disorganized attachment

When you first meet me, I seem to do one of two things. I either don’t share much at all and am very mysterious, or I seemingly throw out a bunch of deep things about me to see how you respond. I don’t mean to do this, it’s natural and learned behavior. It has helped to keep me safe. It is part of my attachment style.

I am someone who carries a lot of secrets about my life and I have had many experiences that seem extreme to other people in casual conversation. So it’s likely, if you’ve had some extreme and traumatic experiences, you’re probably someone I’d open up to very quickly, because you can likely relate.

Having disorganized attachment doesn’t mean you’re not a safe person. For me, it means that since emotional security and safety wasn’t modeled or provided to you, you have the journey and responsibility of finding that for yourself, however you can. It might take longer for you to soothe your nervous system on your own. You might have many more instances throughout your day where you have to actively do more things to nurture and take care of yourself, but it doesn’t mean you can’t work with it. It absolutely doesn’t mean you carry on through life as “the victim who didn’t receive emotional nurturing and needs it from everyone else.” I, for one, have not often taken the path of expecting it to come from other people, which has left me as someone more isolated or disconnected, without really meaning to be. We all deal with it differently.

I’m talking about it because maybe it’s not a thing people understand about this kind of attachment style, and I’m willing to be vulnerable about my imperfections today. Contrary to some beliefs out there, healers, mediums, and spiritualists have days where they are very human, too. I have done so much work on myself, but there are days where my trauma takes me down. There are days where people show me love and nurturing and it triggers me to my core, with my head spinning, feeling out of control, and it ends with me laying on the floor in a corner of my room trying to come back to neutral. And it’s not because I don’t want or appreciate that love, but because I want to grasp so tightly to it and never let it, or the person who was willing to give it to me, go. In those moments I have to breathe, release the fear of losing it or them, and go provide myself some of my own, so I can create my own safe container again, and show up in a healthy way in my relationships.

Disorganized attachment, for me, as shown up as loving and fearing the people I am close to in my life. And it has nothing to do with how anybody else is showing up, or how trustworthy or consistent they are being, or any of that. Because I was conditioned that at any moment someone can do something unexpected and out of behavior and I can feel extremely unsafe. It deals with how my energy is activated when someone engages with me in a specific moment and I am responsible for how I handle and manage that moment. I am responsible for identifying my triggers and what makes me feel unsafe, and communicating that.

I’ve recently gotten better at communicating this to people I love, which I am excited about and I feel like is amazing progress for me. The more that I create my own safe container, and trust myself with processing emotions, the easier it is for me to be intimate and build close relationships with people that are longer lasting.

Much like with everything else I’m passionate about, I believe in processing these intense trigger moments, and not shoving them down or putting shame to them when they arise. Today, I decided to write a song with them, as it is just another day regulating the highly sensitive experience.

All in all I am safe, I am loved, and I will be okay.

And so will you, I promise.