Grief and Loss in Disorganized Attachment Styles

When you're the kinda person that gets a free donut like this and instead of quickly throwing it away... might sit there nonchalantly picking each hair off ( or imagine doing this), only after to processes the fact that it's probably something you should throw away [then throws it away and moves forward].

Personal Reflection

Grief and Loss

Disorganized Attachment

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Grief and Loss as a State or... style of Existence

Grief and loss, otherwise known as bereavement, in the diagnostic bible of mental health, looks like depression, includes most symptoms of it, but isn't labeled it, because identifiable evidence of having experienced a loss prior to it makes it a reasonable exception.

I'm not entirely sure what people had in mind when writing the DSM-V, but I can only imagine they hoped experiences of grief and loss would resolve themselves with time, whether or not a person sought therapy for it.

This makes me sad, because its literally a parallel of what they expect out of children showing signs of attachment issues.

Then, society seems to judge situations like this, without attempting to understand or help in them:

Grief and loss situations experienced by those with non-secure attachment styles appearing nonexistent, forced, awkward, or delayed.

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What I wish more people knew about Grief, Loss, and Attachment Styles

The first, grief and loss is really all about losing the meanings we built about something, someone, and what it meant to ourselves and bout ourselves.

The second, attachment style, is like a formula for making learning associations between all the things we experience, in order to assign and create meanings about things we may or may not have to grieve about losing.

If you can't tell from the above, they are deeply connected. Read that bold/ italic portion again.

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Disorganized Attachment as a formula for experiencing Grief and Loss

I'll get straight to the point. Developing a disorganized attachment style is an early response to surviving a lifetime of anticipatory grief and losses.

Let that soak in for minute.

The perspective from which Disorganized Attachment interprets the meaning of a 'Win' or Loss is usually attributed it to one of the two mindsets they are less consciously in, when either outcome occurred.

If a 'Win,' it serves as positive reinforcement (the addition of positive meaning) for them to lean more into either their sense of hyper-independence (inside the self) or sense of enmeshment (outside of the self) with the thing/ person/ hobby they are currently involved with, while pulling even more away from the other.

If a Loss, it serves as negative reinforcement (the threat of, or taking away of, positive meaning) for them to want to shut down, run away, deny, or completely withdraw from either their phase of hyper-independence or enmeshed sense of one with whatever person/ activity/ etc.. they've thrown themselves into, while running towards a phase of the other.

From a emotional survival stand point, disorganized attachment learning patterns actually do make a lot of sense. The problem is, they're highly unrealistic for surviving happily in a world with others who aren't living in survival mode and motivated by anticipatory losses, but rather living for experiences and motivated by curiosity and growth.

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What Happens when Big Losses are Experienced by Someone with Disorganized Attachment?

Remember, this is someone whose fight or flight system is always anticipating grief and loss as a baseline. The difference is, we're currently talking about grief and losses that are a). unavoidable, b). can span across periods of life or even the lifespan, and c). occur outside of one's day-to-day relationship, habits, and preferences.

When encountering any combo, it can put one in a position of the very helplessness and loneliness that created their disorganized attachment style to begin with... but this time without an 'update' to manage the less commonly occurring situations like big losses we can't just run or cling on to for dear life.

Additionally, if considering the losses of people, I think it depends on one's baseline of how much they actually let those people in, in the first place. Losing someone you didn't spend everyday of your life with, or talking to as frequently as others, might feel even more distant for someone with disorganized attachment.

What's confusing is when 'not grieving normally' creeps into your mind and suggests something must be wrong.

So what happens? The loss serves as a catalyst to a chain reaction of effects from...

Subconscious Dissociation

Some might call this a form of 'avoidance,' but I would argue to consider it more of a kind of clinging to what is.

It's like dissociating towards, or into something's old meaning, as opposed to away from what it's potential new one could hold.

Because even if it's meaning didn't feel that deep, a deeper fear of losing whatever that something is/was, without fully understanding the breadth of its meaning (subconsciously) in the first place is even more daunting to the change-hating minded.

It's like having to solve a math problem you can old remember the the second portion of, but not the first and last, so naturally one might want to give up, or....

press a 'pause' button on, to finish later.

