Disorganized Attachment: Heal By Embracing Your Needs
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Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the podcast, thanks for joining us today. And if you've listened before, welcome back.

If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you've probably heard one of our episodes on attachment theory, and we've done dedicated episodes on secure, anxious, and avoidant attachment. Today we're going to be exploring the fourth attachment style, disorganized attachment, which is also sometimes known as fearful. This style is particularly complex. It combines elements of both anxious and avoidant, and because of this, it's really easy for people to feel like they're damned if they do, they're damned if they don't.

Closeness doesn't feel great. Distance doesn't feel great. Oh, God, what do I do? And this can make working with this style particularly difficult for people, and it can feel particularly bad to feel kind of saddled with it. But hey, no worries. There are things that people can do. And to help us explore that, I am joined as usual by clinical psychologist Dr. Rick Hansen. Dad, how are you doing today?

I'm really good and I just want to say that I feel a lot of tenderness and support and respect for people grappling with attachment issues, particularly in some ways the most challenging of the three forms of insecure attachment, disorganized attachment.

Yeah, this is hard stuff for people. This is some of the most difficult stuff that you can work with. It's also never a person's fault, definitionally. This is something that people get stuck with due to bad prior experiences by and large. Nobody pops out, or I mean, if anybody does, it's an incredibly tiny percentage of people pop out with disorganized attachment. This is something that's developed.

And I think that holding that in your mind and in your heart as you're listening to this and working with this is really important. But before we get into it, I want to give people a quick reminder. Rick does have a course that's going on right now on healing and secure attachment. It's a five-week course focused on helping people work through attachment issues and make changes in their relationships.

And knowing that he was doing that course was one of the inspirations for this episode. You can learn more at rickhansen.com slash attachment and use coupon code beingwell25 to receive a 25% off discount. So I want to start by giving just a very, very brief summary of attachment theory here. Again, if you're a long-time listener, you've probably already heard it, but hey, let's just all get on the same page to start at the top. The

The theory of attachment was originally developed by this guy John Bowlby. He was a British psychoanalyst, and he was trying to understand why kids freaked out so much when they were separated from their parents. There was a colleague of Bowlby's, Mary Ainsworth, who began to really study these infant-parent dynamics.

by looking at what happened when, I think it was 12-month-old, year-old infants were separated from their parents and then returned to them under laboratory conditions. This experiment was referred to as the Strange Situation, and it revealed that there was a lot of individual variation.

It also revealed, very importantly, that this variation seemed to be based in large part on how the parent was with the child. And kids responded in three big categories of ways. About 60% were sad when the parent left, and then when the parent came back, they were happy. They calmed down quickly. They were like, "Wow, I'm excited to see you. That's secure attachment."

About 20% were fussy before separation and extremely distressed when they were separated. That's anxious attachment. Then about 20% didn't seem particularly distressed when separated. And when the kid came back to the parent, they actually actively avoided them. That's avoidant attachment. Now for me, the simplest way that I've come to understand this is what's called a four quadrant model of attachment. Just two very simple questions. Does the person have a positive or negative view of themselves?

does the person have a positive or negative view of other people there are two answers to each of those two questions which means hey four possible combinations and those four combinations line up really nicely with the four different attachment styles people who have a positive view of both that's me thankfully thank you dad thank you mom are securely attached

People who have a positive view of others, but a negative view of themselves, like I can't trust me, but I think that you can keep me safe, that's anxious attachment. But people who have a positive view of themselves, I can rely on myself, but maybe not such a positive view of other people, those people are more avoidant.

Now, you might have noticed that I've left something out so far, and that is what we're going to be focusing on today. That fourth quadrant, disorganized attachment, are people who don't trust others and also don't really trust themselves, particularly to keep themselves safe. This makes it so that everything feels unreliable to them. So, Dad, do you want to start by offering any commentary on what I've said so far? And also, how do you just think about disorganized attachment broadly?

Yeah, a shout out to Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz who developed that four category model that you alluded to. I actually had not been aware of it until prepping for this episode with you. As a bit of a detail, as myself an avoidantly attached person in my childhood, I also had many, many deep feelings of insecurity, low self-worth, feeling unwanted, feeling

even if there was in myself a sense of wariness of the world and a withdrawal from it because I didn't feel the world was trustworthy. I thought the world had to be very carefully managed so I didn't cause any trouble. So there's some complications in that two by two matrix and so forth, but still coming down to the heart of it, it's really pretty powerful here. The second thing I would say is that

Oh, there's been a fair amount of controversy in psychology, as you know, nature versus nurture, nature and nurture, interactions, models. Is this innate? Is it conditioned? Yeah, totally. Yeah. And so there are definitely ways in which attachment styles are learned, but they're often learned in interaction with the underlying physiology and tendency. Highly introverted, highly extroverted,

born with, let's say, a very vulnerable nervous system as perhaps a premature baby. These get in the mix as well. The child comes out, they say that parents of one child believe in nurture. Oh, that's wonderful. Parents of two kids really recognize the power of nature. There are all of these variables. They're bouncing into each other. They're combining in unpredictable ways, totally. And conceptual models just in general, whenever we talk about a conceptual framework on the podcast,

These models need to draw really sharp lines between categories because that's how we test things. We put things into different boxes in order to understand them.

reality is a lot fuzzier, people. Also, as time has gone on, we've really come a long way in the openness we have around understanding attachment and attachment tendencies. We've broadened the idea of what is a primary caregiver? What does it mean to have a relationship with your primary caregiver? Can you have a different kind of attachment style with different groups of people? Turns out, yes, you can. For a long time, we just thought that you had this one attachment style. That was how you showed up in every relationship. That was it for you.

Turns out, probably not the case. So a lot of this has just a lot more kind of flexibility and fuzziness, and therefore, frankly, like a changeability to it that's actually nice to remind yourself of sometimes. Wow, so much happening here. One, I'm having a realization in real time about my own history, which I'll share, in that, as you were getting at, people form an attachment style to their peer groups.

