The short answer: disorganised attachment is what happens when the person you most want comfort from is also the person who frightened you. You end up wanting closeness and fearing it at the same time, which produces the push and pull that partners find so bewildering. Below are the signs in adults, where it comes from, and what genuinely helps.
A quick reframe
When you pull someone close and then push them away within the same evening, you are not being difficult on purpose. Two systems are firing at once. One says “go to them.” The other says “it is not safe to need anyone.” Both are trying to protect you. Naming that out loud, to your partner, changes more than any technique I can give you.
A woman said something to me last year that I have thought about ever since.
She said: “I spend all week wanting him to come closer, and then he does, and I want to run.”
She was not being contrary. She was describing a disorganised attachment style almost perfectly, and she had been carrying it around for twenty years assuming it meant something was wrong with her.
It does not. It means something happened to her a long time ago, and her nervous system built a sensible strategy for a situation that no longer exists.
What disorganised attachment actually is
The other three attachment styles are all strategies that work, in their own way.
Anxious attachment says: get closer, stay close, do not let them out of sight. Avoidant attachment says: handle it yourself, need less. Secure attachment says: go to them, they will probably help.
Disorganised attachment is what forms when no strategy works. When the person who is meant to be your source of safety is also the source of the fear, a child cannot solve that. Go towards, and you go towards danger. Move away, and you lose your only comfort.
So the system does both. That is why it looks chaotic from outside. It is two survival responses running at once, and neither gets to finish.
You will also see this called fearful-avoidant attachment, and you may see the American spelling, disorganized attachment. Same pattern, three names. I have written about it under the other name in my piece on fearful-avoidant attachment, which covers more of the day to day relationship side.
Recognising yourself in this and not sure what to do with it?
A free 45 minute discovery call is a calm, private conversation about what is going on. No pressure, no pitch.
Book a free discovery callDisorganised attachment signs in adults
Disorganised attachment in adults is rarely dramatic from the outside. It tends to show up as a set of contradictions that the person themselves finds confusing.
- You want a serious relationship and feel trapped the moment you have one
- You test people. You may not call it that, but you set up small trials they have to pass
- Conflict feels genuinely dangerous, out of proportion to what is being argued about
- You can be extremely warm and then very cold within the same day
- You assume people will leave, and sometimes speed that up to get it over with
- Your emotions arrive at full volume with no dimmer switch
- Afterwards you feel ashamed and cannot fully explain what happened
- Calm, steady partners can feel oddly boring or suspicious to you
That last one catches people out. If chaos was the backdrop to love early on, steadiness does not always register as safety at first. It can register as absence.
The push pull relationship pattern, step by step
A push pull relationship has a rhythm to it, and once a couple can see the rhythm they stop taking each turn quite so personally.
| Stage | What happens | What the partner concludes |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Reaching | Real warmth, real closeness, genuine intimacy | “Finally, we are back on track” |
| 2. The alarm | Closeness registers as exposure. The old warning fires | Nothing yet. This part is invisible |
| 3. The push | Criticism, distance, or a fight about something small | “What did I do wrong?” |
| 4. The panic | Fear of having ruined it. Shame arrives | “Now they are being intense again” |
| 5. The repair | Rushing back in, apologising, overcorrecting | “I never know where I stand” |
Stage two is the one nobody sees, including the person it is happening to. That is where the work lives.
And notice how reasonable the partner’s conclusions are at every stage. They are responding accurately to what they can observe. This is why couples get stuck arguing about facts when the actual problem is a cycle. If that sounds familiar, the roles people fall into during these loops are worth understanding too, which I cover in the drama triangle.
Hot and cold relationship behaviour, explained kindly
“Hot and cold” is the phrase partners nearly always reach for, and I understand why. From the outside it looks like someone deciding, repeatedly, whether they want you.
From the inside it feels nothing like a decision.
What I hear described, over and over, is a kind of internal weather. The warmth is real. The withdrawal is also real. Neither one is the performance.
I say this because the word “games” gets used a lot with hot and cold relationship behaviour, and it does real damage. Someone who is playing a game is in control of it. Someone with a disorganised pattern is being driven by something older and faster than choice.
That is not an excuse for how it lands on you. Being on the receiving end is genuinely painful and you are allowed to say so. It is an explanation, and explanations are what let couples stop attacking each other’s character.
What causes disorganised attachment
This is the section I write most carefully, because it is the one people use against themselves.
Disorganised attachment usually forms where a caregiver was frightening or badly frightened themselves. That covers a wide range. Sometimes it is abuse. Often it is not.
It can be a parent with untreated depression who was warm on Tuesday and unreachable on Wednesday. A house where someone drank. A parent carrying their own unprocessed loss, who kept disappearing behind their eyes. Serious illness. A frightening separation. A caregiver who loved their child completely and was overwhelmed.
Inconsistency is the common thread. Not cruelty. A child can adapt to almost any rule, including a harsh one. What a child cannot adapt to is a rule that keeps changing, especially when the stakes are safety.
If any of that brings up more than you expected while reading, please treat that as information rather than a problem. Mind has straightforward, non-commercial guidance on getting support, and there is no prize for handling it alone.
★★★★★
“Steve was clear, professional yet warm and personable. He always asked how we were doing so it became bespoke every session and responded to what we needed that week. He diffused heated conversations which gave space for learning and reflected back what each of us said which hugely helped. We have learned a lot more about ourselves and each other. We got through massive differences in what we want for our futures. Now we are aligned and can happily move forward.”
Simran & Alastair, Google
Book a free discovery callDisorganised attachment in relationships, day to day
What does disorganised attachment in relationships look like when it is not a crisis? Mostly, it looks like effort.
