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Disorganised Attachment in Everyday Life
I Feel Confused
I think a common misconception about attachment styles is that they are ways of relating romantically to others and they stop at that.
They do not.
Attachment styles are habits in all areas of life — not just our relationships.
For example, I can imagine if you are someone who relates strongly to the anxious attachment style (where you may require an additional level of security and/or reassurance from your romantic partner to feel safe), it won’t only show up in your romantic relationships.
It might show up in work, too, where you might mistrust say, an annual review that says you’re doing great — a subtle voice in the back of your head arguing otherwise.
We have a relationship to everything in life: from work, to hobbies, to food/drink, and to others. So it’s good to keep this in mind when looking into attachment theory as it may impact your non-romantic relationships, too.
Which is why this week I have felt extremely disorganised, as per my disorganised tendancies.
I wanted to talk about this today to check in with some of you who relate to the disorganised attachment style to see if you sometimes feel this way too. I’ll also share my thoughts on why this is, and how to regain control with a tendency to be anything but controlled.
A Quick Recap of Disorganised Attachment
To summarise disorganised attachment I could use one word: confusion.
Whilst the secure, avoidant and anxious/ambilent attachment styles have a more consistent and expected way or relating in relationships (hence why they’re categorised as ‘organised’ attachment styles), the disorganised attachment style is inconsistent; unpredictable.
We have a hard time follow one mode of thinking, and as such, following one mode of behaving. This is because in romantic relationships we typically have opposing fears: a fear and mistrust of others , and a fear/mistrust of ourselves.
This manifests in relationships as a sometimes violent pendulum (in unhealed cases), where anxiety pushes us close to people, leading to approach-like behaviours…