Let's say, and you could even extend it further in terms of object relations theory and so on to categories of people. Well, I was just realizing, Forrest, wow, in real time here, I used to think that I transferred my attachment style with my parents to my peer groups.

because I was very young going through school, I was kind of quiet on the outside a lot. I was avoidantly attached. I'm beginning to really realize actually that part of the mix was that I had a sense of alienation and distance and fear with my peers, third, fourth, fifth grade onward, that I actually transferred

to my parents. Then you kind of brought back into the room and it was reinforced in some way. I could imagine how that could be the case. Totally. Totally. We're swirling with that one. So anyway, I offer that up to others. Chew it on that one for a minute. To my reflect, by transfer, as you know, we're basically applying to one situation ways of seeing and being, especially assumptions and expectations. And ways of keeping yourself safe fundamentally here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, the other thing I just want to say in passing is that my own

career, starting in college in the late 60s, early 70s, and then grad school in the 80s and onward, kind of has tracked the trajectory of attachment theory, the development of it. And in particular, when I learned about disorganized attachment, the paradigm for that were essentially children who had been taken from their parents at age

birth and dropped into really, really tough orphanage-type situations. It wasn't even in the original model. When I said 60-20-20, that adds up to 100%. There was no space for a fourth group in the original model. Yeah. But there began to be a realization that there were kids who were just

highly vulnerable in their physiology, often because they were premature or really bad stuff happened to them at a very early age. I know you're gonna talk more about complex trauma here, but I think a key piece of it is that disorganized literally means that you're not organized, you're dysregulated, profoundly dysregulated. So it's not even that you kind of oscillate from one attachment style to another,

you can't even find it. There's no stability. And that goes to one of the things we'll be talking about, how people can use relatively stable, good enough others, friends, family, partners, their own children, maybe their pet, their dog, their goldfish, need be, but also in particular, how they can stabilize in their relationship to themselves.

Okay. So we're going to be getting more and more into that, but you set it up great so far. And you gave me the occasion for a personal realization. Who knew? I love this. I love a framework where I'm more the scaffolding and you get to just vibe with stuff down. I actually think it works pretty well for us. So to bounce off of some of what you were just saying- And by the way, Forrest, this is a preview of 20, 30 years from now. Oh, I'm sure. I'm-

I'm sure. When I'm really falling apart. No, no, you'll never fall apart, Dad. I'll try not to drool on you. You're going to be whip smart at 96. You're going to be part of the nursing home Mensa club or whatever it is that's going on over there. I hope so. All right. Anyways, crossing my fingers, crossing my fingers. So back of a napkin, probably about one in 20 people ballpark, that's our current best guesstimate, have more of a fearful style.

My personal bet is that that number remains a little low actually for a whole bunch of different complicated reasons. Really? Because when I was a kid, as a word, grad school- It was considered like 1%- Like 1%, 1 in 1,000. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my guess for that is that the way that we find these numbers in part is based on very early childhood experiences and working and looking at kids who are quite young.

Well, okay. So let's say that you start relatively securely attached in life, or let's say you're insecure, but you're anxious, you're avoidant, you wouldn't be classified as having a fearful attachment style. You go through life, you end up in a relationship when you're 22 years old. Turns out that relationship is a very unhealthy relationship. It is disorganized in its character, okay? There is an inconsistency in the person that you're with,

that could go all the way up to abuse. You feel like you're constantly being ping-ponged back and forth. Maybe you're breaking up and getting back together and breaking up and getting back together. You could imagine somebody who's going through that kind of an experience. What's the lasting impact of that going forward in that person's relationships? I think that we're just kind of kidding ourselves if we say, oh, that person remains securely attached or they remain anxiously attached. No, that person had an experience. And I don't know if we're capturing that person

when we say, "Oh, we looked at a group of a bunch of eight-year-olds and this is our guess about the distribution of attachment styles." It's interesting what you're getting at. I mean, we tend to think about attachment styles being developed zero to three. And static. Yeah, totally. And I just don't know if that's the case. Evolving some layers, definitely with opportunities for healing, but really quite layered in.

But you're bringing into the, I think, a really important nuance that later in life, things can happen. Stuff happens, yeah. That can tilt you one way or another. The thing that I find useful as a frame here is to think of just the meaning of the word attachment style. It's a way of attaching.

And it's a way that works. For example, in my case, avoidant attachment style, which overlaps the so-called schizoidal style or pattern in relationships, even without a formal psychopathological diagnosis. Still, it's about optimal distance.

and never really landing into full intimacy, nor breaking away into full self-expression and individuation. So avoidantly attached people tend to orbit their primary attachment figures. Okay, that's a way of being in relationship. Distance in the service of connection.

Then we have more that anxious, insecure style, right? Kind of a clinging complaint to some extent, but it's a way of relating, staying very, very vigilant, not letting the attachment figure get out of your sight, fussing to draw their attention in, but never really being satisfied with it. It's a way to relate. And then we have secure attachment as another way to relate as well. The problem with disorganized

It's not even a way of attaching because the thing that characterizes it is that there is no stable way of attaching. Not avoiding, not anxious, not secure, there's no way at all.

for profoundly social primates like us, is really devastating and very, very scary. So I think the fearfulness, if you will, is on the heels of, it's the result of the underlying lack of any stably successful in its way mode of relating to others.

Yeah. So I want to give a couple of quick caveats about what I was saying earlier because I was playing kind of fast and loose, as you were saying, with how we think about attachment theory. So the first caveat to give is that what we often find is that people who wind up in more disorganized adult relationships or adult relationships that have that kind of chaos in them

tend to have a background where they were in a more disorganized environment growing up. It's relatively uncommon for people who had a very stable, predictable, safe household environment to land in relationships like that. It does happen. I don't want to dismiss it, but it's certainly less common. So that's kind of the first thing. The second thing is that there is a difference between being somebody who is anxious or avoidant or disorganized in their romantic relationships

but has a pretty secure attachment paradigm to say they're friends and they're parents than being somebody who is disorganized pretty much across the board or who is anxious pretty much across the board. I would describe myself as being quite anxiously oriented with other kids growing up,

But pretty secure with you guys, all the way up to very secure with you guys. That was a pretty darn secure relationship for me because I knew what a secure relationship looked like. I had a model inside of me of a kind of connection to fall back on.

which is really quite different from somebody who has never developed that kind of model inside of themselves. And so this means that somebody who grows up in a situation that's more disorganized or has early childhood experiences that aren't safe and secure in that way, things can be particularly tricky for that person because they've never had that experience of like, how could this be different? They have no model to look to to be like, okay, what's a different version of this?