Enormous effort, spent on things other couples do without noticing. Reading a partner’s tone. Deciding whether a short reply means anything. Managing the gap between what you want to say and what feels safe to say.
Partners often describe walking on eggshells. The person with the pattern is usually walking on eggshells too, about themselves.
There is a version of this that pairs with an anxious partner and a version that pairs with an avoidant one, and they run very differently. If your partner responds to your withdrawal by chasing harder, my piece on anxious attachment will help. If they respond by matching your distance, dismissive-avoidant attachment is the more useful read.
How to heal disorganised attachment
Healing here is slower than with the other patterns, and I would rather tell you that honestly than sell you a quick fix.
Step 1. Work with the body first. You cannot think your way out of an alarm that fires before thought. Slow breathing, feet on the floor, cold water on the wrists. Unglamorous, and it works. The goal is a nervous system that comes down from ten to a six, where conversation is possible again.
Step 2. Learn your own early warning. Everyone has a tell before the push arrives. A tight chest, a flat feeling, a sudden certainty that your partner is against you. Catch the tell and you get a choice you did not have before.
Step 3. Agree a shared signal in advance. With your partner, when things are calm, pick a word or a gesture that means “I am flooding, I need twenty minutes, I am coming back.” The coming back is not optional. That is the part that rewires it.
Step 4. Practise very small repairs. Not big apologies. Small returns, often. Every completed repair is evidence against the old prediction that closeness ends in danger.
Step 5. Get proper support for the trauma underneath. I am a coach. I work with the pattern as it shows up in your relationship now, and I am direct with clients when what they are carrying needs a trauma-trained therapist alongside. Plenty of people do both, and that combination tends to move fastest.
The thing that surprises people most is how much changes once a partner understands the cycle. Not fixes it. Understands it. Being met with “I can see you are flooding, I am not going anywhere” instead of “why are you like this” is, over months, genuinely reorganising.
If you love someone with a disorganised attachment style
- Be boringly consistent. Predictability is the medicine here, even when it feels like it is being ignored
- Say what you are doing and when you will be back. Every single time
- Do not match their intensity. One regulated person in the room changes the room
- Keep your boundaries about behaviour. Understanding a pattern does not mean accepting cruelty
- Expect testing, and try not to take the bait or the blame
- Get your own support. Loving someone through this is heavy and you are allowed to need help too
And a hard truth, because you deserve one. Consistency helps enormously, and it is not a cure on its own. If the person you love will not look at the pattern at all, there is a limit to what your steadiness can carry.
Why a steady partner can feel boring at first
This one deserves its own section, because it wrecks good relationships and almost nobody warns people about it.
If your early experience of love involved unpredictability, then intensity and love got wired together. Relief after fear feels like passion. Being on alert feels like caring. Someone who is simply consistent does not produce any of those sensations.
So a kind, reliable partner can feel flat. Not because anything is missing, but because the familiar signal is missing.
I have watched people leave genuinely good relationships over this and never quite be able to say why. They describe no spark. What they often mean is no alarm.
The way through is unglamorous. You stay long enough for boring to be reclassified as safe, which takes months rather than days, and you stop treating the absence of adrenaline as evidence about the relationship.
One client put it better than I ever have. She said the calm felt like a room with no furniture in it, until one day it felt like space.
Coaching, therapy, or both
People ask me this constantly with this particular pattern, so let me be straight about it.
I am a couples coach. I work on what is happening between you now: the cycle, the triggers, the repair, the practical tools you use on a Wednesday evening when it is going wrong. That is my job and I am good at it.
What I do not do is trauma processing. If what sits underneath this is significant childhood trauma, that belongs with a trauma-trained therapist, and I will say so plainly rather than keep you in coaching because you are in front of me.
| Coaching with me | Trauma therapy | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | The pattern between you now | The original experience |
| Direction | Forward, practical, tool-led | Back, processing, depth |
| Best when | You can both function and want change | Flashbacks, dissociation, ongoing distress |
| Typical length | 6 to 12 weeks | Often much longer |
Plenty of people do both at once, and in my experience that combination moves fastest. The therapy loosens what is underneath while the coaching changes what happens in the kitchen on a Tuesday.
Where disorganised attachment sits against the other styles
| Wants closeness | Fears closeness | Main strategy under stress | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secure | Yes | No | Turns towards, repairs, recovers |
| Anxious | Strongly | No | Pursues, seeks reassurance |
| Avoidant | Cautiously | Yes | Withdraws, self-soothes alone |
| Disorganised | Strongly | Strongly | Both at once, in sequence |
People often ask whether this is the same as a personality disorder. It is not. Disorganised attachment is a relational pattern learned in early relationships. It can overlap with other difficulties and it is not a diagnosis, and I would be wary of anyone on the internet handing you one.
I work with couples in person at my practice in Stockport and online across the UK, including plenty of people who come on their own first. If you want to see how that works, the couples therapy in Stockport page lays out the process.
Tired of the push and pull?
Book a free 45 minute discovery call. We will map what is actually happening between you, and I will be honest about whether I am the right person to help.
Book a free discovery callFrequently Asked Questions
What is disorganised attachment?
What are the signs of disorganised attachment in adults?
Is disorganised attachment the same as fearful-avoidant attachment?
What causes a disorganised attachment style?
How do you heal disorganised attachment?
Why do I push away the people I love most?
Can a push pull relationship ever work?
Is disorganised attachment a mental health diagnosis?
If you have read this far and felt exposed, I would gently point out what that means. You are looking directly at something most people spend a lifetime avoiding.
That counts for a great deal more than you think.
So here is my question for you. If your nervous system had genuinely good reasons for building this, what might it need now in order to believe those reasons have passed?
Take care, ~Steve~