How This Attachment Style Affects Relationships
Infants exhibiting a disorganized attachment style have been observed to display fear, conflict, apprehension, and disorientation toward parents, particularly when they are stressed by separation and reunion (Rokach & Clayton, 2023).
Therefore, it is no surprise that such an attachment style in relationships can significantly impact behavior with parents in children, adolescents, and later in life as adults.
The disorganized attachment style can even lead to individuals challenging and humiliating parents, avoiding intimacy, and potentially engaging in self-injury (Rokach & Clayton, 2023).
Due to potential conflict with those close to them, children and adults may find it easier to form relationships with strangers than with loved ones (Rokach & Clayton, 2023).
Other behavioral consequences for disorganized children may include struggling to form and maintain relationships, including displaying hostility, aggression, and delinquency.
In later life, the disorganized style can wreak havoc on intimate relationships, where inconsistent and erratic behavior, fear, and distrust can be challenging for the other individual.
The anxious adult may fear their partner will leave them, so they attempt to pull them too close to ensure their needs are met or, alternatively, draw back or push them away to avoid rejection.
On the other hand, if they feel their needs are threatened, they may respond with aggression or freeze the other person out to protect themselves (Rokach & Clayton, 2023).
3 Ways to Overcome a Disorganized Attachment Style
Therapy is a valuable process for clients wishing to manage or overcome a disorganized attachment style.
The following approaches and activities are helpful and appear successful (Levy & Orlans, 2014; Shemmings & Shemmings, 2014):
Attend therapy with an effective and appropriate corrective attachment therapist
Therapy can be supportive of overcoming a disorganized attachment style. As such, the therapeutic alliance is a vital aspect of the process and is helped by engaging with a therapist who adopts several essential characteristics, including (Levy & Orlans, 2014):
- Empathy and compassion
- Patience and emotional nonreactivity
- Confidence
- Sensitivity to cultural backgrounds and needs
- Able to deal with resistance flexibly and creatively
- Hope and optimism
- Authentic sense of humor, without sarcasm or ridicule
Fake it until you make it: Act secure until you become secure
Acting as though they have adopted a secure attachment style can help the client reprogram their brain circuitry to move away from an avoidant or disorganized attachment style (Shemmings & Shemmings, 2014).
The act–become model encourages clients with insecure or disorganized attachments to observe individuals they admire to see how they react more securely.
According to social learning theory, observation and subsequent modeling can lead to learning that the client can try out later. The client aims to emulate secure and helpful behavior that supports the building and maintaining of relationships identified in those they admire (Shemmings & Shemmings, 2014).
Revisiting past experiences to transform negative working models
Identifying the clients’ core beliefs is vital to the therapeutic process, as they have most likely become self-fulfilling prophecies leading to learned helplessness (Levy & Orlans, 2014).
The therapist works with the client to revisit memories of loss, pain, and fear from early childhood while exploring and unpicking negative beliefs that combine to form their negative working model, including (Levy & Orlans, 2014):
- Child’s (or adult’s) perception of events
- Emotional and somatic (bodily) reactions
- Associated imagery and memory
- Responses of significant others.
Working through their story with an empathetic therapist helps clients form a meaningful connection and (through repetition) desensitizes the emotional charge of prior events (Levy & Orlans, 2014).
The therapist’s acceptance and validation further reduce the associated guilt.
The therapist subsequently works with the client to develop more secure attachments through the following (Levy & Orlans, 2014):
- Constructing new interpretations
- Dealing effectively with the emotions involved
- Learning prosocial coping skills
- Creating mastery over prior trauma and loss
- Developing a positive sense of self
- Enhancing self-regulation
- Addressing family systems issues
Transforming models is a complex process requiring the skills of experienced and well-trained therapists. Ultimately, it will involve several iterations of telling and retelling the stories within a solid therapeutic alliance to challenge and replace the negative working model and create more helpful and healthy attachment styles (Levy & Orlans, 2014).
4 Worksheets for Supporting Your Clients
Therapeutic exercises are a great way of identifying, focusing on, and understanding attachment styles and building and maintaining strong connections.
The following attachment style worksheets are helpful for use with clients:
- Anxious Attachment Patterns
Digging deeper into uncomfortable experiences can help clients identify and understand anxious attachment patterns.
In this exercise, the client reflects on several vital questions, including:
What was the trigger that made you feel upset or emotional?
What was the worst part of the incident?
Why did the incident have such a profound effect on you?
How has that incident, and others like it, impacted your current relationship?
- Recognizing Our Need for Safety and Security
We all have a psychological need to feel safe, secure, and important in our lives. Feelings of security may be missing from a disorganized attachment style, yet they are crucial for relationship collaboration and intimacy (Chen, 2019).
Use this exercise with your clients to help them better understand what they need to support feelings of safety. Ask them to reflect on the following:
What could you do to help prevent yourself from getting stressed?
What could your partner do to help prevent you from getting stressed?
What could you do to calm yourself down once you are stressed?
What can you do to reassure yourself of the relationship connection you have?
What things could your partner do to reassure you of the relationship connection you have?
- Shifting Codependency Patterns
Codependency can lead to unhealthy emotions in your clients’ relationships. Through contrasting codependency thoughts and behavior patterns with healthier ones, they can learn to take action to recover from codependency.
Clients can use this exercise to reflect on how codependent patterns impact relationships.
The client reviews codependent patterns of:
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- Denial
- Low self-esteem
- Compliance
- Avoidance
- Control
With practice, they will become more able to change to more adaptive behaviors and tendencies.
- Understanding Your Avoiders and Triggers
Clients with a disorganized attachment style may avoid forming emotionally solid bonds or engaging in uncomfortable situations.
This worksheet helps clients identify which anxiety triggers lead to avoidance and require additional focus in therapy.
Ask the client to:
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- List five triggers for their anxiety.
And then consider:
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- Am I avoiding any of these triggers because of my anxiety?
- Are there occasions when I experience the triggers and react in ways I don’t want?
The client then reflects on how their behavior changes following the trigger and what sensations they experience.
The exercise provides an opportunity to work on these triggers and reduce their impact.
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