So where does this come from? It comes from a lot of different places. A lot of the time, again, growing up, early childhood experiences, chaos, disorganization, a parent who was either way too involved and then totally disengaged from you or not involved at all can also, as I said, sometimes come from more traumatic adult relationships where there's sort of this oscillation inside of them.

And really what I want to pull out from this is lack of reliability because it's so inherent in disorganization as a whole. We've talked a lot on the podcast about how important consistency is for kits.

The world seems like a pretty crazy place in general, and they are totally dependent on one or two or a small number of people for their safety and security. So they really like feeling like they understand things and like they kind of know what's going on. And more often than not, disorganization comes out of environments where that was not present for that kid. Is there anything that you want to add to that, dad? Yeah. Well, as usual, you've done super prep. Everybody should listen to Forrest.

That'd lead to a strange world. We haven't happened. Okay. Just me. Be sane today. Don't do it. Take your meds. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, go ahead, Doug. Well, last time we talked, I established that you are this remarkable intersection of skepticism and optimism. We're actually going to swap the order of those two episodes just so you know, Doug. So that's actually going to be coming out next week. But I think people will like that one. We had a lot of fun recording that mailbag. Okay. Well-

Let's talk about what it feels like on the inside. Yeah. So you're right about highlighting the role of the environment, particularly the environment in which the kid grows up. It's really important to appreciate the fact that one in five kids in America nearly lives below the poverty line.

and think of notwithstanding the best efforts of their parents and other systems around them, that creates a lot of exposure to chaos and disorganization. So there's a lot of stuff that can happen in the lives of people that certainly is on the outside. Okay, that's part one. Part two is that sense of lack of reliability internally. When you are with yourself,

in the world of your own psyche, all this stuff bubbling up from the depths, the unconscious depths, primal material, old imagery, what's it called, snapshot trauma images, flashbulb traumatic images, just wow. And the sense of internally of being really fragmented. You look inside, it doesn't feel reliable inside. And I'll ask you a question, Forrest.

Which would be worse, to experience that internally you are reliable for yourself in an unreliable world, or that you are in a reliable world while being internally unreliable for yourself? Which would be worse?

Wow. It's like a Zen koan. You just hit me there with that. Now, you have to really imagine your way into it because your internal world is reliable. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's hard for me to imagine my way into an internal unreliable world. I think I would dislike that more.

would be if my own material that isn't quite psychotic, but yeah, no, that would be, that would be awful. Yeah. And that's what I want to speak to in a way with a lot of compassion and respect for, okay, if it's, if it's your internal world that is disorganized, untrustworthy, volatile, mood swings, passions, throwing mood disorders,

it's really hard. So then the question becomes what to do about it. But to me, I kind of want to bring in that element of, wow, what's it like on the inside out? And then what people do is they clutch. They clutch at a solution. Okay, all right, I'm going to follow a script, right? I'm going to act a certain way because that's what works for me with other people. But even that is hard to sustain because that externally developed script...

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I think the result of everything that you're speaking of are the big things that we think of as quote unquote symptoms of this, you know? But the basis of it is that underlying feeling of internal instability. So externally that can look at like ambivalence around connection,

or not even ambivalence, really strong feelings both ways. I don't always like the word ambivalence because it implies both feelings are pretty mild. The person might both really crave connection and be absolutely terrified of connection. There's a feeling of emotional overwhelm both in approach and in withdrawal for the person. They could have some difficulty with trusting other people, often because they had experiences of other people not being tremendously trustworthy.

or regulating emotional intimacy and closeness with others. There are often patterns in their relationships of boundary confusion, fuzzy boundaries,

One day the wall is really high, the next day the wall is non-existent, and then maybe some more general symptomology like emotional shutdown, dissociation, hard time forming more lasting bonds with other people. And the basis of all of that is exactly what you're talking about, Dad. It's this internal sense of kind of like, I don't know. I wanted to ask you about something that really stands out to me from this, also in just thinking about it.

I've really seen people come a long way with this. Elizabeth has talked really openly about having a fearful attachment style, and I've just seen how much she's been able to change in her work with it. As we were saying in the introduction, it's very noble work in part because it is quite difficult. And one of the problems with fearful attachment is that what the person needs as a kind of

"cure" in quotation marks, because there's not really like a cure here, but there are better experiences, is also what they're really afraid of. There's a kind of catch-22 to it. Behaviorally, we know how to deal with different kinds of psychological issues.

You start by building up the internal resources so the person feels a little stronger inside. You do some kind of an exposure. That exposure hopefully leads to some kind of corrective emotional experience. Then you internalize that experience, as you talk about all the time, and then you let that new experience help you change your internal model. So there's this transition from it being this kind of very conscious act of testing to a more unconscious state of being. That's what we're trying to do here, right?

We're trying to get what we didn't get in the past, and we're trying to learn from it in some kind of meaningful and useful way. But the problem is that if you tell somebody with a more fearful attachment style to do this, they're like, well, wait a second. What got me hurt was doing exactly what you're describing.

And this is extra hard for people who are more disorganized because they don't have a lot of good options for regulating closeness. Distance doesn't feel good, closeness doesn't feel good. They don't have something that they can fall back on in the relational environment to keep the relational water the right temperature for them.

