by Jessica Fern
A person with a preoccupied style can be uncomfortable, even terrified, of being alone. They often promote their own dependency on their partners (or they might promote their partners’ dependency on them) in a way that discourages doing things separately from each other. Engaging in compulsive caretaking can also become a way to prevent the discomfort of feeling lonely and enhance the perceived security of not being abandoned. Even though people with this style tend to sacrifice themselves for the relationship, the ways in which they are preoccupied and compulsively give care are not necessarily attuned. In such cases, the caregiving is more of a strategy to keep a person close than an actual response to what their partner genuinely needs. If someone with this attachment style perceives even the slightest possibility that their partner is disconnected or disinterested, they can become demanding, possessive or needy for approval, reassurance, connection, contact, and greater emotional or sexual intensity.
From their partner’s perspective, the needs of the person with the preoccupied attachment style may seem insatiable. The partner may feel they can never do enough, which can in turn create the very pulling away or even breaking up that the person with the preoccupied style is so desperate to avoid. Compared to people with a more secure attachment style, people with the preoccupied style report increased jealousy and relationship conflict,24 as well as feelings of ambivalence about their sex life, since they are less likely to use consistent contraception and more likely to engage in sex they don’t fully want.25
Similar to people with a dismissive attachment adaptation, people with the preoccupied adaptation also have difficulty identifying and describing their own emotions. Initially, this may seem counterintuitive since the preoccupied person is much more emotionally focused, self-disclosing and heightened in both their emotional experience and expression in comparison to someone with a dismissive style, who typically has less access to their feelings. But it makes sense if you look a little closer. Someone with a preoccupied style has more awareness of both their feelings and their partner’s feelings, but they still struggle with differentiating and communicating their feelings and with managing their emotional responses in healthy ways. Also, although they’re aware of their partner’s feelings, they’re not necessarily reading those feelings accurately. People with this attachment style might be very precise in detecting even the slightest change in their partner’s mood or state, but they’re more likely to assume that the shifts are personal to them and that they are negative, when neither may be true.
Part Three covers ways to heal the different attachment styles, and provides a more in-depth look at self-soothing. It also explains a model called HEARTS, which describes secure functioning in ways that can be applied to healing your own attachment challenges. For now, I’ll just say that someone with a preoccupied style must first come back to themselves. I will often guide clients to tune into where their sense of self is. Is it within their own body or out there in someone else’s body? If it is with someone else, we can then focus on calling themselves back to establish a sense of inner authority and self-trust.
Statements that someone with a preoccupied attachment style might make:
I am comfortable with connection and usually crave it more than my partners do.
I am very attuned to others and can detect subtle shifts in their emotional or mental states.
I often worry about being abandoned, rejected or not valued enough.
I tend to overfocus on my partners and underfocus on myself.
When I am going through something, I tend to reach out and turn towards others to make sense of what I’m experiencing or to make myself feel better.
I need a lot of reassurance that I am loved or desired by a partner; however, when my partners give me reassurance or show their desire for me, it either doesn’t register for me or I have trouble receiving and believing it.
I tend to commit to relationships and get attached very quickly.
I get frustrated or hurt if a partner is not available when I need them.
I get resentful or take it personally when a partner spends time away from me.
I do well with the transition from being alone to being together with partners, but I struggle when going from being together to being alone again.
I tend to hold on to resentments and have trouble letting go of old wounds.
The Disorganized/Fearful-Avoidant Attachment Style
Disorganized Attachment in Childhood
The final insecure style was not initially classified in Mary Ainsworth’s original studies, but was named later by Main and Solomon.26 Ainsworth observed that a percentage of the children in her Strange Situation Procedure did not neatly fit into one of the three categories of secure, anxious and avoidant. Some children displayed confusing, even chaotic, behaviors such as running towards their parent then immediately away from them, freezing up, hitting their parent for no apparent reason, rolling or throwing themselves on the floor, and more. Main and Solomon later reassessed these findings, and furthered our understanding of the attachment styles by adding the fourth classification of disorganized.
Children with a disorganized attachment style have an attachment system that seems to be hyperactivated and deactivated at the same time. They don’t display a consistent organized attachment strategy in the same way that children with a secure, anxious or avoidant style do. Instead, they seemed to lack a coherent organization of which strategy to employ, often vacillating between the anxious and avoidant insecure attachment styles.
