Fearful-Avoidant Attachment: Everything You Need To Know
The signs, the causes, and how to heal.
As someone who used to have a fearful-avoidant attachment style, I know very well how messy relationships can be when you’re terrified of closeness and intimacy yet crave it at the same time.
I believed self-sufficiency was my best trait. I prided myself on my independence and I pushed away everyone that I perceived as a threat to my self-reliant, unrestrained lifestyle.
However, deep down, I was craving love and affection. I’d anxiously chase emotionally unavailable partners, yet I’d close myself off to mature, secure individuals.
If you relate to my experience, you probably have a fearful-avoidant attachment style. Also called disorganized or anxious-avoidant, this attachment style is the most difficult type of insecure attachment, as it leads us to avoid the very relationships we crave.
I’m here to tell you everything you need to know.
The Signs of A Disorganized Attachment In Adult Relationships
Adults with a disorganized attachment style lack a coherent approach towards relationships. These are the main signs:
- In your perception, hurt, rejection, abandonment, and disappointment are inevitable. You want to love and be loved, but it’s difficult for you to open up because you think love is unsafe;
- You have trouble believing that your partner will love and support you as you are;
- Your self-talk is extremely negative (“I knew they’d leave me”, “I’m too broken”, I’m unlovable”);
- Sometimes you think you’d like to “keep things casual” (to avoid real intimacy/closeness) but you can’t even do that because you get too attached too soon;
- Your behavior is unpredictable: sometimes you’re clingy and demanding, other times you’re dismissive and rejecting;
- You’ve developed the illusion that you’re “better off on your own” and you pride yourself on your independence;
- You end up self-sabotaging healthy, loving, secure relationships. You’re so used to the emotional roller-coaster that your feel turned off when there’s no chaos involved;
- Your friendship also tend to be unhealthy and unstable;
What Are The Causes of A Disorganized Attachment?
Our attachment style is primarily formed during our childhood, depending on our relationship with our parents. Nevertheless, it’s also influenced by the first romantic experiences we experience as adults.
When parents are sensitively attuned to their baby, a secure attachment is likely to develop. Securely attached children are better able to regulate their emotions, feel more confident in exploring their environment, and tend to be more empathetic than those who are insecurely attached. Why? Because they have a secure base to return to.
As the name suggests, fearful-avoidant attachment combines the characteristics of both the anxious/fearful attachment as well as the avoidant attachment. This means your caregivers exhibited contrasting and unpredictable behavior.
Sometimes they were responsive, other times they were unavailable. Sometimes they were caring, other times they were distant. You never knew what you’d get — that’s why your attachment style is disorganized.
Since you never knew if your needs would be met, you absorbed the message that it was not safe to trust your caregivers. How could you, when your source of safety was also a source of distress?
Just like adults with a disorganized attachment style lack coherence in their intimate relationships, children with a disorganized attachment style lack coherence in their own behavior towards their caregivers. They seek closeness and intimacy (because that’s a natural, healthy instinct), yet they reject the caregivers’ proximity and distance themselves, due to fear.
They keep oscillating from two biological drives: the need to belong (to love, to connect) and the need to survive (to protect oneself).
Essentially, the root cause of a disorganized attachment is unresolved trauma in the parent’s life.
Parents who’ve experienced trauma in their early lives and have never resolved that trauma by feeling the full pain of their childhoods are likely to engage in erratic, inconsistent behavior with their children. They unconsciously project their wounds, perpetuating the cycle of generational trauma.
Becoming More Secure: How to Heal
Fortunately, there are ways to heal and become more secure. Although we don’t get to choose the attachment style we form as children, we do get to choose what to do with it as adults.
First, you have to make sense of your experiences. This means having the courage to revisit the past and recognize why you are the way you are. How is/was your relationship with your parents? Did you feel unconditionally loved, or was your home environment chaotic and overall unstable?
When you’re aware of your emotional triggers, they’re much easier to manage. When thoughts like “they’re going to leave me” arise, you have the ability to say “wait, I know where this is coming from. My fear is not real. Maybe I can share my insecurities with my partner”.
Something that really helped me was allowing myself to build a secure relationship with someone who was already securely attached. After years of toxic relationships and push-pull dynamics, I decided that I’d give myself some time to heal — and that I’d only get myself into a relationship again if I truly felt loved and accepted.
When I met my partner 5 years ago, I was aware of many of my triggers. I knew why I had such a deep fear of abandonment, I knew I was ready to leave my fears behind and, most importantly, I knew it was possible to experience a different kind of relationship. A healthy, stable, loving relationship.
I slowly realized that it was safe to be vulnerable and show my true colors. In fact, the more vulnerable I got, the more loved I felt. It became obvious that my fear of abandonment was not real.
A securely attached individual will validate your emotions and give you the safe, calm, non-judging space you have always craved. But first, you have to give yourself permission to find such a person.
If you’d like to dive more into this topic, I highly recommend reading The Root Cause of Many Mental Health Problems.
A disorganized attachment stems from unresolved trauma.
However, it is not necessarily how bad our childhood was that impacts our attachment — it’s also how much we’ve been able to make sense out of it and feel the full pain of our past.
Avoiding intimacy, burying our emotions and hiding from the past will not heal our trauma and it’s not sustainable over the long-term.
