When Love Feels too Risky: Understanding the Push-Pull Pattern and How It Impacts Adult Relationships
Disorganized attachment is one of the most complex and painful attachment styles to live with especially in relationships. It often begins in childhood and shows up later in life as a confusing, often exhausting blend of wanting closeness and simultaneously fearing it. If you find yourself caught in intense emotional swings, craving intimacy but also feeling overwhelmed by it, you’re not alone, and you’re not broken. You may simply be living with the effects of disorganized attachment.
Let’s take a deeper look at how this attachment style develops, how it plays out in adult relationships, and how therapy, whether individual therapy, couples therapy, or online therapy in California, can help you move toward healing.
What Is Disorganized Attachment?
In simple terms, disorganized attachment is what happens when the nervous system doesn’t know where to go. On one hand, there’s a strong need for connection, support, and love. On the other, there’s a deep-rooted fear of getting too close because closeness might have once meant pain, punishment, rejection, or neglect. This internal conflict can feel like an emotional tug-of-war. It’s not that you don’t want love; it’s that your system has learned that love might not be safe.
Disorganized attachment typically develops when caregivers are both a source of comfort and a source of fear. That unpredictability wires the brain to expect chaos, to brace for the worst, and to stay in a constant state of hypervigilance or shutdown. These early experiences set the stage for how someone connects (or struggles to connect) in adult relationships.
Understanding Attachment Styles
Attachment theory helps us understand the different ways people connect based on their early life experiences. Our first relationships, usually with caregivers, set the blueprint for how we relate to others emotionally. Here’s a quick refresher on the main types:
Avoidant Attachment
People with avoidant attachment tend to keep others at a distance. They often pride themselves on independence, avoid vulnerability, and struggle to express their emotional needs. This style may form when caregivers were emotionally unavailable, critical, or dismissive of the child’s emotions. Over time, the child learns that closeness doesn’t feel safe or rewarding.
Anxious Attachment
This style forms when a child receives inconsistent caregiving sometimes present, sometimes not. The result is heightened anxiety around relationships. Adults with anxious attachment may appear clingy, need frequent reassurance, and worry about being abandoned. Their nervous systems are always bracing for disconnection.
Disorganized Attachment
Disorganized attachment combines elements of both avoidant and anxious attachment. It’s often rooted in trauma, abuse, neglect, or chaotic caregiving. These children grow up confused: “I want to be close to you, but being close to you scares me.” The caregiver was both the source of love and the source of fear. This creates internal disorientation that often leads to dissociation, panic, emotional shutdown, or intense emotional reactivity later in life.
What Causes Disorganized Attachment?
Disorganized attachment usually develops in environments where safety was inconsistent or completely absent. Some contributing factors might include:
Caregivers who were emotionally abusive, threatening, or unpredictable
Physical or emotional neglect
Caregivers who mocked or dismissed a child’s distress
Growing up in homes with substance abuse, domestic violence, or mental health instability
Caregivers who were themselves traumatized or dissociated
In essence, the child learns: “I want to go to you for comfort, but when I do, I feel worse.” That creates a survival-based strategy that follows them into adulthood.
How Common Is It?
According to data from the National Institute of Health, around 15% of the general U.S. population exhibits signs of disorganized attachment. But among individuals who’ve experienced abuse or neglect, the number skyrockets, up to 85%. It’s more common than you might think, especially in adults who grew up in stressful or emotionally unsafe environments.
How Disorganized Attachment Affects Adult Relationships
If you have a disorganized attachment style, your relationships might feel like a minefield. You may crave love, but as soon as someone gets close, you pull away or test them, sabotage the connection, or shut down completely.
Some common patterns include:
Struggling to trust others
Feeling unworthy of love or support
Being terrified of abandonment but also overwhelmed by intimacy
Picking emotionally unavailable partners
Alternating between emotional intensity and numbness
Being critical, reactive, or defensive in conflict
It’s a painful cycle: you want to feel safe with someone, but your nervous system tells you not to trust it. Therapy can help you interrupt this pattern and move toward something more secure.
Signs You May Have Disorganized Attachment
Some signs of disorganized attachment in adulthood include:
Emotional whiplash in relationships
Fear of intimacy mixed with fear of being alone
Feeling “too much” and “not enough” at the same time
Chronic people-pleasing
Emotional outbursts followed by guilt or shutdown
Numbing out or dissociating under stress
Anxiety that seems hard to explain or soothe
Recognizing these patterns is a powerful first step toward change.
Healing Disorganized Attachment With Therapy in California
The good news? Disorganized attachment is not permanent. You can heal. You can build what’s called an “earned secure attachment,” even if your early relationships didn’t provide the safety you needed.
Working with a skilled therapist through individual therapy in Hermosa Beach, couples therapy in Manhattan Beach, or online therapy across California can help you:
Understand your attachment history
Identify triggers and emotional patterns
Build emotional regulation skills
Practice new ways of relating
Strengthen your self-worth
Develop safe, secure connections
You’re not too damaged. You’re not too complicated. You just need a consistent, compassionate space to heal, and therapy can offer that.
Why Couples Therapy in South Bay Can Be Especially Helpful
If you’re in a relationship and struggling with disorganized attachment, couples therapy can be a game-changer. A trained therapist helps both partners recognize attachment wounds and understand each other’s emotional needs.
In couples therapy in Hermosa Beach or Redondo Beach, you can:
Create emotional safety
Learn how to co-regulate with your partner
Develop communication tools that don’t trigger shame or fear
Stop reenacting old patterns in your relationship
Learn to stay connected, even in conflict
This is especially powerful for those with disorganized attachment, who often struggle to repair ruptures or believe they’re allowed to depend on someone else.
What You Can Do Now
While therapy is the most effective path forward, there are also small ways to begin healing on your own:
1. Practice Mindfulness
Slowing down and checking in with your body can help interrupt the panic or freeze response. Breathwork, journaling, and meditation are great tools.
2. Get Curious
When you notice a strong reaction in a relationship, pause and ask: “What is this really about?” Often, it’s not about the current moment, but it’s about an old wound being reactivated.
3. Build Safety Routines
Do things that help your nervous system feel safe and grounded. This could be a walk by the ocean, a regular bedtime, or surrounding yourself with emotionally safe people.
Therapy in Hermosa Beach and Online Across California
Whether you’re dealing with disorganized attachment, relationship struggles, or the aftermath of trauma, therapy in Hermosa Beach and the South Bay area offers a safe place to land. If you’re elsewhere in the state, online therapy in California provides the same high-quality support from the comfort of your home.
You don’t have to keep living in survival mode. With the right support, healing is not only possible—it’s absolutely within reach.