Struggling with patterns of uncertainty within transitional circumstances, is NOT something that is limited to being seen within our relationships- I hope you're understanding this by now.

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Processing and/or Reprocessing Grief and Loss, from a Disorganized Attachment Mindset

I'm not going to sugar coat this- it's a more complicated process than people think. It requires time, patience, and commitment to wanting to rewire patterns of learning and memory association, more than whatever particular loss triggered attention to them.

Examples of losses that bring people into therapy with me that are linked to a Disorganized Attachment Style:

• Rough breakup

• Loss of a job one expected to be promoted in

• Identity issues (inter group ones and intra group ones (ie. Bisexuality or being biracial)

• Perfectionism

• Process Addictions (ie. eating disorders, gambling, substance, social scrolling, etc...)

• Loss of a parent or grandparent

• Empty nesting

• Going no contact with parents

• etc...

because processing one loss of any of the limited list of the above can often serve a mere window into a whole system of practical and impractical habits one's picked up post developing their general associative learning style, which inadvertently can bud out of their attachment style.

General steps in Therapy I've personally experienced and the Therapy I provide for Disorganized Attachment amidst coping with Grief and Loss

1. Hunkering down to identify the true subconscious meaning beneath one's loss

2. Identifying prior experiences with threat to a similar theme

3. Getting to earlier, often the earliest, experiences or period of life when they experienced the physiology behind it, and when and how they coped or wished they had been supported in getting through the experiences.

4. Starting the Memory-based Learning work

   1. Somewhere along one's timeline of experiences shared that feels activating enough to elicit a tolerable window of emotional pain behind a specific experiences likely themes of helplessness and vulnerability that did not provide comfort- OR-

   2. Starting with processing the particular loss at hand, because it is most disturbing for the person in the moment, with them fully understanding that the benefits may not necessarily extend all the way back to childhood, nor prevent future scenarios from arising that could trigger their similarly undesirable ways of responding.

5. Reevaluating for effectiveness and potentially, or not, repeating a similar process to cope with other instances related to the same theme in the past, or discovering and beginning on another intertwined theme of emotional learning contributing to ones disorganized attachment patterns.

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My Advice for those with or without a Disorganized Attachment Style,

that can identify with the conflicting and sometimes constipated emotional processing issues discussed in this post would be to start noticing patterns of meaning that you less consciously have assigned things and your patterns of reactions and responses to when they feel and/or are actually threatened.

• Notice if each thematic system is functioning adaptively or not.

• Does it's functioning make sense given the circumstances?

• Could you imagine both a close friend and general acquaintance responding in a similar fashion?

• Does the pattern show up frequently enough in your life to determine whether its presence or lack of presence would impact the quality of life you're living for better or worse?

These are just some of the literal questions I tend to ask myself and my clients, to determine whether or not they want to explore their options in dealing with these issues, and if they want to, how throughly they want to go in processing them.

Because like I mentioned earlier, working with disorganized attachment issues in general, requires time, patience, and continual commitment to making the lasting response changes that would've been helpful in the past, are practical in the present, and will benefit how one experiences circumstantially similar instances in the future.

Disorganized Attachment Identity and Coming of Aging

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Aging- a potential Tailspin if you've got Attachment Issues

If you're a Millennial like me, you're probably becoming much more aware of signs of aging.

Now, if you grew up to feel like a cycling byproduct of people pleasing and rebellion, listen up and read on.

Conceptual Transitions can be more, less, or not all Traumatic

Aging inevitably triggers an awareness of natural changes, seemingly out of our control, that impact how we perceive ourselves: physical appearance, social status, future goals, esteemed abilities, and running achievement lists.

Our western culture has a hyperawareness towards the ‘losses’ associated with aging appearances, bodies, and abilities. Internalized beliefs suggest aging comes with more and more red tape to how we’ll continue experiencing our external realities, whilst on journeys to pause, stop, or turn back and preserve the internal realities we want to experience them with.

This is a problem in general, but a particularly hard one to navigate for those with untreated or treated disorganized attachment (DA) patterns.

