Disorganized Attachment: When Connection Feels Confusing

If you grew up in an unpredictable, inconsistent environment with unstable caregiving, you may feel like closeness or connection isn’t always comforting like others may feel. It’s confusing and it may even feel dangerous at times, even when you’re being loved.

If you feel like this, you’re experiencing something called disorganized attachment. People commonly mistake it for being “bad at relationships”, afraid of commitment, or even afraid of intimacy. However, this isn’t necessarily true. It’s more of an invisible way the nervous system learned to survive and feel safe on its own.

What Is Disorganized Attachment?

Disorganized attachment isn’t just fear of commitment or emotional distance. It’s a confusing push and pull relationship with connection itself, not necessarily with the specific people. Those who experience disorganized attachment may fluctuate between craving closeness to wanting to get away from it spontaneously. For these people, love can feel grounding at one moment then absolutely suffocating the next.

So then how does one who experiences disorganized attachment stay connected? To tell the truth, there isn’t really a consistent strategy since relationships can feel like an emotional rollercoaster even when the other person hasn’t done anything wrong. This is because the nervous system doesn’t know whether to move toward or away, so it does both.

Those with disorganized attachment describe feeling “too much” and “not enough” at the same time. The past and present blur together, and old survival responses can activate even in safe relationships.

What Causes Disorganized Attachment?

There isn’t one single cause, but several factors commonly play a role:

• Inconsistent or frightening caregiving: When caregivers were loving at times and harmful, neglectful, or volatile at others.
• Unresolved trauma: Especially childhood trauma where there was no safe adult to turn to.
• Emotional unpredictability: Never knowing what response to expect when expressing needs.
• Role reversal: Being responsible for a caregiver’s emotions before learning how to regulate your own.

What It Looks Like in Everyday Life

Disorganized attachment is often misunderstood as being dramatic, unstable, or self-sabotaging, when it’s actually rooted in survival. It may show up as:

• Wanting closeness deeply, then pulling away once it’s available.
• Feeling overwhelmed or numb in intimate moments.
• Difficulty trusting others or your own feelings.
• Intense fear of abandonment paired with fear of being controlled.
• Rapid shifts between idealizing and distancing from people.
• Feeling unsafe when things are calm or stable.

These patterns aren’t flaws. Instead, they’re learned responses from a nervous system that had to adapt early.

What Can Help

Healing disorganized attachment isn’t about forcing yourself to be “secure.” It’s about slowly teaching your nervous system that connection can be safe, consistent, and choice-based.

Some supportive practices include:

• Building awareness: Noticing when you’re moving toward or away from connection and what triggered it.
• Somatic grounding: Using body-based practices to calm the nervous system when attachment fears activate.
• Safe, consistent relationships: Healing often happens in relationships that are predictable and non-punitive.
• Gentle reflection: Exploring patterns with curiosity rather than shame, often with a therapist or support group.

Healing one’s relationship with attachment itself is not linear. It often accumulates overtime through small moments of effort.

How ShareWell Supports People With Disorganized Attachment

At ShareWell, we understand that connection can feel both necessary and terrifying. That’s why our peer support spaces are designed to be low-pressure, choice-centered, and emotionally safe.

Members can participate at their own pace. You can show up quietly, listen, or share when you’re ready. There’s no expectation to perform vulnerability or stay engaged beyond what feels manageable.

Because healing attachment wounds isn’t about forcing closeness. It’s about experiencing connection that stays gentle, predictable, and human.

At ShareWell, we believe connection doesn’t have to feel like a threat. It can be something you approach slowly, safely, and on your own terms. If you’d like to practice grounding in community, join a peer support group today.