So you can just sort of feel like you're kind of screwed. And I remember relatively early on in the process of this for Elizabeth, this was very much her experience. She was like, well, I guess that this is just it for me. There's nothing that I can do. Have you seen people work with what I'm describing here, this kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't feeling? And are there any things you've seen people do that can be particularly helpful with this? Absolutely. I think a way to

start is to appreciate what a person has done and is doing to get through life. And I was reflecting earlier about one of the ways that the body organizes and regulates and the nervous system is under extreme threat or extreme activity. So I think sometimes people who have this sort of disorganized quality underneath it all look for high-intensity sports,

or other kinds of situations where they really pull it together.

under certain conditions, soloing and rock climbing. By the way, I do not think that Alex Honnold has a disorganized style of attachment, just for the record here, but I'm thinking of other kinds of extreme situations or putting yourself in gambling, putting yourself in risky situations because it tends to organize you. So a person could look at what they do, drugs and alcohol, a way to numb and a way to kind of

come together in some way, what are you doing already to cope with this kind of underlying neuropsychology, I'll call it. So you can appreciate that. What's working for you? Why is it working for you? You're doing something that's working. How can you learn from that? So that would be one thing to do. And the second is to be organized with yourself, be reliable for yourself.

If you do that, as again, I see some people do from this more disorganized style, starting with a level of, we could say, moral reasoning that is relatively feral. It's not malevolent, it's not mean, it's not horrible to other people. But at the end of the day, it's like- Animal system trying to survive. Yeah. Fuck this. I'm going to live to see the sunrise. Yeah.

right? I love seeing them. As you know from my dissertation, I did it on 15-month-olds and I watched them in different situations. And the one thing you never want to see with a little child is despair.

I would rather see cold rage or that kind of feral, I am going to get through this predatory vibe than a child who's just in despair. And then you build from there in terms of how you are with other people, moving up the ladder of moral reasoning and so on. But there's a value in finding where you can be trustworthy to yourself.

in activities you do, maybe in your daily routines, perhaps in how you stand up for yourself with other people, that, hey, I need to step back here because I'm getting really triggered. You may not even want to use that therapeutic lingo. Just bottom line, oh, this was interesting. Gosh, I got to go now. You know, you take care of yourself. You were not well cared for.

But at least today, you can really care for yourself. So I'll just pause there and say that I really have seen people develop, and I think it's possible to develop, and I'll never bet against the human heart. We may still have some vulnerabilities. Okay. But on the whole, we can certainly grow and develop and have a full and rich life.

So I got to ask you about something that you said as part of that, that kind of took me by surprise there. So you were talking about recognizing ways of coping that you have currently, and your list was that the person might be relying on putting themselves in more extreme emotional situations.

They might be even, you said, gambling, drugs, all of that kind of stuff, classic coping mechanisms. So what do you mean learning from that? What does learning from that in a useful way look like? Because most people, I think, would see that list and just be like, these are bad things. Don't do them. Oh, that's interesting. I think there's certain things we develop in certain occupations.

I imagine that maybe as an attorney, you would develop a sense of threat because that's what your work would be. Or if you see a lot of people that bad things have happened to. Yeah. In law enforcement or you would see something like that. I think as a therapist, you often can sort of, how can I put it? You embrace the shadow. You embrace, you look for what's left out.

and embrace it and appreciate it and look for the sincere intentions in it, the good intentions underlying it. So it's about recognizing the function. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's right. Particularly useful function. Yeah, and how there could be some useful internal exploration around that.

Yeah, joining with the defense and in a sense, joining with the coping mechanism initially while looking for, okay, what might be some nuances of improvement here down the road? So yeah, and I think the implicit in that is how do we view individuals? Do we view them as being broken?

Or do we view them as actually doing things, maybe not so skillfully, maybe at some serious price, but doing things to make a better life for themselves and those they care about? It's a way of viewing the person. And I think very often it's important for someone who comes in to a therapist's office or who's listening to a podcast or just reflecting to really appreciate, wow, I'm

You know, the story I tell myself is mostly about the adversities I have faced, the people who've betrayed me, the opportunities I blew right by and now can never recover. You know, that tends to predominate in my story. All right. To whatever extent all that is true is true. What else is true, especially about you as a fundamentally well-intended, good-hearted person?

Yeah, even kind of noble, virtuous, heroic figure. Let's look at that part of the story, not out of woo-woo, rose-colored glasses, but out of recognizing what's true and recognizing the value of recognizing what's true with a feeling of respect.

I want to ask about a particular aspect of disorganized that can be very real for people and just create a lot of problems inside of their relationships, which is that people who have this attachment style tend to be hyper-hyper aware of what I will classify as normal disruptions of rapport inside of relationship. This is basically a very fancy way of saying that they're very sensitive. And

A little moment where somebody else is a little short, has kind of a tone with you, said something that was a little sideways, I might have that happen to me and I just kind of barely notice it, but another person could really notice it and really be affected by it.

And this can make it very tough for people to have a secure moment of connection, that kind of reparative emotional experience I was talking about earlier, because the bar for what's secure looks like to them or what feels good looks like to them is just sky high, like perfect attunement, perfect connection.

there is no perfect attunement or perfect connection even inside of the therapy room. Elizabeth sometimes talks about that she works with a lot of people who have a more disorganized attachment style clinically because she works with a lot of trauma work with people. And she just needs to be such a finely tuned instrument sometimes working with people in order for them to feel safe and connected and respected inside of the space.

And so this means that, hey, a big skill to develop over time is getting essentially the right amount of okay with these normal issues inside of relationship, right? Like okay enough that you can let some things that don't really matter slide by, but

but not so okay that you start forgiving relational abuses and inappropriate behavior and all of that. And this is sometimes known as splitting or black and white thinking, right? Another person is all good or all bad. We pendulate really strongly from one aspect to the other. Have you seen people work with this, Dad? And have you done any of this kind of work with people? And what does it look like to start to kind of develop

more capacity there, for lack of a better way of putting it. I don't even really love that language because it feels kind of critical to me, but I don't know a different way to talk about it. I'll just say two things pop out right off the top that might be a little counterintuitive. One is that what I've seen a lot is that people who are very bruised by the gears that grind, it really affects them. It's like people like you. You have bat ears. You

little sounds that I would never be bothered by. They're going to bug you. No, totally. 100%. Yeah. I don't know. I'm sensitive in that regard. Yeah. I don't know what Thomas Keller is like, what he's eating at some roadside diner, but I just kind of imagine maybe that

If the soup is cold or the hamburger is way too greasy or something, he really notices it. Well, I love that you're putting the spin on it, Dad, because you're doing a little bit of a classic humanistic move here where you're turning it into a strength to a certain extent implicitly. What I mean by that is that people who have these tendencies can be really, for example, really great therapists.