Transitions are Change, aka. the Fuel for Disorganized Attachment Issues

When you've experienced DA, it's like your brain's algorithm formed associative learning patterns in the form of cling-or-run responses. It's likely that early experiences in inconsistent and/or chaotic environments reinforced this style of coping.

The interesting part is that many of these circumstances aren't what you'd expect right off the bat.

Sure, some might include family dynamics with DV or drug use, but still others include situations like

• Having had many caregivers with different parenting styles

• Dismissive adult responses to coping with change in form of questions

• Caregivers who were supportive and loving, but inconsistently accessible

• Starkly different surroundings and expectations at home vs school

• Having no role models for certain aspects of one's healthy identity integration

• Moving multiple times across the country or between places with different lifestyle norms

• Shifts in familial values based on parents' perceived satisfaction within their relationships, income, political views, self-perception, healthy or less healthy means for coping

• I could go on....

But regardless of how disorganized learning patterns were originally introduced, they can be traumatic, and honestly lead to increases in the probability that one will respond to new circumstances that feel similar to past ones, with more complex traumatic responses than the original.

This is where we often see individuals suffocating for reprieve in the form of countless types of addictions, over identification with traits and achievements more in one's control, or even straight up declaration that one's gravitation towards chaos is because it's familiar-- as if to justify the patterns nonexistent end.

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Imagine this:

You have a road bike as a form of mental and emotional transportation throughout life. But, because of the majority of trails you've experienced in childhood, it get's tweaked for you to use as more of a mountain bike. Then in adulthood, imagine trying to go back to riding it as road bike, without the mechanics to remove it's hypersensitive shock-absorbing system.

The going back and forth between the two+ environments over the course of a lifetime- without making any mediating adjustments like you probably would with environmental ones- is what experiencing unaddressed disorganized attachment can feel like.

Each environmental transition is representative of ANY big life change that requires an invisible mental & emotional transition to occur in parallel.

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All of these exhausting sounding, but stereotypically non-traumatic seeming experiences result in subconscious learning messages (see below), reinforcing a disorganized attachment styled response system.

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Disorganized Attachment beliefs/ rules to abide for mental & emotional survival

1. Sources of comfort are never the same, so life generally feels unsafe

2. To feel as safe as possible, I can mentally & emotional try to prepare for unpredictable disasters with slight clues like one weird look or gut feeling

3. Hyperawareness to the slightest signs of change provides a head start in processing any threatening emotional consequences, to quickly decide what I might need to do to best handle them, maintain what is most valuable to me, and/or totally avoid their loss

4. Feelings of loneliness dissipate when I prioritize⏤ above all else⏤ the comfort I feel in whatever relationship, hobby, or work project I've got going on at the time

5. When & if my over-sacrifice starts making me feel stiffled, trapped, and/or limited in the big picture, just dropping it and running away is always an option, until I'm ready to try again... and again

Over time, identity can seem to become just as transient as one's styles of damage control responding,

making a person with disorganized attachment inherently confused about whom they are, what aspects about themselves they value the most, and what they should consider investing in more because of their subjugated social capital.

But let's recap for a minute- So far when considering the DA experience, we've got one response system highly sensitive to responding to chaos with more chaos, and a guiding self-belief system founded in confused, but compliant shape-shifting to keep up with it.

Now, consider 2 more variables:

1). The smoke and mirrors nature of covetable Social norms/ ideals

2). The visible and functional affect of aging (consider it like puberty)

When lived experience prepares you for chaos, it doesn't necessarily mean you want it. Ultimately, I think all of us crave the stability and safety in knowing some things that are predictable- just to different degrees.

In cases of disorganized attachment, this is felt to an extreme, because mental & emotional, reality-shifting consequences are the ultimate detriment from which one's trauma response of a lifestyle formed.

Disorganized attachment brains are wired for preparation, to control what one can, before outcomes ensue. It's not about controlling the actual outcomes, rather maneuvering one's mental & emotional suspension system to best accommodate them.

Enters 'aging'.......

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The Onset of Aging when you have a Brain Wired for Disorganized Attachment

What do you know, another major transition. Namely, one that's naturally occurring for all of us whether we like it, approve of it, and have come to terms with it or not.

