WHAT IS FEARFUL-AVOIDANT (DISORGANIZED) ATTACHMENT
I discovered Attachment styles on a long winter night during the New Year holidays of 2022. Extended holidays are well-known catalysts for major change: the abrupt shift from busy days can trigger deep introspection. When you are alone with yourself, you might not like what you see. For me, it meant the sudden return of dread, anxiety and old fears about being in the wrong relationship – thoughts I was sure I had conquered years ago. This threw me into debilitating anxiety, which I somehow managed to hide from my wife. So, my search for answers began. Attachment theory provided the first key. After taking an attachment quiz, I was dumbfounded: Disorganized (Fearful-Avoidant) – the most insecure style. Perplexed (and somewhat relieved), I began digging deeper.
First identified through experiments with toddlers by the now-legendary psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth in the 1960-70s (most notably Ainsworth's "Strange Situation" experiment), our attachment style fundamentally shapes how we connect with intimate partners throughout life, rooted in early experiences with our caregivers. Originally met with skepticism, Attachment Theory (AT) has been extensively validated by decades of research, including long-term studies, neurobiological investigations and clinical applications across diverse populations, cultures and age groups. It is now one of the most empirically supported and universally accepted models in developmental and relationship psychology. Understanding your attachment style isn't pop psychology; it's engaging with a deeply researched model of human connection with extensive implications for relational health. Many books have been written about it by respected authors, such as the famous Attached by Amir Levine and The Attachment Effect by Peter Lovenheim, Love Sense by Dr. Sue Johnson, Wired for Love by Stan Tatkin, and many others. This is not merely a theory anymore. Though it is still called Attachment Theory (AT), it deserves the title of Attachment Science.
Heidi Priebe, a prominent relationship coach, offers a great summary of the four attachment styles, one secure and three insecure, ranked by severity of attachment disruption and average prevalence in the population:
1. Secure (≈50% of people): These lucky people benefited from consistent, unconditional love and emotionally attuned "good enough" nurturing from stable caregivers. They possess an effective "emotional immune system," perceive the world as safe, feel capable of both giving and receiving love and can self-soothe or co-regulate effectively.
2. Anxious-Preoccupied (≈20%): This style often is often rooted in interrupted or inconsistent love and attunement, perhaps experiencing temporary abandonment or the absence of one parent. These people anxiously seek love and, because of its perceived unreliability, fear abandonment, and develop clingy, anxious dependency. Their "emotional immune system" is weak; love and connection feel like essential medicine they desperately crave. They feel okay only when receiving it and panic at a mere hint of abandonment, sometimes overwhelming partners with jealousy and clinginess.
3. Dismissive-Avoidant (≈20%): Raised by emotionally distant yet relatively stable parents, these people suppressed their attachment needs, relying heavily on intellect and self-reliance. They also need (some) love, but they feel "allergic" to it, tolerating only small doses. They often depend on "painkillers" (distractions, self-reliance). With reliable escapes and self-soothing, they can maintain a facade of being okay and stay in the relationship.
4. Fearful-Avoidant (Disorganized) (≈10%): This group, emerging from toxic, unpredictable homes marked by crises, conflict and unhappy parents, faces the greatest challenge. They crave love intensely like the Anxious-Preoccupied, but feel "allergic" to it like the Dismissive-Avoidant. Their "painkillers" are ineffective or short-lived, leaving them constantly unsettled, often blaming their partner for their distress. This chaotic inner state led to the term Disorganized Attachment, which I will use interchangeably with Fearful-Avoidant in this book.
Initially, the Fearful-Avoidant attachment style wasn't even detected in early experiments and thus was considered relatively rare (~2%). This is reflected in the noticeable lack of coverage in many books on attachment. Older ones don’t mention it (including the famous Attached), while newer ones often dedicate just a single page. The situation is slowly changing, as recent studies show it now affects 10-15% of people – unsurprising given constantly accelerating world stressors and the overall degradation of the traditional family institution.
