Disorganized Attachment and Dissoiciation

My mind is rambling here.

I'm wondering is there is anyone who has experienced an association with this.

I know.

It would make total sense, and it's probably textbook, but I would like to hear thoughts on it. (If that's ok.)

Ya know, the feeling of wanting to be heard, valued and loved but being afraid to reach out for it.

The feeling that if you do, you will be shunned away or of no importance.

You don't matter, but that's all you want or need.

You are a little one and you just need to know that you are safe and ok.

This whole attachment thing with t/counselors.

How do you learn how to be ok, if you can't feel that?

Where do you find it if you have never experienced safety and a feeling of being wanted and ok?

I think I "go away" when I feel the need of comfort. I'm afraid of "being there" and being pushed away or neglected.

Ya know, I'm 53 years old and it still hurts me to say this and feel this at this age, as it did when the push away happened.

Just saying.

Again, I'm just rambling, but I would value any comments of connection that anyone has.

Trail.

Second thought.......

Have you made a connection with it as a hinderance for your healing?

That is where I was going with this, but I totally lost my train of thought.

Does disorganized attachment hold you back from trusting the people who really want to help you because you can't trust them?

Is a sense of trust for anyone who wants to be there really there?

I can believe it (a sense of trust) with my mind, but I question it internally, and it's a battle that shuts me down.

It's so hard to put words to and much harder to put feelings to.

Yes I think it is all tied in together. Things I have read on DID therapy and EMDR and dissociation all tie it in together too.
And yes disorganized attachment really hinders me in therapy. When I most need support I push away and isolate because that is too vulnerable and experience has taught me that closeness hurts. I am experiencing that push pull thing very intensely right now. The two needs for support and protection are on opposite sides of a very wide divide. One side is howling out in desperation as they are pulled deep into the internal abyss by the others.

Yes, I experience exactly the same thing you mentioned. It is difficult to manage and work through when you have different parts of yourself that feel different ways. It creates an internal struggle inside. It makes it hard to know which feeling is correct or what decision you should make.

I was thinking about this earlier this morning...

"Ya know, the feeling of wanting to be heard, valued and loved but being afraid to reach out for it.

The feeling that if you do, you will be shunned away or of no importance."

I have problems with open and honest communication because I do not trust people. I don't trust that my words will be heard, and if by some chance I get listened to, I just know my words are only being heard so they can be ripped to shreds now or in the future or somehow used against me, to get me. Whatever. I just know it's going to come back to bite me so it's best to keep my mouth shut... hurts less being invisible than it does to speak up and be disregarded and/or hurt. I don't really think anyone ever will do right by me. I don't know how to think anything else.

I wonder, for me anyway, if I actually have to trust people or if it's okay enough to just insert trusting actions. Like, I don't have to believe it, I just have to do it. Maybe the believing will come later. I tried the whole open and honest communication earlier this week with someone. I just knew going into it that it would be awful.. braced myself for worst of the worst. Prepared myself for a few hours to have that talk. Heart rate went through the freakin roof, but I did it. And it turned out okay. It wasn't even a big deal, but it was really disturbing to me. But after, I think now maybe, hm, maybe I can do that again. So, I will try again later. I wonder if I do this enough and get enough okay outcomes, maybe that is how I will get trust. I have nothing real from my past to draw on. The one safe I remember, I think that was mostly in my head. I dunno. Maybe I can make some in the future though. Maybe if I am luckier, this new found idea will stick around and not vanish into oblivion on me. I tend to derail myself like a champ. Anyway...

Yeah, this stuff all kinds of messes up my healing, my progress, my relationships, my everything. It has for years.

L.P.

This part of your post really stood out to me:

Prepared myself for a few hours to have that talk. Heart rate went through the freakin roof, but I did it. And it turned out okay. It wasn't even a big deal, but it was really disturbing to me. But after, I think now maybe, hm, maybe I can do that again.

First, I think it's awesome that you managed to go through with it, despite how anxious you were. I'm especially glad it turned out OK. (I do that too...torture myself by imagining the worst, but the worst doesn't usually happen. )

If you keep showing courage to communicate directly with others -- even though you feel afraid or anxious -- and things turn out well consistently with certain people, you will slowly build more and more trust in them. On the contrary, if you communicate with certain people and it turns out badly, you will learn that those individuals do not warrant your trust.

yes. definitely can understand and relate. struggle with this too. it is hard to fully trust anyone because people are human, and they will at some point say or do something that will trigger something for me/us.

i have to try to, if i can, remove myself from the emotional part of that and try to see it in another way and remind myself they are human and have flaws too. it depends on the situation, but i have found that is helpful when someone says something that triggers/upsets me but know that they don't mean it. i have a habit of taking things the wrong way or sometimes having things get bigger in my head from an association of something than it was ever intended to be.

i don't know how to really put trust in people, and it also extends to myself. i am trying to learn how to help myself/the others be safe when things start to become big and scary. i do a lot of talking, self care, etc. and find ways in the moment to try to get through it and calm things.

it is hard to find that balance with others and even myself and how to keep things somehow stable. it's a work in progress.

These statements really stand out for me. It's one of the most difficult sticking points in therapy because, while I have never asked for any of this from my therapist, she has continually pointed out to me that I need to learn to hug myself, and for those inside to comfort each other. It feels like such a cruel thing to say because, like you, I don't know how to conjure up something for myself that I haven't experienced.

I'm starting to understand what my therapist means, and I can see how she's right, but it's just enormously painful and hard not to hear it from her in shaming/rejecting tones--especially since this isn't even something I've brought up to her.

