Disorganized Attachment: Heal By Embracing Your Needs

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Rick and Forrest explore disorganized, or “fearful,” attachment. This complex style occurs when emotional intimacy and distance both feel uncomfortable, and typically arises based on difficult life experiences. They unpack why this attachment pattern forms, what it feels like on the inside, and how it can change over time. Dr. Rick explains how to break the Catch-22 of disorganized attachment, and how fully embracing and expressing your needs can be the key to finding stability. Topics include hypersensitivity, repression, experiencing out, self-regulation, and why "boring" relationships can be transformative. You can watch this episode on YouTube. Key Topics: 0:00: Introduction 2:20: How attachment theory developed, and how it has evolved 11:20: How attachment styles shift based on life experience 15:25: Social environment and internal reliability 23:55: The catch 22 of healing disorganized attachment 29:35: Leveraging coping mechanisms for healing 32:20: Hypersensitivity and embracing your need for attunement 39:50: Repression, and experiencing out 45:45: Recognizing what’s true, and how reality is reliable 48:25: Caring for the body, and innate self-love 53:45: Unique therapeutic approaches to disorganized attachment styles 55:25: Embracing what you really want, and creating a coherent narrative 58:40: Bottom-up self-regulation, self-trust, and internalizing positive feedback 1:04:20: When stable relationships are “boring” 1:06:55: Self-respect and freedom in communication Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Head to acornsearly.com/beingwell or download the Acorns Early app to help your kids grow their money skills today. Get Notion Mail for free right now at notion.com/beingwell, and try the inbox that thinks like you For a limited time, get Headspace FREE for 60 days. Go to Headspace.com/BEINGWELL60. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/beingwell. Go to ZOE.com and find out what ZOE Membership could do for you. Use code WELL10 to get 10% off membership. Go to Zocdoc.com/BEING to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Connect with the show: Subscribe on iTunes Follow Forrest on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Follow Forrest on Instagram Follow Rick on Facebook Follow Forrest on Facebook Visit Forrest's website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to being well.
0:09.1	I'm Forrest Hanson.
0:10.1	If you're new to the podcast, thanks for joining us today.
0:12.7	And if you've listened before, welcome back.
0:15.6	If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you've probably heard one of our episodes on attachment theory.
0:20.2	And we've done dedicated episodes on secure, anxious, and avoidant attachment. Today we're going to be exploring
0:26.4	the fourth attachment style, disorganized attachment, which is also sometimes known as fearful.
0:32.2	This style is particularly complex. It combines elements of both anxious and avoidant. And because of this, it's really easy
0:39.1	for people to feel like they're damned if they do. They're damned if they don't. Closeness doesn't
0:44.0	feel great. Distance doesn't feel great. Oh, God, what do I do? And this can make working with
0:49.3	this style particularly difficult for people, and it can feel particularly bad to feel kind of saddled with it.
0:56.8	But hey, no worries.
0:58.7	There are things that people can do.
1:00.3	And to help us explore that, I am joined, as usual, by clinical psychologist, Dr. Rick Hansen.
1:05.1	Dad, how are you doing today?
1:07.1	I'm really good.
1:08.0	And I just want to say that I feel a lot of tenderness and support and respect
1:14.4	for people grappling with attachment issues, particularly in some ways the most challenging
1:21.2	of the three forms of insecure attachment, disorganized attachment.
1:25.4	Yeah, this is hard stuff for people. This is like some of the most difficult stuff that you can work with.
1:31.3	It's also never a person's fault definitionally. This is something that people get stuck with due to bad prior experiences by and large.
1:40.3	Nobody pops out, or I mean, if anybody does, it's an incredibly tiny percentage
	...

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