Like Dr. Heal Thyself, he researches research. Oh, like Elizabeth, who's put a shout out, fantastic therapist. So she's had to really learn about this stuff and it's turned her into this extremely finely tuned instrument with other people. So anyways, just valuing that aspect of it as you work with it so you don't become excessively self-critical I think is a great move here. That's fantastic. And because it's partly a corrective

For the tendency people have to feel embarrassed about this. They've received a lot of criticism. I love that you're so sensitive. You know, Wednesday's child is full of whoa. Oh, you're always mopey. You know, paradoxically, I find for people, it really helps for them to, again, tap into that feral, moxie, loyalty, bedrock loyalty to yourself stance of embracing your neediness. Embracing it.

The desire for people to listen to you and remember what you're saying and not have their eyes wandering all over the restaurant when you're having dinner with them.

Yes, whatever that might be, to really own the desire for really the upper bound of careful, thoughtful, empathic attunement. Yes, I want to matter enough to other people that they sustain their attention to me. I see what you're doing here, Dad, and it is extremely clever, so keep on going.

I've learned enough at this point where I could start where I see that I see the gears turn. Anyways, keep going down. This is very, very clever. Well, it's real. And, you know, because I don't think it's just a trick. I just like I love the validation in it. And like to put it away, you're really finding a way to join with the part.

Yeah, and where this works for us is you start with unreasonable. You start with the demand, the protest.

The protest, that's a key term from attachment theory developed, Margaret Muller's beautiful work. - Healthy protest, yeah, totally. - Yeah, the rapprochement phase. You just own it. Now you gotta be careful sometimes about who you say this stuff to and maybe you initially own it in the middle of your living room. You stomp up and down. Nobody's there, but you own it.

And you let it out and you feel it and you legitimize it. You validate it. Of course I want this, right? And yeah, it is turbocharged because I didn't get it. Deal with it, world. Of course it's turbocharged because I didn't get it. So you own it and you own the unreasonableness of it.

Yeah, what even is reasonable? Exactly, totally. Yeah, what does that even mean? Yeah, it's what I want, totally. So paradoxically, it actually can really help to do that part, which will organize you because you are tapping into some primal, kind of biologically rooted, innate in your DNA, you know, it's there, pulling for appropriate supplies, appropriate social supplies, you know, from the world.

So that would be one thing to do. Genius. 10 out of 10. I don't think I've ever bumped into that one or heard that one applied to this specific kind of an experience that a person is having. I've heard versions of it applied to other things. I think it's like a really clever usage of that sort of an approach. Anyways, go ahead, Dan. I just thought that was cool. Yeah. Well, when you're on the inside of this, you're going to start crying.

You start with screaming, you might end with crying, because it's so touching. You're giving voice to the despairing child inside who watched the caregiver just walk out of the room. So it's great. You become integrated through self-expression, your own expression. People who are disorganized have issues with fragmentation. They're not so integrated. Full expression of the self stabilizes the self.

It fosters integration. If you're on the receiving end of this as a therapist or you're another person, if you have your wits about you, even if the complaint is not just directed vaguely at the world or at somebody else, but the complaint is coming at you with some top spin and velocity, if you're really on your game, you just slow it down. You go, yeah, of course you would want that.

Of course you would want that. Absolutely. Long pause, maybe some cycles of that. And then where you were kind of going, now I'm getting there. Okay, okay. How can we do that together? Including, of course you want that. And I want you to have that

Including for me, and I'll just tell you pragmatically, it's easier for me to do that. And I want to do it under any condition, but it's easier for me to do it when I'm not being yelled at. Also sort of implicit in what you're talking about, there's a piece of this that's to an extent about repression and about experiencing out sometimes. Like you were saying, giving a voice to the aspect of you that was voiceless through this process.

the younger parts that had a desire that was not met. And that, to some extent, is the root of this disorganization. For most people, most of the time, these relatively early experiences of things not being allowed to come out of you or that you just didn't get from the world as a whole. And at some point, that stuff

I think most of the time does have to get kind of unearthed in order to really make big progress with this kind of stuff. I mean, not only always, maybe there are some other approaches or techniques that I'm just not as familiar with. But I think maybe because I'm a little psychodynamically oriented, I just think that's a big piece of it for most people. We'll be back to the show in just a minute, but first a word from our sponsors.

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Now, back to the show. There's kind of a paradox that the more that we are full-throated and wholehearted in what we communicate, the less we need perfect attunement from others. Yeah, great point.

It's when we're beating around the bush a little bit or kind of sort of hinting or figuring that they really ought to be picking up on these fleeting micro-expressions on our face. And then that's when we want a lot more attunement from others. We want them to come get us. That's understandable. You know, the classic runaway bunny stuff or the peekaboo games or Winnicott's beautiful line, a joy to be hidden, a disaster not to be found.

We want rescue. We want to be sought. We want them to keep coming for us. And so when our communications are more, they're harder to understand, they're more veiled. We especially want full attunement and full pursuit in the best sense of the word pursuit of us. We want them to come for us and leave no one behind. So it's interesting that if we want to help ourselves

with others who are living their own lives, dealing with their own pains and losses and sorrows and their own attachment issues, we can help them to help us by being more wholehearted and full-throated ourselves. Was there another piece of this that you had kind of cooking along already, Dad? It felt like there was another thing you wanted to talk about. Yeah. Now imagine you're in a couple, okay? You're in a relationship, let's say, and you can look at this from both sides. So

If you are on the receiving end of someone who, let's say, is more disorganized in their attachment style,

It's really important to kind of fill in the blanks of what they're trying to communicate because they themselves may not even know how they feel. I've just said, oh yeah, be full-throated and wholehearted. Well, thanks, Captain Obvious, but how do I actually do that when I don't know how I feel? And I'm terrified of even getting in touch with a piece of it. So if you're on the receiving end, being really good like scaffolding where you fill in the empty spaces,

with curiosity and inquiry and receptivity. And you want to keep, in effect, conveying, I can handle this.

