, but elsewhere as well.

3:35I would agree.

3:36Kimberley Wilson:And I think this is going to be another important and popular conversation.

3:45Kimberley Wilson:So I might start out by just highlighting that the majority of the population, somewhere between 50 and 70 percent, are what psychologists call securely attached. Could you give us a very quick summary of what secure attachment looks like? secure attachment is just being comfortable with oneself and independence relying on oneself but also being comfortable with connection so it's really kind of an absence of stress and worry about people and things i can trust people and i feel safe to depend on them not only because i trust them but also because i think i'll probably be okay either way okay so let's very briefly touch on avoidant and anxious styles?

4:33Kimberley Wilson:Just some quick definitions just to contextualize us. So they're strategies. So they're both ways in which we tackle this question of how do I connect with other people? And the avoidantly attached person will say, I don't need other people. They have a high sense of self on the outside anyway, and a low tolerance for sort of intimacy and vulnerability. And then for an anxiously attached person, their strategy really comes from this sense of having a low self-esteem and therefore being overly reliant on connecting with other people. And I say overly reliant in the sense of it feels very much that without that, they are not okay, they're not worthy.

5:22And so their connection seeking is very anxiety driven. and causes a lot of stress and worry.

5:32Kimberley Wilson:Okay, so we have the lay of the land and then we have the 10 to 20 % of us that are what we would call disorganized, have a disorganized attachment style. Or some people might have read that online as fearful avoidant attachment. Sometimes these terms are used interchangeably. Fatimata, how would you describe disorganized attachment? Disorganized attachment is used to describe attachment styles in children. And there's a link to having a disorganized attachment style that then in adulthood leads you to have a fearful avoidant attachment style. And both are categorized by basically looking at the strategy and seeing a lack of coherence in the strategy.

6:18So with the anxious and avoidantly attached people, there's coherence in the sense of, you know, generally it's avoidance strategies generally it's anxiety strategies there's consistency in the approach yeah whereas with disorganized fearful avoidant it means that there is no coherence you are sometimes acting avoidantly sometimes acting anxiously and there really isn't a kind of rhyme or reason to how you act beyond a severe lack of self-esteem a fear of abandonment and rejection but also a deep desire for closeness. And it's that contrast that causes difficulties because you then engage in push-pull dynamics with people and get very confused by why all your efforts are ending up causing more problems in your relationships.

7:13Thank you.

7:14Kimberley Wilson:That's really clear. And you've described the way that this disorganized attachment is identified in early childhood. and a lot of that comes out of Mary Ainsworth's work on a now very famous study first carried out in the 1960s called The Strange Situation. Could you give us an outline of what The Strange Situation was? Yeah so The Strange Situation is a really well-known psychological study and what they did was they had mothers and their babies playing in a room and then they asked the mother to leave the room and they looked at the behavior of the child in response to the mother leaving and also in response to her returning more importantly so they found that children who are securely attached when the mother comes back they notice her absence there's a bit of a distress but when she comes back there the child is able to be soothed and very quickly reconnect with the mother.

8:19For avoidantly attached children the child struggles to reconnect almost as if the child is sort of dismissive of the mother on the return. Almost indifferent to her coming back. Almost indifferent yeah and then for anxiously attached children the mother comes back and the child responds with further distress and it takes a long time to soothe them and get them back to baseline and this is for children that have really struggled to rely on their attachment figure and then even more extreme version of that is the disorganized attachment style in children and for that it's again just the lack of consistent strategy so the child is wanting to go towards the mother but then pulling back mother is coming the child's still crying sometimes they'll go to her and then they'll freeze yeah so it's just really looking at a child who doesn't have a strategy that seems to be working for managing that connection need and what they do when that connection is broken and they're in distress and that is you know what came out of the strain situation.

9:30Thank you.

9:32Kimberley Wilson:And in case there's any confusion out there, there is a difference between being a disorganized person and having a disorganized attachment style, right? Oh yeah, definitely. They're totally different things. You can be a disorganized person and be securely attached. It's really about not how you like plan your days or organize your room or organize your diary which speaks to whether you're disorganized or not it's much more about how you relate to yourself and to others and the disorganization is in the strategies you use to manage that

10:16Kimberley Wilson:and this is where I like to bring in a listener's experience and we have had so many emails about attachment style. So thank you everyone for all of your stories. We absolutely love receiving them. So Fatimata, I've got a listener's request from someone I'm going to call Robin. She says, Hello Kimberley, your podcast is great. Having listened to both the episodes on avoidant and anxious attachment, please could you and Dr. Jutta do an episode on disorganized attachment? There seems to be so much variation in the descriptions of this and its presentations. and it'd be really helpful if it could be explored in an episode similar to the other attachment styles.