The disorganized attachment style is most commonly associated with trauma and it typically arises when a child experiences their attachment figure as scary, threatening or dangerous. When we are afraid, our attachment system gets activated to seek proximity to and comfort from our attachment figure, but what happens when our attachment figure is the person causing the threat? This puts the child in a paradoxical situation where their caretaker, who is supposed to be the source of their comfort and the solution to their fears, is actually the source of their fear instead. Diane Poole Heller refers to this conflicting experience as having one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. The child’s attachment system wants to move towards their attachment figure, while the protective defensive mechanism of flight / flight / freeze / appease wants to move away from the attachment figure, and the two systems are coactivated.
The predominant factor leading to this style in childhood is having parents who are suffering from their own unresolved trauma or losses. When a parent has a history of unresolved trauma, they are more easily overwhelmed by life’s demands and emotionally flooded by their child’s emotional states. Unable to regulate their own emotions, parents with their own history of unhealed trauma, neglect or abuse might then act out, lash out or completely tune out in ways that are scary to the child. Whether that parent is being terrifyingly overresponsive or frighteningly underresponsive, the child learns that they’re not safe with the very person who’s supposed to protect them. Research has shown that approximately 20 to 40 percent of the general population has some degree of a disorganized attachment style, and approximately 80 percent of children who have experienced abuse develop a disorganized attachment style to one or both of their parents.
Additional factors that can lead to a disorganized attachment style include:27
Parents who are on an emotional roller-coaster. Parents who have drastic, unpredictable fluctuations in their moods, actions or mental states can be extremely confusing for the child, leaving them uncertain whether to approach or withdraw. One of my clients described how her stepmother’s emotionally erratic behavior was still lingering in her own nervous system decades later. At family holidays, her stepmother would dote on her one minute, showering her with gifts and praise, and then minutes later would erupt in a yelling fury, shaming her for not paying enough attention to her younger stepbrother. This client recalled how she wasn’t the only one who fell into a freeze response when her stepmother had these outbursts; all of th
e adults in the house did—including her father. They would freeze up, unsure about how to handle the situation. This left her additionally abandoned by the other adults around her, who could have stepped in to mitigate the situation in some way that was responsive and protective for her at a crucial time.
Parents who are contradictory in their communication. Indirect signals or direct expressions that tell the child to come close but then go away, that they are loved but then unworthy of love, or that they should succeed but are a failure can all be perplexing to a child. Similarly, unrealistic expectations, catch-22s, being punished or shamed for not doing something that they were never shown how to do, being asked to solve problems that are unsolvable, or being expected to do tasks beyond their developmental capability can all lead to a level of disorientation where the child is left frozen and unclear whether to move up or down, right or left. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
Family chaos. Factors such as illness, financial stress, job insecurity, parents who are imprisoned or handling addictions, and even a culture of overachieving in which every minute of a child’s life is scheduled with extracurricular activities can all create a home of chaos. It is difficult to feel safe and secure when the home that we live in and the people we rely on are unstable, unpredictable or even erratic. Well-intentioned parents who push their child into more and more enriching activities can cause children to feel destabilized from the lack of rest, downtime and free play time that is needed to feel settled and soothed in the nervous system. In such cases, attachment figures may not be engaging in direct mistreatment of their child, but the surrounding environment or some of the parents’ behaviors can create fear and chaos for the child, disrupting their ability to feel safe and secure.
The child may be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) or have a challenging health condition. While disorganized attachment is often associated with parental abuse and neglect, this isn’t always the case. Certain traits or experiences specific to the child can also prompt a disorganized experience. Approximately 15 to 20 percent of the population has a nervous system wired to be more sensitive. These people are more attuned to the subtleties of their environment and process that information much more deeply compared to others without this trait.28 While being more observant might be a survival advantage, it can also be overwhelming. Someone who is constantly aware of the subtleties of the environment and of the people around them can quickly experience sensory overload. My clients who consider themselves to be HSPs often report experiencing a certain type of disorganized attachment because the world itself is too much. Due to their increased sensitivity, even normal everyday events can feel too intense, too chaotic or too stimulating, leaving little respite to feel settled, safe and secure. In relationships, HSPs are often unclear as to whether what they are feeling has its origin in themselves or if their partner’s feelings are creating that “one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake” experience in their nervous system. They want to be close to people, but being close can be a sensory assault that is confusing or that dysregulates them for days. Similarly, I see people with certain illnesses who also suffer with a disorganized attachment, not because of their parental experiences, but because of the world and the body they find themselves in. Imagine what it’s like to eat a certain food that may be innocuous for most people, but can spiral you into debilitating physical and mental symptoms for days. Or imagine what it would be like to be invited to a friend’s house for their birthday, which should be celebratory, but is actually terrifying to you because you don’t know if you are going to be exposed to mold that can set off neurological symptoms that will interfere with your ability to think, walk or talk. Or imagine what it would be like for someone with chemical sensitivities who can’t just jump into a taxi, stay in a hotel or even at times walk into a grocery store without experiencing an olfactory punch that can leave them less than functional for days. In such cases, the world itself isn’t safe and our bodies are not safe in the world. When autoimmunity is at play, someone will experience a paradoxical situation where the immune system that is supposed to be protecting them is actually harming them and the body that is the vehicle for life is the very thing taking it away.