And let me remind you, aging, or rather our self-perception of aging impacts the meaning of our physical appearance, social status, future goals, esteemed abilities, and running achievement lists.

Literally the idea of aging is probably a trigger to shut down, avoid, or ignore for everyone whose experienced patterns of disorganized attachment learning.

And the worry isn't in stopping or controlling ones aging, but rather the anticipation of and wishing one had more of a heads up of when and how the natural, yet unpredictable onset of changes with aging is going to impact one's self-concept.

So, if we imagine the road bike with mountain bike like changes analogy again,

it's like all of one's future paths (all terrains), which one already anticipates to continue struggling to move between, appear to be getting narrower and narrower.

Honestly, as Professional with previously treated, and now functional disorganized attachment issues, just writing this kinda makes me feel uneasy...

If the Fear with Aging is of being helpless, the goal after noticing signs of it⏤ with Disorganized Attachment or not⏤ should be to think about avenues for self-fulfillment beyond shifting to extremes and relying too heavily on specific abilities and appearances.

The struggle with this for those with disorganized attachment (at least in the US) can make it feel like an uphill battle to even begin considering the above goal. Experience has taught:

1. Society praises extremes & values independence more than connect culture (ie. "work hard, play hard," perfectionism, workaholics, etc...)

2. Memory networks have literally been conditioned to respond in extremes

3. If you have high-functioning disorganized attachment patterns, you probably learned that success can only be experienced in one area of life at a time

So in reality, aging more adaptively, which may or may not be considered graceful, will really require one to identify, unpack, face, and reprocess the various layers of messages learned, like the above, that conditioned one's development of disorganized response patterns FIRST.

Other wise, attempts to brainstorm sustainable paths of self fulfillment while aging will only seem more and more futile as life progresses.

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Reprocessing Disorganized Attachment's Past Learning to integrate a more secure sense of Self-Concept, to then more adaptively age with

Healing requires another look at the following DA learning tenets from earlier:

Disorganized Attachment beliefs/ rules to abide for mental & emotional survival

1. Sources of comfort are never the same, so life generally feels unsafe

2. To feel as safe as possible, I mentally & emotional try to prepare for unpredictable disasters with tiny clues like one weird look or gut feeling

3. Hyperawareness to the slightest signs of change provides a head start in processing any threatening emotional consequences, to quickly decide what I might need to do to best handle them, maintain what is most valuable to me, and/or totally avoid a loss

4. Feelings of loneliness dissipate when I prioritize⏤ above all else⏤ the comfort I feel in whatever relationship, hobby, or work project I've got going on at the time

5. When & if my over-sacrifice starts making me feel stifled, trapped, and/or limited in the big picture, just dropping it and running away is always an option, until I'm ready to try again... and maybe again.

Each tenet ultimately represents a piece of internalized learning that needs to be reprocessed for someone with disorganized attachment to feel more comfortably functional as a version of themselves, where chaotic response patterns truly feel as unnecessary as they're already, logically understood to be.

Let's look at them based on themes of safety, belonging, power (ie. esteem), and control (ie. freedom)

• Baseline of Feeling emotionally unstable because Comfort Sources weren't Consistent or consistently Available

• Hyper-flexibility in responding (ie. code-switching) was required for Emotional Survival and building a sense of Belonging to support it

• Control through Predictability & Choice (Freedom) became THE tool for accessing Safe-feeling moments of peace within supportive relationships, and later on- in sources of Esteem & Self-fulfillment

• Situational changes trigger threat to one or both senses of Esteem & Belonging and activate Freedom's role in responding with extremes again, like it originally did to secure early Social & Emotional Survival

It's important to note that reprocessing these learning themes will require a mind body approach, because all traumatic learning is not stored in any one particular way.

Sometimes the traumatic learning is clean simple and in effectively stored in mind and body, without trickling in later on to negatively impact life experiences after.

Other times it's it's in pieces where logic is healthfully up to date with what is past, but the body and nervous system still hold on to details experienced in the past.

And still other times, different perspectives within the same memories or periods of life are linked to various unrelated or intertwined traumatic learning themes that each need to be reprocessed separately before being reprocessed as a whole.

