Disorganized (Fearful) Attachment 

Here's how it works with me: I FEEL anxious, but I ACT avoidant.

This attachment is so exhausting. So much suffering included. I hope I can heal it one day. I'm 26 and already so exhausted by it. 🤯

I'm eighteen and crying watching this video. It sucks feeling like your entire life was destroyed and is hopeless all because of your parents not protecting you from themselves.

My dad was the loud, frightening abuser; my mom was the avoidant, emotionless, mocking abuser. My mom is avoidant 100%, my dad is either anxious-ambivalent or anxious-avoidant. I am 100% anxious-avoidant. Also, I was definitely the caretaker. Depersonalisation/dissociation, gaps in memory due to trauma, yes.

The most useful I’ve seen on disorganised attachment style so far, thank you. I definitely became a caretaker child for my emotionally unstable mother. I remember pleading with her one night when I was a young adult ‘just be a mum for me’ and she just stared back at me blankly like I was speaking a foreign language.

My mother was emotionally unstable and unpredictable. She would take so many things personally, and I didn't feel like I couldn't truly talk to her seriously about anything without it being a whole ordeal. Although as a child I was attached at the hip to my mom anyways. I was so afraid of being without her, yet at the same time she wasn't meeting all my needs. She gave me the message that I couldn't trust my self. But she was all I had, and that wasn't a good thing because I couldn't have myself and her at the same time. It's interesting because I was so close to her and reliant on her as a child but when I got older and grew more into myself I isolated myself and became very distant from her. She left with me the fear of being rejected by others, the fear of messing up or being wrong, and the fear of not fully being seen, understood, and approved of. So I've been very isolated because of this, but I'm trying to find people to let in but it's hard because all I've known is being misunderstood.

I was told by a counselor i might have the avoidant attachment style. I definitely don’t have a healthy attachment so I figured it was correct. However, I gave up on learning about attachment styles when the avoidant attachment didn’t seem to connect. Then I found this video! I have disorganized attachment! Everything falls in place & now I know what to work on. Thank you!

Thanks for this video. My earliest memory is having been traumatised by my Dad's anger and rough handling. My very earliest memory is one of being in shock after my Dad had traumatised me. Unfortunately for me my Dad was emotionally abusive and undermined me all through my childhood. I grew up very anxiously and with very low worth. Aged 55 and I have suffered a great deal from depression and have been very suicidal at times. I always liked to go off on my own and get right away from other people in order to feel safe. My Dad ruined any chance of my ever achieving any real happiness in life but at least I don't have kids myself so at least I have not got to feel guity about passing my problems on to my own children in the way my Dad did to me.

this is the only video on attahcment that actually goes into depth instead of covering the superficial terms and calling it a day

My dad had major anger issues. He was violent, very intimidating and enjoyed humiliating everyone. My mon is a covert narcissist. To her, my father was a good man. If he was sometimes abusive, it was because I didn't love him enough. I'm now over 60 and I still wish I never came to life.

Your videos have been so helpful. Through dating on and off for a year I slowly yet painfully discovered that I had not only an anxious/preoccupied attachment but a favorite person relationship to my partner who was disorganized. Talk about a thrilling rollercoaster. Lol I changed my relationship to the truth with your radical acceptance videos because I did not want to believe all this pain and tragedy. I’m currently working on getting them back with this new found knowledge. Of course I’ll keep my prostitute archetype at bay and balance GIVE, FAST, my needs AND their needs and see what happens. Wish me luck haha Thanks Dr. May. 💙

This is so amazing. I was wondering a few days ago, why do I always freeze in alarming situations. I never run or fight - I just always freeze, that seemed weird to me. So this helps, thank you ❤️

This hurts and I feel so understood hearing this. Finally someone has explained it.

I have disorganized attachment but I’m very logic and truth oriented. So everything I say and do I try to always align with truth even when I’m wrong about what truth is. I’m constantly trying to evaluate what is going on in my mind and responses even if I can’t understand it. And when I know something is wrong I try to understand and change it. It all can take years of work. I don’t have pride in much nor should I, but evaluating with right or wrong conclusions is something I’m glad I do.

God bless you and everything you touch, cherish, and pursue. Thank you.

The difficulty part was this described what happened to me and how I unintentionally raised my kids. You have no idea about any of this until after you go through it with your kids. I worked so hard to be a good mom, friend, wife. But I was emotionally all over the place. On top of that, I attracted unhealthy people into my life so you can't tell if it's them or me. Smh! On the surface, I was living a good life. I had totally ignored what was real to make everything fit. I had great friends, family and spouse. Then I took a mindset course and found out it was all fake! I had totally misread everyone around me. I was a people pleaser. Avoiding confrontation. Projecting my feeling onto people. Pretending not to see things I knew I should address. I thought i had life all figured out. What a shock! Now I'm on an innerwork journey that keeps going and going.

thank you for this. you just described my childhood, and now my adulthood as well.