I'm okay. I can handle this. Let's slow it down for a breath or three so I can kind of catch myself. But basically, I can really handle this. I'm okay with that. Because again, if you're that little infant, the world could not handle you. They could not take care of you. They could not manage you. Part of what you're doing as a kid is boundary testing effectively. You're seeing where

what happens when you do different kinds of things. And one of the roots of disorganized attachment is getting a lot of bad responses when you were doing these things. Yeah. And you're with the other person as that partner or friend or ally or therapist saying, this is not going to end our relationship.

"You're not putting our relationship at risk by doing this." Yeah, we may need to repair a few things and kind of have some mutual understandings going forward. And this is not fatal to the relationship. It won't annihilate anything. People, again, with this disorganized quality, because sometimes it can feel annihilationist on the interior, there's a fear of annihilation, including maybe a catastrophic loss of an attachment figure.

Another thing too, I think, is being in the present on both sides. Because in the present, we go on being. There's no annihilation in the present. And if you can stay in the present, then you won't be dissociating either. You'll be staying in the present and recognizing that the present is good enough. The good enough present. You know, the going on being good enough present.

And this is typically where I would ask the natural follow-up, okay, how do you do that? We've done whole episodes on dissociation and that would eat all the remaining time that we have, but I would mostly refer people back to that. We did a full episode on dissociation a year or two ago, and we've done many other episodes that talk about dissociation in terms of the like, how do you stay in the present aspect of it?

So we're being kind with and respectful and not over-therapizing, not over-assuming the people in our lives, our friends, our family, our relatives, neighbors, on the one hand. And if we ourselves are someone who has that disorganized, volatile innards, as it were, how can you help yourself? And I think one way you can help yourself is by recognizing very often

what's actually true. You know, I talk about being basically all right right now. In the present, you are okay. In the present, you're going on. And this is where I know we're coming to the end here. I'm going to do a little swerve and do something kind of, to me, amazing, which is that reality is not disorganized. Reality is unfolding.

in its very organized and typically lawful ways. And to the extent that we identify as a beleaguered, separated body-mind process, then it's really scary. But if you can, in a way, realize that the world is living through you,

in reliable ways, and you can open to that sense of being lived by many things. The air you breathe given to us by green growing things, other people, the food you're eating, that can help you to feel even though, even if you're kind of distributed, which might be a better word than disorganized, right? You're kind of distributed. It could be a kind of refuge for you. Distributed self is being lived

Successfully. Yeah, totally. By many beautiful things in which it lives interdependently. Well, I wonder if this is part of the answer of a final question I wanted to ask you while I still got you, and then I'll do a little extra on the recovery process. I know you got to go in a couple of minutes here. But is this part of the answer to how people get better at self-regulation?

Because the self-regulation aspect of it I think is a huge part of disorganized attachment for people. They just have a very difficult time regulating their internal experience. I think that what you talked about earlier about just letting it all out can actually be in the service of self-regulation ultimately because you really pop the lid, you get the feelings out, you find after you finally say the thing or you finally have the emotion or whatever it is. It actually gets a lot easier.

to be with your internal world after that. But if there's anything else you would like to add to that piece of it, the more self-regulation aspect, I would love to hear. Oh, thanks for that. Take care of your body. That's really important because there's often... You know how high ACEs score predispose people to chronic health problems, ACEs being adverse child experiences. And it's not at all uncommon that a person, for example, has some kind of chronic reactivity to fill in the blank,

Take care of your body, protein with every meal. Be careful about stuff that's dysregulating physiology. Eat well, get some exercise, have daily routines. These things really, really help protect your body. - Get a good sleep. - Sleep, right? - If you can, yeah. - Yeah, protect your body. The last thing I'll just toss in here is one of the most regulating things of all is love flowing through us. Truth. And there can be this feeling

depending on attachment experiences, particularly in disorganized attachment, that somehow we're broken, tainted, spoiled, irredeemably

destroyed. No, the innate lovingness that comes up from the well of being in your own depths is indestructible. And as it flows through you, it will organize you and kind of regulate you and focus you along the way, including as it flows out into the world.

Whether it's your cat, your neighbor, your friend, your tomato plant, flowing through you will organize you. And also, it tends to create the best odds of good treatment from others. Acts of creation in general, I think, are another great example of that. So I'm just thinking of watering the tomato plant in this example or doing something artistic or just being attached to something.

Whether it's you're attached to that tomato plant or that pet or that friend or that thing you care about out of the cause out in the world, that can become in a funny kind of way a model of a relationship and gives you a weird kind of practice sometimes showing up consistently and needing to show up even when you don't want to, regulating your emotions around it because you feel kind of bad about the thing you did. All of those pieces, it can just be a great example of it.

That's really good, Forrest. Great. Well, this is the time I got you for here, Dad. I thought this was so interesting. I'm going to stick around. So if you're listening, don't go anywhere. Rather than doing an outro for this one, I'm going to go in a little bit more to some of the things that I think can really help people with this and just some of the thoughts I've been having about it recently. But I really appreciate talking with you about this, Dad. This was a really interesting one. And that comment about just fully letting it out,

is really going to stick with me. And I think it's what people might really take from this one. I want to highlight something that popped out for me in which you made a comment that reliability in relationships can sometimes involve the pursuit of boredom. Yes. And obviously, that has to be understood in a certain way. So that's a preview, folks. Stick around for the rest of the show.

So we have bid farewell to Rick here, but there were still some things that I wanted to get in toward the end of this episode focused more on helping people work with their disorganized attachment style or otherwise develop some of the key strengths, some of the key abilities that could really help somebody who had disorganized attachment. And as we go through this, I'm probably going to reference some other things that we talked about today. So it's also going to be a bit of a recap.

There is a really close link between disorganized attachment and particularly complex PTSD, traumatic experiences in general. And this means that there's generally a lot of overlap between the recommendations that you would get for trauma work and the recommendations that you get for working with disorganized attachment. So if a lot of this sounds kind of familiar, that's probably why.

