DiscoverBeing Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick HansonDisorganized Attachment: Heal By Embracing Your Needs
Disorganized Attachment: Heal By Embracing Your Needs

Disorganized Attachment: Heal By Embracing Your Needs

Update: 2025-05-191
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Description

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


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Disorganized Attachment: Heal By Embracing Your Needs

Disorganized Attachment: Heal By Embracing Your Needs

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Forrest Hanson