I'm not going to lie, this process [reprocessing disorganized attachment patterns] is complicated. It's not necessarily as time consuming as you might think, but way less intuitive than I've even tried to explain here.

So, here's what I might think about if I were you... or me in the past, before I knew about anything I was going through, other than I was all over the place, exhausted, probably exhausted my parents, and knew something was off, but not too off to keep pressing the issue with providers like me today, for fear of being labeled 'crazy,' Bipolar, having a split personality (aka DID), or a personality disorder.

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Minimization is Self-Gaslighting

Pay more attention to complex emotions, even in mundane situations. Ignoring will reinforce chronic self-invalidation, keeping us all trapped in trauma-bonded cycles of what we might presume to be with just control and freedom, but occurs within an over-protective foundation of expired, but deeply internalized search, rescue, and maintain missions for our peace, comfort, and belonging.

Now, if simply being aware of these patterns and trying to retrain yourself into believing that they are no longer necessary isn’t enough to break free from them, I strongly encourage you to speak up and out with any questions you might have and trauma professional with attachment experience may have answers to (I wish I had sooner).

Better yet, straight up explore the idea of investing in Complex Trauma Therapy.

Complex Trauma Therapy (not to be considered interchangeable with event-based trauma therapies) has the potential to enhance your quality of life just as it did for me and continues to do for my clients.

Contrary to popular belief, complex trauma and trauma therapies aren’t just for the most horrific events. They may have been created for those situations, but can also effectively treat any kind of mind-body learning experience details that are expired, but still clinging to you and causing you problems in the present.

Personally, EMDR Therapy is what worked for me to achieve what I would professionally consider today to be a healthfully functioning sense of memory network pathways built upon disorganized attachment learning.

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Final Thoughts for you to Consider

We can choose to stop and take breaks when we feel they might be beneficial.

Taking a break or needing a pause is not the same thing as avoiding things due to cowardice, quitting because you already see yourself as a failure, refusing to quit because you're not that kind of person, or worse becoming a burdedning risk for self-harm and/or suicide.

I know I'm being blunt, but someone's gotta be....

But perceptions aside, reprocessing all the maladaptive meaning you've collected over the years from internalizing your experiences from a disorganized attachment frame of reference will clear this all up.

For now though, take a break to consider the type of person you want to become moving forward and how you might've learned to deter from it's becoming in the past.

Those are honestly gems for therapist like me to hear clients are thinking about in the very begging of their healing journeys.

Also, there 100% is a more integrative and adaptive path for YOU, that’ll guide all parts of YOU towards becoming the version of YOU that functions most comfortably with disorganized attachment.

Maybe you'll find you path is through EMDR Therapy, maybe not. Just keep an open mind and take a break to think before you commit to any one.

With professional & more personal understanding than you can imagine,

Carolyn L. Downes, LMHC

📍a Passionate Complex Trauma Therapist with Disorganized Attachment

Attachment Trauma: How Attachment Styles can shape Identity Development

WHAT THE START OF AN

ATTACHMENT ISSUE CAN FEEL LIKE

Expand for a Quick, Non-threatening Exercise →→→

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Attachment trauma is when positive expectation turns disappointment, usually followed by a logical understanding that a preferential relationship with a thing, person, etc.. is over, without the emotional closure necessary to stop the pattern of of subconsciously yearning and looking for it elsewhere.

We crave a past feeling, yet fear either a) finding it and losing it again, b) finding it at the expense of a more secure, self-reliant source, or c) both—losing it and only regaining it at an unbearable cost, trapped in a cycle.

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What's scary is that seemingly harmless attachment styles, or patterns of relating to anything, seriously impact identity development, healthfully or traumatically.

How Attachment Trauma plays out within us, when s*** goes south between us (3 Parts)

1. Learning What is Self vs. Other

   
   

We develop an emotional need for connection with those who provide basic survival needs like food, water, and shelter. This need arises from socialization, typically involving our closest caregivers.

We absorb countless social messages, but what’s often overlooked is how we form beliefs about ourselves and how we relate to situations based on early interactions.