Thank you for the video. It always hurts to encounter something that is that accurate.

I cried as I listened to this. I ended up here after listening to the dismissive video. I had been dating a guy who had the dismissive tendencies. I've been greiving him for far too long and figured if I learned why he behaved the way that he did, it would help. This didn't explain why I responded the way that I did so I ended up here. I've been greiving a guy I knew for less than 4 months, for about 6 weeks now. I'm not as bad but still not bad. I'd be triggered if I saw him. I purposely chose to demonstrate secure behaviours which is why it probably lasted as long as it did. I also cut him off. My old therapist mentioned that she believed that I was FA. This video really resonated with me. I always can so activated that I can't get out of it. I won't hurt myself but definitely find that being a person is more pain than it's worth.

This was brilliant! I'm going to watch the suggested links for your other work too. Thank you.

Thank you for this video. My therapist had me take an assessment yesterday and this is what my results showed. I had never heard of this but what you’ve described sounds a lot like what I’ve experienced.

this is probably the best video ive seen explaining this attachment style, thank you so much!

Having a mother tell you she loves you and as a child trusting that after the mother just tried to stab you to death is confusing. Living in constant fear and craving to be hugged and loved by the mother at the same time is the worst experience ever. After 45 years of life I am finally understanding this attachment style.

This explains so much for me! Thank you, thank you, thank you! 🙏🏼 Will continue to check out your videos! 🤗

Your visuals have a great ratio of clarity to budget.

Thanks for a very informative and compassionate post! I can't believe I have only just discovered your content. It makes a lot of sense, the diagrams are helpful and you explain it well. Thank you!

Starting to really dig into this work after finding myself in a mess of emotion in the last couple of years. I am so grateful for content creators like you making this information available. Your specific way of describing this attachment style and related issues was very helpful to me and certainly resonated. I felt validated as the video went on. Thank you thank you!!

Wow again, your clarity and examples are blowing my mind. I'm soo so grateful for these videos, thank you!

Fantastic video, thank you so much. It's painful, exhilarating, liberating, sobering, intense and SO useful to watch such clear, on-point videos. Great great work

❤ everyone watching 😢 I hope no matter when you come across this video your at least okay and this can be figured out. I know the hell of it all but if there is a will there is a way right 🤷🏻‍♀️

thank you for this video, i'm sincerely grateful for how much useful information you've put into it. everything is so structured and clear, i have found myself in most of what you were talking about. you're a truly good and professional psychologist

My mom use to call me stupid idiot girl and I just can’t get over it

If you only knew how helpful this was for me. Thank you 🙏🏻

I will remember this video as life changing. Thank you so much! 💓

I used to think that it was the people around me who had issues. Then I found out that I'm disorganised. I'm trying to deal with this issue but damn is it hard if you're broke.

Thank you for this video. it was very helpful.

this is very helpful and accurate

Thank you this was very helpful!

Wow u making me understand it more. Thanks

This video is incredibly helpful to support how one creates skills to survive unavailable parents I have been doing my personal best to heal what my parents did to me ( my therapist says it was torture ) over 30 years of therapy Once I understood the label FA lightbulbs went off Then disorganized left me with an awareness of a pattern of creating layers of disorganization in how I live to unconditionally keep a bit of that crazy chaos charge around. Now I’m going deeper… I think I’ve lived most of my waking life in fein * the deer adapting to what could go wrong. My endocrine and nervous system have been damaged from living in a state of distress for most of my life. I appreciate your video here There doesn’t seem to be that much online that I found, I did attend the personal development school as well and some of that information was very helpful. Thank you for your service.

I love these! Thanks for making these videos ❤️

This was very helpful, thank you

My mother used to mock me all the time... It took a LONG time before I was finally strong enough to tell her to stop. She had a miscarriage before me, and I've always felt like her least favorite child. I don't think she was ready for me when I was born; my parents were emotionally neglectful of us kids. My sister is the sick one, my little brother is 'the baby'. My mother withdrew from me after I told her how I felt and called her out on some of her awful behavior. Of course she got psycho, defensive and angry. I can't talk to her like an adult. She still puts me down and I feel bad around her often, so I barely communicate with her. I never visit because I know I'll leave feeling bad. Pretty positive I took on a lot of her trauma, and she projects her inadequate feelings onto me...

Thank you so much for your content!

This was incredibly helpful. Thank you

Awesome video thanks

You are awesome, I love you, thanks!

Thank you so much for making this. I'm 33, and have been in therapy for about a year now. For whatever reason, I've never heard of attachment styles, and this has been a massive breakthrough. I'm going to have to ask my therapist why she never brought this up previously, but in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm finally ready to heal.

