Your Village Can Heal Your Disorganized Attachment Style

How accepting people's limitations is good for your children and healing for your attachment system as a parent

In this season of motherhood, I’m learning that part of being a part of a village is honoring the gift that each person can give you and surrendering the expectation that everyone has the same gift.

What’s interesting is how this acceptance of others and how they can support my family is healing the parts of me that hold attachment wounds for not having their healthy emotional expectations met as a child.

In her book on attachment, The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships, Diane Poole Heller talks about how part of the pattern associated with disorganized attachment is that these expectations for attunement and care get really big when they aren’t reliably met, so that when they are finally met, the child pushes them away because they can’t trust that they’ll be met again.

This resonates with me as I have a young part that struggles to accept other people’s limitations because it feels so similar to that feeling of accepting a parent’s lack of attachment efforts.

I remember when I was much younger and new in my recovery, I would always dread the part of making a friendship or dating when you learned about the other person’s baggage. I guess nobody really can give me everything that I want, I would think when my date asked me about the book I was reading but didn’t make me laugh, or when a friend would remember my birthday but not demonstrate good active listening skills.

This realization always felt so devastating. And after a lot of work on myself, learning how attachment and young parts work, and working with other traumatized systems as a therapist, I’ve come to understand that this realization is only devastating to young parts who are frozen in time, beholden to the lack of reciprocity and instability of an unreliable attachment figure.

These parts long for a rescuer and redeemer, the perfect parent who unconditionally loves them. And even though we grow up, traumatized young parts don’t unless we consciously heal them. This longing then takes the form of projecting onto lovers, friends, and authority figures our unmet attachment needs.

So when we encounter other people’s limitations, which are healthy and human, young parts caught in the web of disorganized attachment struggle because accepting other people’s limitations is entangled with neglect.

Having a son, I am aware all the time that people in his village offer different gifts. For example, he has one grandmother who seems to really care about presence and attunement and another grandmother who prioritizes play and thoughtfulness. One grandmother would never forget a birthday card and the other grandmother would never let him so much as whimper. Both grandmothers are extraordinary with their love for my son in their own way and I see their positive impact with every visit.

Sometimes we can’t appreciate other people’s gifts without contrast, but this contrast feels painful to young parts that wonder why one person can’t be everything to them, which reflects their longing for a consistent attachment figure.

What’s interesting is that when I observe the impact of letting people love my son the best way they know how, with their gifts, love languages, and wisdom, everyone flourishes: my loved ones, my son, and even me.

And this is healthy attachment — nobody’s perfect and no one has all the gifts, even me as the mama!

We’re all human and doing our best. Our limitations carve outlets for the expressions of our love. And this actually fosters close and meaningful relationships. This cultivates secure attachment because it demonstrates that someone shows up authentically and tries.

Research on secure attachment shows that it’s this trying that makes the difference and builds trust. Children don’t need perfect attachment figures, but they need ones who are “good enough” and can repair when they miss the mark.

My son isn’t wondering why one grandmother isn’t singing the Wheels On The Bus while the other grandmother is gently rubbing the back of his head, or why one grandmother is reading to him instead of taking him for a walk in the garden. He’s just present and receiving the oxytocin in whichever form it’s offered.

And as Elena Bridgers reminds us in her post “What About Dads?” on Motherhood Until Yesterday, babies throughout human history had multiple attachment figures equipped with different kinds of gifts. This builds healthy attachment for our babies and it also builds community in the village.

We are biologically wired to rely on each other even when we’re not perfect, even when we have limitations, and even when our gifts look different from each other.

Watching our children form healthy attachment can be healing to our own attachment system.

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