Like all insecure styles, Fearful-Avoidant (Disorganized) Attachment is a subconscious survival strategy, formed from very early childhood experiences (ages 1-2), when an infant cannot find a consistent way to get their emotional needs met. It combines the worst aspects of Anxious-Preoccupied and Dismissive-Avoidant styles, causing confusing, contradictory behavior. The unstable environment of family homes forces infants into an impossible, paralyzing paradox. The very caregivers who should be the source of comfort are simultaneously the source of perceived threat; approaching them for soothing risks fear, while avoiding them risks abandonment. The child cannot develop a cohesive strategy to get needs met because approaching the caregiver for soothing might trigger fear (because of anger, withdrawal or anxiety), while avoidance leaves them abandoned and unsupported. This unresolvable conflict of needing the parent for survival yet fearing them or their unstable environment disrupts secure attachment formation.
As German psychologist Stefanie Stahl writes in her bestselling book The Child In You, small children cannot judge whether their parents’ behavior is good or bad. From a child’s perspective, their parents are godlike and infallible. If a father yells at or hits his child, the child won’t think Daddy can’t control his anger and needs psychotherapy. Instead, she associates the punishment with her own “badness.” Before acquiring language, she cannot articulate being bad, but senses the punishment and internalizes wrongness. As a result, chronic stress wires the brain for fear and distrust, leading to the contradictory, fear-based behavior in adult life (craving love yet fearing intimacy, blaming partners, volatile relationships), characteristic of Fearful-Avoidant Attachment in adulthood.
While abuse is an obvious cause, Fearful-Avoidant (Disorganized) Attachment often develops not just from direct maltreatment, but from parental struggles, seemingly unrelated to the child. Young children are naturally egocentric in their early years, interpreting all chaos around them (loud parental arguments, economic stress, a parent's emotional unavailability or unmanaged anxiety, marital difficulties) as being about them and their fault. Even without ill intent, emotional neglect (the precise term for a chronic lack of emotional attunement) and the absence of a secure base also create an atmosphere of perceived danger. Parents, preoccupied with their own unresolved issues (often stemming from their own insecure attachment), lacking self-soothing skills or simply emotionally unavailable, can not provide the consistent safety essential for healthy development. The child is traumatized not just by negative events, but by the absence of positive ones – reliable comfort, connection, and security – core required elements that were simply missing. This type of environment shapes the more common variant of Fearful Avoidant (Disorganized) Attachment, when people function well in work or social settings, but struggle in intimate relationships. In contrast, direct abuse is associated with a more severe form of Disorganized attachment, bordering on or overlapping with more debilitating conditions, such as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Complex PTSD (CPTSD).
Whatever the cause, in adult lives we as Fearful-Avoidants yearn desperately for love, yet are terrified of intimacy and connection. This internal conflict often manifests subconsciously in partner selection: we are often drawn to emotionally unavailable, distant or troubled people. This seemingly counterintuitive attraction actually resolves our paradox as it allows us to pursue attachment (satisfying the yearning) while the partner’s unavailability prevents true intimacy (avoiding the fear). Once we get into the relationship, we project our remaining terror onto partners, believing safety depends on their change. Familiarity to our past reinforces this, drawing us to fixer-upper partners, leading us to try fixing them, hoping this will finally make us feel safe. This strategy inevitably fails, leaving us drained and resentful. Partners feel invaded and inadequate as we "disassemble" them, nitpicking and fault finding.
We devalue both ourselves (like Anxious-Preoccupied) and others (like Dismissive-Avoidant), operating on "I'm not OK / You're not OK." We feel chronically unworthy and unlovable, yet can be hypercritical, even contemptuous, towards partners. Our relationships are volatile, characterized by a frustrating, confusing paradox ("can't leave but can't stay"). When we chase or feel undervalued by a partner (especially with avoidant attachment), we behave like Anxious-Preoccupied. When being chased or paired with a secure, committed, or worse – an Anxious-Preoccupied partner – we turn...
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