10:58Kimberley Wilson:So Robin, your wish is our command and this is such a layered and complex attachment style that there is a lot for us to talk about. So let's get into the complexity.

11:15Kimberley Wilson:so going back to mary ainsworth's strange situation protocol of the back of that experiment ainsworth created this classification system but the children who we would now classify as disorganized were originally labeled as unclassifiable do you have any sense of why that was it's really a sense of the attachment figure is either frightening or frightened. But I think both of those are frightening to the child. So again, it's just the outcome. And for any parents out there, you know, it's difficult talking about this sometimes. But yeah, it's really not about the intention that the parent has, but it's just what's the outcome of how they are behaving towards the child.

12:03And is that causing the child fear and distress. So very high rates, for example, in children who've been sexually abused, because of course, that really speaks to that sense of the world is a safe place suddenly gets turned upside down. And it's that question mark that people with disorganized attachment have, you know, like, how can I trust when the world and the people around me are so unsafe?

12:34Kimberley Wilson:That combined with this innate drive to connect, creating this impossible kind of double bind conflict where moving towards is what is natural and that's the impulse, but it's terrifying. But also being far away, being separate feels utterly obliterating as well at the same time. So finding that safe distance feels impossible. Yeah. And I think that kind of makes me think about another thing about the symptomology. It's really this sort of very black and white thinking or black and white way of experience in the world, whether it's with people or, you know, about yourself. Either that person is like the one and everything is amazing to suddenly they are like the worst thing that could happen to me and need to get away straight away.

13:25Kimberley Wilson:so that shift between idealization and denigration it's the fall from grace of the other person yeah absolutely i think it's really important that you make that distinction that it's not always the intention or any kind of deliberate cruelty or malice on the part of the parent because there is some work showing for example that where there has been child loss in the family so a parent has previously lost a child, the subsequent child is more likely then to have a disorganized attachment because the parent's trauma has impacted and interfered with the way that they've started to relate to the subsequent children.

14:07Yeah, absolutely. And this is why I often speak to people about generational trauma. It's so important to recognize that you were once a child who was relying on your caregivers and they may or may not have given you what you needed and you know you've got to process that but equally your caregivers were once children that were reliant on caregivers and so on and so forth you know one of the big risk factors for example is if a child has spent time in a neonatal care union this is why psychologists are interested in the first two years of your life as well what was your birth like what was your birth like for your parents because all of that has an impact on how those first few months, those first few years were for you and your family.

14:57Kimberley Wilson:Yes, and if we're thinking about those relationships, because these attachment styles are identified in childhood, but what would an adult relationship that's been affected by a disorganized attachment style look like? quite a bit of confusion again very much that pull push pull dynamic so it might show up in the sense of lots of reassurance seeking on the one hand but then not being able to accept any of the reassurance that's coming it might be like do you really care about me do you love me do you even like me the person's like yeah of course I do I took you out on a date last week and you're like well that was just for two hours so it's a way of like not being able to trust the connection that you're getting there's also quite a bit of anger so with fearful avoidance in attachment people will struggle with that sense of like feeling let down often and so a chronic sense of disappointment.

16:08Yeah, very kind of unforgiving because that underlying belief is I'm going to be rejected and abandoned anyway. And so you're looking for information that confirms that and letting go of information that doesn't. One minute the person is amazing and love of your life. The next minute you've broken up with them because actually, you know, I saw something and it's not going to work. There is like a real difficulty during breakups. So again, you might have instigated the breakup, but then you regret it very quickly and are then quickly wanting to try to repair and get the person back. And this might have happened a number of times in your relationship.

16:51And it's that, you know, oh, here I am again. I knew I couldn't be loved. I knew I would be left. I knew I was too much for people. But yeah, the way you're approaching it is causing some of those responses, as well as maybe the type of people that you're choosing as your partners as well.

17:12Kimberley Wilson:It sounds as if the ground is always moving underneath this person, you know, in their relationships, in their lives, this kind of sense of instability and unsteadiness and not being able to have an anchor point either internally or in their relationships to hold on to and I think this is part of the reason that we also see quite a strong overlap between this kind of attachment style and mental health conditions and personality disorder certainly my experience in particular is about this this impossibility of finding steady ground yeah absolutely there is a huge overlap and certainly for people who struggle with borderline personality disorder also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder there's a lot of overlap with fearful avoidant disorganized attachment it's not exact mapping but there's a lot of overlap And it really is about these histories and how the histories kind of lead people on a pathway to particular types of development.