Self vs Other Messages- Attachment Breakdown

Anxious Attachment: Fear of losing connections outside of self leads to clinging, because early focus was on maintaining comfort rather than exploring independence (ie. didn't fully feel secure enough to get to focus on self-development).

Avoidant Attachment: Reliance on self and things within one's control, because early attachment figures provided inadequate comfort/ security, leading to mistrust and a focus on solely personal abilities to cope ( ie. compartmentalizing what is self vs other- almost as means to prevent 'cross-contamination').

Disorganized Attachment:  Shifting between self-reliance and dependency/codependency in cycles, driven by unpredictable care. Constantly anticipating chaos and reacting to it (ie. running towards self-reliance when feeling ever so slightly smothered by others, and clinging to those same people when feeling an empty loneliness creeping in).

Secure Attachment:

Motivated to flexibly identify & turn to various sources of comfort and meaning (inside and outside of the self). Early experiences of open communication and trust allow exploration without fear of losing stability or self-reliance. Recognizes the difference between temporary feelings and deeper insecurities.

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2. Discovering Choice & Control

Around the age of 3, we begin to realize that all of these meanings we've been collecting, can also be impacted and influenced by ourselves, our choices, opinions, and actions!

We continue to develop patterns of relational learning from general exposure to things in our immediate environments, but also differential learning ones based on how our choices or actions hold the power to impact responses in the world around us.

These bidirectional learning patterns shape the 'attachment styles' we all love to discuss in the context of relationships.

They fuel our less conscious motivations behind how we see ourselves, how we want to be seen by others, and what we decide to to do in order to reinforce or try to run away from those perceptions.

Now, when the sources we attach to only provide the comfort and security we crave temporarily (link in the food exercise above), under circumstances that cause us to respond in ways that prevent self-exploration or promote it as a means for protection as opposed to healthy development, or inconsistently enough to make us hyper responsive to shifts in emotional needs, we develop traumatic attachment patterns, or 'attachment trauma.'

Choice & Control Messages- Attachment Breakdown

Anxious Attachment:

"I will do anything for those important to me. This fulfills my internal emotional needs."

Avoidant Attachment:

"I can and will do everything in my power to be everything I will ever need."

Disorganized Attachment:

"I will go to whatever extreme I can to offset a waning emotional need, even if it means it'll temporarily have to sacrifice another emotional need."

Secure Attachment:

"I will try my best to do or access what is within my control/ available to me, and that will be enough."

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3. Identity Exploration and Development

   
   

Our caregiving environment and attachment patterns shaped how much space and under what conditions we could explore who we are. External validation highlighted certain traits while others were overshadowed.

In other words, some traits had more room to develop than others.

With attachment trauma, this becomes risky because many traits that were emphasized, while socially desirable, were originally trauma responses.

In people with attachment trauma, we often see quick development of identity masks and a slower development of building blocks for a separate entity called 'identity trauma,' which will most likely surface 15-20 years down the line ↓

Identity Development Messages- Attachment Breakdown

Anxious Attachment: 

The self is within others I surround myself with → "I am the caregiver..." to a fault.

See me for trauma therapy years later, often reporting feeling like imposters.

Avoidant Attachment: 

The self is everything I am & can be, without them → "I'm the independent person..." to a fault. See me for trauma therapy years later, often reporting feeling confident but incredibly lonely.

Disorganized Attachment: 

The self is unfortunately fleeting between them and me → "I am an intensely passionate person..." to a fault. See me for trauma therapy years later, often reporting feeling lost and lonely, and confused.

Secure Attachment:

The self is as dynamic and multidimensional as the complex circumstances I find myself in, inside and out → "I am many things, never everything, but always enough." Don't see me years later for identity, self-esteem, or attachment issues in therapy... unless for addressing trauma related to specific traumatic events or episodes of life.

Attachment Trauma is based in experience, which is fueled by learning. Here's my favorite part about that- learning can't be unlearned, but our responses to it and the parts we emphasize can 100% be.

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Interested in therapy with me? Check out what I'm all about here:

www.carolynleelmhc.com

xoxo,

a Passionate Trauma Therapist with past trauma