Disorganised, (also called disoriented) in attachment theory, is, sadly, a term that I associate with many children growing up in families that are in the Focus Group.
As such it is important that anyone with ambition to support families affected by imprisonment has an understanding of the term and its implications.
My own opinion is that while children, as they grow to mature adults, can make sense of and even rationalise (what I described in previous posts) as ambivalent and avoidant attachment, it is far more difficult for children who experience disorganised attachment to do so.
Unlike children who experience secure attachment, they may find empathy difficult. One of the reasons for this is that their ability to mentalise is impaired. That is, guessing what others – including their own parents – are feeling or thinking.
A not uncommon manifestation of disorganised attachment is a rage, or disintegration, (reminiscent of a tantrum that a three year old might have) that the vast majority of the population have no appreciation or understanding of – as they rarely if ever experience it themselves in their adult lives.
These difficulties have implications for the type of modality that we choose when supporting people who grew up, or are growing up in such situations.
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With disorganised attachment we parents might display very inconsistent behaviour in general. We may be very angry (and/or violent) one minute and display great love the next, with no rational explanation or apparent reason for the sudden switch.
Certain members of the extended family may be feared and obedience, authority etc. is garnered through fear and strength rather than genuine respect.
As children we never know what to expect and can experience both love and fear and everything in between but have no way to figure out a reason why. This causes us to be confused and apprehensive, leading to an overall sense of deep insecurity. We can avoid relationships, or resist affection and feel that we do not deserve it.
Sometimes we appear distant but paradoxically it also causes us to seek closeness, a kind of extreme clinginess. This is the only way that we can feel safe – as it is too risky to venture too far from the caregiver for too long. Also, we might have grown up having to be on high alert all the time.
And we never learn to soothe our pain because we are too pre-occupied being on high alert. (More about this in posts 3.4.3.4 and 3.4.3.5).
Because we have never learned to soothe our own pain, rather than being open and honest and willing to ask for help we expect others to sense that we are in pain and soothe it for us. But the trouble with this is that others often get it wrong!
John Bowlby proposed that we can have different forms of attachment to different family members and even though attachment might be disorganised with parents it can be secure in respect of others in our life – which – obviously, is a protective factor for us. (In this, I have come across children that, on the surface, do not appear to have what could be described as secure attachment with anyone – and discovering those to whom they are attached takes time and patience).
As adults we can feel unloved and undeserving of love with roller-coaster kinds of relationships. We may be totally apathetic on one hand and demand great love on the other. We can be very difficult to live with as we are usually very demanding, emotionally.
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When I think of insecure disorganised attachment, I think of a house built on soft or swampy soil with insufficient pile-driving done to ensure stability, or (in the living world) a tree growing in sandy or gravelly soil where roots are thin and stunted, placing the very viability of the growing tree at risk.