18:23Kimberley Wilson:So I worked in prison for a number of years and there is an over-representation of people with complex PTSD and borderline personality disorder or EUPD in prison over representation compared to the general population. and also there is a huge over-representation of people with traumatic histories in forensic settings. Yeah I work part-time in a crisis service for people who are suicidal and or in another type of crisis situation like maybe in a psychotic episode and of course most of the people we see like probably 90 % have a traumatic background and attachment difficulties in their early life.

19:10And I think it's really important to just say that that understanding is so important because otherwise it's the kind of like I am broken. This is just who I am. I was born damaged. And it's like, no, anyone who was born in your situation and went through the type of life stages that you went through, it makes sense that you've ended up here. And often people feel like it's not possible to change. The problems are so entrenched and so unstructured and so long standing and difficult that it's not possible to change this. And that's not true. It is.

19:58Kimberley Wilson:Now, usually this is a point at which I invite my expert guest to put our topic onto a scale from kind of mild to severe, or we might think about a tipping point where something goes from something that's not problematic into something that is troubling and the cause for concern. But I'm not sure that that's possible with this particular issue. I think most people can relate to being unsure like what to do what strategies to use how to get what they want from people how to connect with them and so yeah you can put that on a scale if secure attachment is I have confidence that I can be okay in a romantic relationship where I'm close to my partner and I can also be okay by myself, then, you know, the other end of the scale is I have no trust in my ability to be okay, no ability to trust in the other person.

21:02I went to a talk recently by Amir Levine, who wrote the book Attached. At the start of it, he set this question which was a really good one to kind of help you think about how you are attached and it was your partner calls and says we need to talk I'm gonna call you later what is your first an initial response like what do you sit with and is it it's gonna be fine you know I'll call them later I'm sure it's like really exciting news is it like oh my god he's gonna break up with me or she's going to break up with me and I'm just not going to call. I'm just going to leave it. Is it, oh my God, what's going on?

21:46What's going on? And I guess, yeah, the fearful avoidant person would be, I hope they're not breaking up with me. They must be breaking up with me. I'm going to break up with them because the relationship wasn't right anyway. And I think that's a nice little way to sort of think about what category you fall into.

22:05Kimberley Wilson:That's great. I think it's a kind of very neat way of contextualizing it for the listener thank you now the good news is that our attachment styles can change over our lifetime and i know i know i do sometimes say go to therapy and i also acknowledge very much that's not always accessible whether that's for kind of financial or practical or other reasons. But I think with disorganized attachment styles or fearful avoidant attachment styles in particular, I kind of really do think that the answer lies in therapy. I suppose there might be situations like if you've been very lucky and you had a mentor or a teacher in school or an attachment figure that ended up not being your parents or somebody who could step in and offer you some kind of a secure base that can help people a lot.

23:09Kimberley Wilson:Yes my supervisor when I worked in prison would always say you need to look for one good relationship and it can be a teacher it could be an aunt it could be you know someone else but that's the part that says there's this kind of hopefulness is this availability there's a template yes. There's a template which is like an internal working model that a child has for like navigating the world. And there's a part of that template that is functional that we can then use to transfer over to all these other parts. The other thing that can happen is maybe people have children and suddenly sometimes, you know, they actually force their child to become their kind of healthy attachment figure.

23:53It's not necessarily the best thing for the child because the child has been put into a position that is way above their pay grade but they can then become stable dependable reliable safety figure for this person and that's why you often do get for example things like emotionally unstable personality disorder passed down in families because a mother often it's a mother could be father as well has use their child as an attachment figure and help themselves in that way. But yeah, absolutely. I think therapy is like just a really key place to learn. And I think it's about skills, because I think this is a type of attachment style and struggle that is not going to be fixed through no amount of talking about it on its own.

24:47You also have to like put into practice skills and practice them in the room. So there might be, I don't know, I have clients who come in, maybe something's happened and they're just like suddenly screaming at me because I've let them down in some way. Of course, as a therapist that can, you know, it hits a certain way. But for this kind of work, that's really a key part of the work. Okay, you've just shouted at me. You didn't have any sense of, let's say, control over this moment, but you do have control over what's going to come next. How do we repair this and that kind of teaching a skill role-playing ahead of time getting people to like practice outside of the room really literally like learn how to speak to themselves it's really a lack of a skill in emotion regulation and so learning to emotionally regulate yourself can be done and I think it's a group of people that are really misunderstood and there's a lot of stigma around it because the way they relate to other people's causes so much friction.

25:57So we're often coming in as psychologists and saying, think about their attachment style because the way they are relating to us

26:07Kimberley Wilson:is precisely what their struggle is. They want the help, but they also don't know how to access it. They want the help, but they're also pushing us away. so you have to kind of like yeah really think a lot and takes quite a lot from professionals to help them