Disorganised attachment is the most severe form of insecure attachment in children.
Children who display this attachment style are drawn to their caregivers out of the need for safety, but they also fear them.
I wrote a piece about the feelings of my own two-year-old self in relation to this horrible conundrum in my forthcoming memoir:
But even that won’t be enough, even if she ate me and took the flesh and bone that I am into her body. I know this. I’ve been consumed, swallowed before by a witch, who spat me out. She ate me, then spat me out, then ate me up and spat me out and washed her mouth out with vinegar, to rid herself of the cloying sweetness. But she was hungry again and ripped me to pieces even though I was distasteful to her.
All this eating and spitting happened, just the two of us, intimate, close together, close enough to smell each other, like animals. That’s how closeness works, you are too close and you need to get away quick, and then you are too far away and the night creatures encroach. You cry out, she hears, and you are dead.