There are a number of approaches to therapy, including somatics, emotionally focused therapy, IFS, that are more relational or more trauma-informed by their nature. We had a great conversation with Dr. Bruce Perry years ago. He's been on the podcast a number of times, and he talked about how when kids are exposed to traumatic environments growing up,

their brain doesn't develop the same way that kids who are in perfectly secure environments develop.

And so approaches to therapy that are designed for somebody who has a lot of top-down cognitive control, a lot of executive function, are not necessarily going to be great for somebody who went through more traumatic experiences growing up. And it's kind of the same thing for working with disorganized attachment styles. A lot of what we were talking about today was not that kind of procedural behavioral framework that

that we often wander toward in the show because I want to give people things to do. I want you to have a checklist. I want you to have some how-to. I want you to have a really good sense of what's going to get you off of the ride that you're on that you don't want to be on and onto one that you much prefer. But working with disorganized attachment is not always so clean and procedural in that kind of a way. It's often a lot fuzzier almost by its nature.

And I thought that that piece of advice that Rick gave, which just blew my socks off, about fully embracing what it is that you really want, like the big seemingly over-the-top request or desire for that connection, attunement, relationship, or for people to really understand where you're coming from, or for them to be a certain kind of way around you, whatever it is.

is a really great example of the kinds of things that do tend to work for people who are more disorganized. It's not so much a checklist. It's more of an exploration of the interior, an exploration of your own emotions. And then by going through that process, you can set the stage

for better relationships out in the world, and then maybe start applying some of those things that I was talking about when I gave that very behavioral list, right? Where you do a little exposure, you have a slightly better experience, and then you try to help yourself learn something from that new experience. So with that as the kind of foundation of what I'm going to be talking about here,

There is a lot of variety in disorganized attachment. Some people tend to be more anxious. Some tend to be more avoidant. So a lot of this is about self-awareness. What is your unique batch of problems? And a great way in to understanding what that is, is appreciating another thing that Rick was talking about that kind of piqued my interest when he said it, appreciating your coping style. What do you do to regulate yourself? What do you do to cope?

And what experiences did those coping styles emerge out of? This is called creating a coherent narrative. We talk about it on the podcast all the time. And it's looking back over things and going, what the heck happened there? And what's the tip of the route for me? What is the core emotional experience that I did not get? What were the steps along the journey that maybe some other people got?

Because I've got a friend who's more securely attached, or I can just kind of see other people out in the world, good examples of other people where I look at them and I go, wow, I would really like to be a little bit more in my relationships the way that that person is. Those kinds of models can be very helpful for us. What did they get that I didn't get? How are their experiences different from mine? What's the big gap here?

And this process helps us become much more aware of what we really need

what our specific vulnerabilities are, and frankly, what our strengths are as well that might have emerged out of those experiences. Experiences, even truly horrible experiences, often have aspects of them that can lead to the development of some kind of a strength because you really had to build a muscle of some kind or another to get through what was going on. What was that muscle for you?

And that piece of the process, that more self-respect, self-appreciation aspect here, can be really helpful for people with a disorganized attachment style because they often really struggle to build up that self-compassion, to build up that sense of themselves as a worthy, important person just the same way that anybody else is.

Often for people, a core piece that is missing are different aspects of emotional self-regulation. This is the ability to keep yourself comfortable in different kinds of circumstances. Because disorganized attachment is so often developmentally rooted, people with it tend to not have had good self-regulation modeled to them. Their parents weren't good at regulating themselves. The environments were all over the place, again, as we talked about quite a bit during the conversation. And so

So there just weren't a lot of great examples of what that really looked like. And if you can't self-regulate, it is very difficult to solve problems in a self-respecting manner inside of your relationship. Because when something threatening comes along, you're going to immediately move into a coping strategy.

This is the fight response, flight, freeze, fawn, those kind of classic stress responses. It could be self-abandonment, which we've talked about on the podcast a lot, fuzzy boundaries, excessively high walls, whatever it is for you.

We've talked about different aspects of this process, and we've done dedicated episodes to things like working with the different stress responses, improving self-regulation, dealing with dissociation, all of these different aspects of disorganized attachment. And there's more information in those episodes that's specific about how to do that. If I actually walked through how to do all of those things, this would be a five-hour episode or something like that. But a great place to start

is that more feely, fuzzy, bottom-up aspect to this whole thing that I think Rick was really getting to in the advice that he gave throughout the episode. So part of that can be appreciating the aspects of who you are that are more frightened or avoidant or anxious. Letting those parts out of the basement, letting them into the light, feeling some of the feelings that accompany that, and then appreciating why they feel the way that they do.

Then, very critically, can we start to enlist those parts as problem solvers for us? Can we bring them onto the same team with the rest of our system as a whole? Can we ask those parts, how do we stay safe? That's why we have coping strategies. We have coping strategies to keep us safe, to protect us from different kinds of painful emotional experiences.

Even if it's not logical to us, it's logical to the part. There's some logic to what's happening here. How can you enlist that part as part of your team, keeping you safe, but then very importantly, doing it in a more adaptive way? So there's this huge self-trust aspect to the whole thing. We need to build up a basic level of self-trust in order to do this kind of work.

because that part needs to believe you when you say, hey, I get it. I'm going to do my best to manage it, and we're going to work on this together. And in order to develop self-trust, you need to be able to internalize external people who give you positive validation, even if it's just through the parasocial relationship of this podcast, me saying to you, hey, the fact that you're listening to this

means that you're somebody who gives a shit, who is trying hard, who wants to do this kind of work, and therefore, who is going to get better over time because you care, you're diligent, you will make it happen for yourself here. I really believe that. I really believe in you as a part of this. And I know that that can sound like a little trite or a little like a Hallmark card, but it's very authentically how I feel.

And you can internalize that a little bit. You can internalize the friend who says something nice to you, that caring committee that Rick talks about pretty often on the podcast. And then from that basis of a little bit of internalization, you got to go out into the world and you got to try stuff. And you got to have experiences of being trustworthy.

of getting up when you said you were going to get up. Metaphorically speaking, that's not so much an avoidant attachment thing or a disorganized attachment thing, but you know what I mean. Keeping your commitments to yourself, maintaining a boundary, not being excessively harsh on yourself if things fall apart, because things will inevitably fall apart. That's the way that this process is. It is a process of two steps forward, one and a half steps back, and then you keep going.

