They say that when something ends, we learn something new about ourselves. Recently, I’ve learned about something called disorganised attachment, and it completely changed the way I viewed my relationships, whether with friends or romantically.
Before that, I had already heard of anxious and avoidant attachment styles. For those who don’t know, they are patterns in the way we relate to closeness and emotional safety with others.
Someone with an anxious attachment style fears abandonment and may seek reassurance when they feel uncertain. Someone with an avoidant attachment style protects themselves by creating distance, shutting down emotionally, or relying heavily on independence.
When I only knew about these two, I felt confused in my relationships because I could recognise both tendencies in myself. I had moments where I needed closeness, but also moments where I wanted to withdraw completely. It wasn’t until I spoke to my therapist that it finally clicked: disorganised attachment.
So then, what is it?
Disorganised attachment is more complicated. Your nervous system reacts as both anxious and avoidant. A part of you wants closeness and safety, but another part is terrified of it.
Sometimes something small, like a tone of voice or a moment of silence, triggers activation in your nervous system. At first, it can be subtle. Over time, if ignored, it becomes heavier, almost suffocating. Then the system looks for a way to regulate itself, called deactivation.
In other attachment styles, there is usually a clearer strategy. An anxious person may seek reassurance. An avoidant person may withdraw.
But when you’re both, you freeze.
Physically, it can feel like your chest drops and your stomach churns, like a silent panic attack. For me, it felt like my system didn’t know whether to move toward the person or away from them, not because I didn’t love them, but because of how much I did.
Both impulses existed simultaneously, and instead of choosing one, my body shut down entirely. From the outside, it may have looked like indifference, silence, or distance. But inside, it felt like chaos. I would often burst into tears without fully understanding why.
Love itself can become the trigger. Not because love is dangerous, but because closeness can awaken parts of the nervous system that learned, at some point, that closeness was unpredictable or unsafe.
So, when someone cares for me, something inside softens, but something else panics. I might feel warmth one moment, and then a wall appears, like an emotional blockage. My words disappear. My emotions become hard to access. It’s not a conscious choice, and it tends to happen before I even realise it.
Sometimes the shutdown happens precisely because I care so much. Because the connection matters. Because the possibility of losing it or hurting within it feels too overwhelming. So, the system protects itself in the only way it knows how: by freezing.
Learning about this doesn’t excuse the ways I may have hurt others or myself. But it helps me understand what was happening internally when, from the outside, things might have looked confusing or distant. Understanding it has also allowed me to feel something else: compassion.
Because when you understand something this big intellectually, but your emotions haven’t caught up yet, guilt can feel overpowering, because you blame yourself and because sometimes, you see the other person think it’s their fault too, but you can’t think or explain it in a way that makes sense emotionally.
People often criticise these emotional patterns, calling it emotional unavailability, distance, or saying that you’re too complicated. But if only they knew the desperation you feel in needing to escape the chaos inside while still craving connection.
It feels like being invisible in a room full of people you love, like slowly digging your own grave while knowing exactly what you’re doing. Like carrying a loneliness that no one else can see.
And maybe that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned. Sometimes when someone pulls away, it’s not because they didn’t care. Sometimes it’s because they cared more than their nervous system knew how to handle.
So let this be an apology, to those I may have hurt, but especially to myself.
And finally, let it be a reminder that what you ignore or don’t understand, you repeat. And what you do understand only matters if you allow yourself to feel it. Even when I only partially understood, I allowed myself to face the fear, to feel the emotions, and to release what I had been holding onto for years. I didn’t need to have everything figured out immediately, and through this process, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I can’t change the past, but I can move forward with more awareness, patience, and compassion, for myself and for the connections I care about.