Gosh Dr May i just gotta say thank you for doing all these videos (have watched a substantial minority of your videos. i have to rewatch and process and pace myself. i want to thank you for saying what you say about disorganized attachment typically leads to CPTSD. so frequently CPTSD and BPD are conflated and theres so much difference. We lean more avoident then anxious tho only slightly. DID system here, under a chosen name due to being an oea (ramcoa) survivor. people dont even want to believe "organized exreme abuse" happens. it does. CPTSD automatically goes hand in hand with DID. BPD is frequently co-occuring additionally but not always. we have subclinical Borderline traits but dont meet the criteria. we have been working on healing our attachment style significantly over several years of having safe people who are willing to be patient and listen and work out conflict and such on a consistant basis.. we still score highly/extremely disorganized on attachment assessments. (jmho as the "identified patient" of my family, the ones who are *actually sick* here are the abusers who traumatized a childs brain to the point of alteration of its structure &/or function. stands to reason, in my brain that insists on retaining full reality testing and sanity despite the, yes, paranoia and terror you are stuck living with, and the flashbacks and everything.) idk ill stop rambling. i just love how you dont pathologize humans trying to heal. it takes a real long time to get this f'ed up and yea. likely the rest of my life to get un-f'ed up.

Thank you so much. I thought I had a preoccupied anxious attachment style but at 31 I realize I have a fearful avoidant attachment style. Or maybe I have both.

It's well explained presentation, thank you for sypmlifing it for me ❤️❤️❤️❤️ you made me more aware of myself behavior's

Thank you!

I have spent the past 20 plus years healing on and off without understanding my Attachment style. I don't have all the traits anymore, but the ones I do I am working on.

Thank you so much!

Liked and subscribed

Thank you ❤

Well, that video explained a few things. That was oddly precise.

Thank you

Spot on Thank you

Dr. May--I deleted my comment before seeing your reply. There were a lot of “rights,” but as I continued to listen, I saw that there was also a lot of good content and kindness, so you didn’t deserve the hit--I apologize. I’m in a pretty rough place right now, which is why I’m doing internet searches on disorganized attachment -- and why I was in a less than kind mood. You do good work--no need to change anything!

I'm still confused whether I'm in Anxious/Preoccupied or Disorganized. My parents had inconsistent presence in my childhood, I don't get along with them emotionally, I was abused by my cousin consequently being emotionally distant with my whole family. At this point, I started to calculate the amount of emotion I give to particular friends. There are some friends where I can be completely open up emotionally and there those friends where I cannot because it is going to cause conflict. When it comes to romantic relationship, I've never been in one yet but I'm always dreaming about having someone that is emotionally secure and can understand me emotionally but I fear the commitment and responsibility that comes with a romantic relationship. Multiple online say I'm anxious, other say I'm avoidant, while others say I'm both. I'm confused, what is my attachment style?

Hello Jennifer, your content is amazingly clear, thank you so much. I live with a disorganized fearful avoidant. How to reconcile his need for distance/escape (without me contacting him) and at the same time his need to be reassured/safe that I am not abandoning him?... Thank you.

Dr.May, could you direct me to your video, the one to feel safe..? Thank you so much🙏🏻

Could you please add the link to the video where you discuss the way to create a safe environment 🙏

If you don't learn red flags as a child and you don't understand or know what red flags are as an adult I managed to shut that all out when it came to looking after my own children I didn't want my kids growing up with the shit I went through I was neglected and suffer from cptsd and I'm still suffering now having had lots of councling i needed help and there was no one to help I remember everything from being a child and that's what got him 20 years

Hi, Dr. May, thank you for making these very helpful videos. Is disorganized attachment the same as fearful- avoidant attachment?

❤

Thank you! That sounds a lot like ADHD actually... And I think I do have CPTSD, is there an evidence for a clear difference between the conditions?

Are there any good books about the disorganized?

Aw, Charlie Brown is such a sad, balding child. I'm starting to think everyone in my immediate family may be disorganized...

This is my current relationship I thought that love was the answer, but what can you do when nothing works? I sent the video

Have you ever come across a patient who did not develop Disorganized Attachment from childhood, but did so later in life? I'm asking because someone I'm very close to exhibits all of the signs of DA and had many back to back traumatic experiences in adulthood that I believe led to this.

Lucky I check the timetables on my phone and it went overtime

Can u be disorganized and preoccupied??

How do you get the fa to take responsibility and do the work?

My mom hates that I was ever born, how can I ever recover from that?

Charlie Brown

Help? I caused my son attachment disorders all by ONE day! I never got onto him. Then the one day I did I caused him ptsd. I am trying to get him help still but he stopped talking so we are trying to get him talking again. I yelled at him to shut up and stop talking to go to bed so his daddy didn’t get onto him anymore and apparently that can cause ptsd. I was his only secure attachment though. His go to. Now I am suffering because I caused him suffering accidentally. I can’t sleep. I can’t stop panicking. He is avoiding talking to me now. And disorganized as well. Comes to me whenever he is afraid but then is afraid of talking to me. This is all a big disaster but I’m trying my best to fix it all. 😢🥺😭

It's all so unjust.