But going, oh, okay, I fell down that time and I'm going to recommit to it. I fell down that time and I'm going to do it a little bit differently next time. I'm going to learn from that experience. And this is going to help you build up a sense of self-trust and self-reliability. And there's going to be a parallel process where as you develop that in yourself, you can start to find it in your relationships. You can trust yourself a little bit and you can trust others a little bit in a careful, well-managed way.

Of course, don't hand a stranger your baby. Be rational, be responsible, trust is conditional, but you're not walking around with the metaphorical safety off, okay? Ready to blow somebody away because there was a minor breach of rapport. You are not deeply convinced that you are just a piece of shit who's going to constantly fall apart in this way, okay? We've brought the extremes in a little bit here.

as part of this process. So what does a reliable relationship really look and feel like to somebody who has a disorganized attachment style, to somebody who doesn't feel good in closeness and also doesn't feel good in distance? Well, what does a good, healthy, reliable relationship look and feel like? Rick alluded to this. A lot of the time, it looks and feels boring.

For people who have a lot of experience in dysfunctional relationships, romantic or otherwise, stable ones often feel quite boring because not a lot happens in them. I like you, you like me, we're just kind of okay here. They include predictability and consistency and emotional validation, and they aren't punishment-oriented.

This is a big one for people who have a more disorganized style because it disconfirms earlier experiences that they might have had. But for somebody who is used to radical swings from idealization to devaluation, or who is used to a chaotic emotional environment with a lot of breaking up and getting back together, or who is used to friendships where there's always kind of like an edge of, do we actually like each other? Can I really trust you?

that stability feels uninteresting to them.

And it can be tough to tell somebody, you've got to pursue boredom. That can feel like a weird sort of thing to say. But for many people who have essentially only ever experienced a dysfunctional relationship, it can really authentically feel that way. And this is something I've heard friends of mine talk about, how they had to ride out it just feeling sort of dull for a little while. And over time, you get a bit more discernment. There's

There are relationships that are dull in a bad way, and there are relationships that are dull in a good way. And with a little bit more experience inside of that more functional relationship, you'll often get more of a sense of like, okay, which bucket is this in? Of course, you want to feel interested in the person that you're hanging out with.

You want to find what they're saying more or less interesting most of the time. But those other aspects of the relationship, the respect, the kindness, the caring, all of these things that frankly, we do not really teach people to care about in relationships, particularly if you're somebody who's more like late teens, 20s. What we teach people to care about in those relationships is frankly, a lot of stuff that doesn't age very well. So let's say that somebody's done that.

They've developed a little bit more self-trust, self-respect. They've had maybe one or two better experiences out in the world. They feel like they're starting to be able to develop better regulation of their internal world. They've built more of that coherent narrative. They've done that process that Rick was talking about of really claiming the fullness of the desire of that part or of what can really feel like all of them right now.

You've gone through that whole process, okay? Where does that land us? The end of that process for people often is a very different kind of communication style emerges for them. To me, it's really defined by self-respect and communication. This is communicating with others in a direct, clear, and functional way where you are at choice about what you're saying to them.

Here's how I feel, and I feel comfortable telling you how I feel, which is a huge step for many people already. Here's why I feel that way, and here's what I'm asking for from you. And of course, you understand that we're going to ask for things from people in our lives, and sometimes they're going to say no. Sometimes they're going to do a really bad job of delivering the goods for us. That's part of it. Disappointment is a part of life. But you're able to say those things from a stance of self-respect. You are able to draw healthy boundaries with other people.

you're able to make choices about how close do I want to be and how far do I want to be.

You're able to regulate that distance. And yes, aspects of closeness still feel bad and aspects of distance still feel bad. But you're the one who's choosing how close you are and how far you are. Of course, the other person's choosing too. The other people are choosing too. But you feel agentic in that process. You feel like you get to make a choice as opposed to it almost being made for you by your systems.

And this all results in you getting to make choices. You can speak what's in your mind now, or you can choose not to. You can take a step in, you can take a step out. You can be transparent about your emotional experience, or you can say, you know what, not going to share that with this person. That's the freedom that you gain by going through this kind of a process. And to be clear, closeness, probably still going to feel bad. Distance, probably still going to feel a little bad.

it is probably not going to move to a full, full, full completion where both of them feel great. That does happen for people, but that's a pretty high bar. What we're really aiming for is the kind of functionality that I'm describing here. And that, I got to say, is an incredibly worthy goal for a person to have. And it's just such a credit to people when they're able to get there. So I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I hope that you found

something in it at the very least that was helpful for you. If you've made it this far and you somehow haven't subscribed to the podcast, if you could take a moment to subscribe, that would mean a lot to me. I would really appreciate it. You can always shoot us an email over to contact at beingwellpodcast.com or leave a comment down below. If you're watching on YouTube, you can also comment on Spotify. You can probably comment other places, but those are the places where I read all of the comments.

It's always great to hear how people felt about the episode and the kinds of things that they would love to see more of in the future. That's also very helpful for me. For example, if there was an aspect of this that you feel like we didn't explore enough or that you would like to learn more about, that would be great to hear. If there was something that just really landed with you, that would also be really great to hear. And of course, comments on YouTube help us out in the algorithm, so it's always appreciated.

If you want to support the podcast in other ways, you can find us on Patreon. It's patreon.com slash beingwellpodcast. And for just a couple of dollars a month, you can support the show and get a bunch of bonuses in return.

At the end here, I wanted to give you a quick reminder about Rick's course on Healing Insecure Attachment. It's a five-week course that's focused on helping people work through their attachment issues and make big changes in their relationships. It's been running through May, but everything is recorded so you can get access to all of those videos. There's also a live session toward the end of May. It's going to be an hour-long Zoom call where you can ask Rick some questions if you want to. And knowing that he was doing a course was part of what inspired this episode.

You can learn more at rickhansen.com slash attachment. I've also included a link to it in the description of today's episode, and you can use coupon code BEINGWELL25 to receive a 25% off discount. As always, thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it, and I'll talk to you soon.