And yes, resoundingly, it interferes with my ability to recover from old wounds.

This is how I actually experience trust most often. Not as a feeling of safety in the beginning, but rather a fearful leap into the dark that turns out okay. With a couple people that fearful leap has gradually become less intense with repetition, so that seems like progress to me. To be able to take that leap, in spite of the fear—that’s what courage is in my opinion. And over time I’ve put less hope into changing my feelings and more into changing my actions. I figure the trusting feelings will have to come after my experiences change, and risking that is going to continue to take a lot of courage (and caution).

Thanks for this thread

Thank you for your replies to my post. Sincerely.

I didn't really remember posting this at two o'clock on that morning. It came to me when I woke up the next morning and I went back and read my post.

This is really a very hard place for me. It feels like this is the hardest and most resistant part of me so far. It hurts.

It's like I know that I want it, trust and honesty, but I'm terrified of it.

I don't know it.

I don't know what it feels like or what the experience is.

I have no knowledge of what it looks like or feels like.

I do know that I want to know it and experience it.

A mental image -

I'm there and watching or in a place that I want to be real and honest and open.

There is a glass wall in front of me and I'm straining to make it happen, wanting it.

Numb.

I'm banging my head on the glass, numb and so alone.

I don't know how.

It's panicky feeling.

It feels like if I can't get past this I will never be ok.

Not whining or asking for attention.

Just being real.

Another second thought ......

It makes me internally angry.

It feels like a wound that is worse than any other wound I've encountered or have found healing for.

I'm struggling with my mom's manipulation and she's sick.

She has not earned my respect but I feel so guilty.

This is not my fault and I so wish I didn't have to figure out how to heal from it.

Blah blah blah blah blah

I wish we could sit together and talk about this and I (and you if you relate) not feel so alone.

Sorry if that's too much.

Yes. This is the worst wound. It's the first one, so intolerable it made the splits begin. Now I'm lame in that place. I just can't make myself walk on this broken limb. The small victories are so tiny, and the mountain I want to climb is so tall... The only way I can keep going is to keep my head down, and just see the next step. People are hard. Pets are easier, innocent. So I figure if I can love them and trust them maybe I can learn. At least get used to feeling warmth without fear there. It's hard finding people who deserve trust with my fragile heart and immense oddity, too. I'm not easy to love, I'm not easy to know. I hide in the dark for years before I let anything "real" become visible. I don't know. I feel like I'm rambling. I have found a few people who I've deemed worth taking some risks with, and only one who I can say knows me. So there's some hope there.

Yes. I agree it is the worst wound. I pray there is healing for it.

You are very strong and persistent how you describe the one step at a time. In reality that is all we can do. I will try to remember your words the next time I get derailed.

I have a dog and it's a comfort for me to have one. After reading your post it dawned on me that I "take care" of my dog but there isn't really an emotional connection with her.

It makes my heart sad and me feel anger that it is that way. It makes me feel broken and dysfunctional.

Another byproduct of my childhood.

My heart is seeing a field of white flowers on the other side of this!

i don't know if I am reading your posts right or if I am talking about the same thing but for me the mother wound is he very worst. It is far worse than any of the other abuse. To be so little and so vulnerable and so dependent on an adult who hurts or watches hurt or does nothing is the most alone feeling in the entire world. That sense of not having a single person to help or depend on, a single person who loves you, in a world where there is so much hurt and anger and violence and pain at every turn is ... I don't really know a word for it.
For me it is life. That is life. That is my life. This is what I truly at the core and heart of me know.
A world where people can be trusted to not harm, or trusted to be kind, or trusted to help?
I don't know that world.

Yes. That is what I'm talking about. The real one. The wound that laid the course for all the other ones. It's the wound that makes you feel unworthy, unlovable, needy, whinny, the list goes on.

It is the core and beginning of many bad choices that I didn't think I had a choice of because that is who I thought and believed I was. Of no consequence. I didn't matter.

I think I want to doty myself on saying that. It's hasn't been long that I've really known that. Really known the words and what they meant to and towards me.

It IS the mother core of all wounds.

In realizing it, maybe there is healing in that. Maybe?

Maybe realizing that could be the beginning of healing that? It does seem important to recognize and know that at an adult level... to know that the child you were was essentially abandoned and it wasn't the child's fault. Because we all know that child inside us that KNOWS how bad she is,, so bad her own mother couldn't love her. Maybe its up to us to teach that child that she was okay all along??

I just wanted to thank you for posting this thread Trailrunner. It has had me thinking about my own mother wound and today in therapy I was surprised to find myself "sitting in on" a part of us telling her story about her mother wound to the therapist. It was painful and the therapist heard her and afterwards she felt so much lighter.
We had to go to the grocery store to get something for dinner and somehow we ended up with several bags full of treats and candy. I think that child in us felt like celebrating. It was helpful to do some work around this topic. So thank you!

You are so welcome! Thank you for your replies to the thread. They helped me sort out some things too.

There is nothing like the lightness of bringing something out and sharing it and being heard and it being valued. I'm so glad that you had that experience!

I hope y'all enjoyed the candy celebration!

High five from me!

I am thankful for my parts in many ways, but in this way most--together we can nurture and love the little ones into a new way of feeling. I forget that I must do this, and it is so good to be reminded. One of my littles, Ash, told me that his life is so much better now. He has good memories, and before he had none. The pain doesn't have the same power it once did. And I forget to reach out to them, and they don't ask for help because that was never an option before. Such a simple thing, to listen and love them and tell them they matter. Thanks for this comment.