Fearful-Avoidant Attachment as an Adult
In adulthood, the disorganized attachment style is referred to as fearful-avoidant. People with this style of attachment experience a clashing fear of either being too close or too far away from their partners. People with this insecure attachment style have the characteristics of both the dismissive and preoccupied styles—their desire for closeness and their longing for connection are active, but because they have previous experiences of the ones they loved or depended on hurting them, they tend to feel uncomfortable relying on others or are even paralyzed by the fear that speaking their feelings and needs could be dangerous and make things worse. They might request attention from a partner but then withdraw when connection is offered or, in more extreme manifestations, they might demand attention or affection and then attack or criticize their partner when what they want is given. People with this style are easily overwhelmed by their feelings or subject to what I call emotional flare-ups, where their intense emotional states can take over, disrupting their ability to function and, at times, taking others down with them.
Due to their history of trauma, their sense of self and others have been impaired. When trauma occurs, there is a rupture with the foundational relationship a person has with their self. This severed internal relationship with the self needs to be restored so that the person can go on to trust and value themselves, as well as begin to trust others again. When this type of healing has yet to occur, people functioning from the fearful-avoidant attachment style will tend to see themselves as broken and unworthy and will expect that others are untrustworthy or will only hurt them in the end. In more extreme cases, this attachment style is associated with high relationship turmoil, dissatisfaction and toxicity, self-destructive behaviors, relationship abuse, mental illness and addictions.
Diane Poole Heller makes two important distinctions in regard to this attachment style. The first is that the expression of this style can either look more dismissive and withdrawing or more anxious, clingy and pursuing. Heller refers to these two variations as either being more disorganized avoidant or disorganized anxious. In my own practice, I make a distinction between the internal fearful-avoidant and the external fearful-avoidant. In the category of internal fearful-avoidant, we find people who, when under stress or threat, are triggered into higher anxiety and have the internal disorganized experience of wanting connection and wanting to move closer to someone, yet simultaneously feeling an inner pull back, believing the connection to be unsafe. However, such people do not act this dynamic out in ways that are destructive to themselves or others. The experience is more internally disruptive than externally damaging.
Other people express the experience of having one foot on the gas and the other on the brake in a relationship in a much more external and reactive way. These people react externally in ways that are confusing, contradictory or harmful. The distinction between internal and external fearful-avoidant might be a difference in degree or severity within this attachment style, or it might also be two different stages in healing. A person with a fearful-avoidant attachment style who has been engaging in healing work that is moving them towards more secure functioning may initially develop less external reactivity while still experiencing an inner “push/pull” dynamic. The process of resolving their trauma may have enabled them to now choose differently with how they externally respond.
The second important distinction that Heller makes is that we can have a chronically disorganized style that functions as a primary attachment style, or more of a situational disorganized style. In the situational kind, someone might be more consistently secure, dismissive or preoccupied in their attachment style, but in certain situations or under the influence of certain triggers, they get activated into a temporary disorganized state. Once th
e stressor or situation resolves, they then return to their other, more dominant style.
Since people with the fearful-avoidant style experience both attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, see which of the above statements for the dismissive and preoccupied styles also describe your experience. Some statements that someone with a fearful-avoidant style might make are:
I often don’t feel safe or fully trusting in relationships, even if my partner acts in safe and trustworthy ways.
I frequently get triggered by things that may seem to come out of nowhere.
I genuinely want intimacy and closeness but I can experience episodes of fearful overwhelm when intimacy with a partner increases.
When in conflict, I can vacillate from being overwhelmed or aggressive to being dismissive and numb.
I can vacillate between different types of chaos or rigidity.
When in distress I have acted in ways that have been harmful to myself or my partners.
I often expect that the worst will happen in a relationship, even when things are going well.
I have elaborate negative fantasies about what will go wrong or how my partner will inevitably hurt me beyond repair, even if things are mostly going well.
Being in a relationship can cause me to become dysregulated, dissociative or confused.
There are times when I look fine on the outside, but I am actually a complete tsunami on the inside.
I frequently experience the conflicting internal drives of wanting to be close and share myself but fearing that closeness or vulnerability will be dangerous or cause the relationship to end.
Parental Interactions
Childhood Attachment Style
Adult Attachment Style
Protective
Emotionally available
Responsive
Attuned