Angry Outbursts And Disorganized Attachment: How To Cope

If you have disorganized attachment, you could be prone to angry outbursts that lead to feelings of guilt and shame once your emotions settle.

Let’s say you have a date planned with your partner, but they cancel because of a bad headache.

You immediately blow up, accusing them of not caring about spending time together. Before they even have a chance to respond, you hang up.

A couple of hours later, you realize you overreacted. Your partner had a legitimate reason to cancel. And yet, this innocent situation triggered you as if they had stood you up to go play video games.

Why does this happen?

For people with insecure attachment, emotional regulation is difficult.

Even more so when you have disorganized (fearful-avoidant) attachment.

In a recent study, researchers found that adolescents with a more fearful attachment style showed more anger while those with secure attachment showed less.

If you want to have healthy relationships, learning how to process your anger is essential. Otherwise, you risk sabotaging your relationships and pushing people away.

How To Cope With Anger When You Have Disorganized Attachment

As a person with disorganized attachment, your angry outbursts could be connected to traumatic events in your past that you’re trying to process in the present.

However, please note that the advice below doesn’t apply if you’re in a relationship with someone who genuinely treats you badly. When a partner or a friend keeps disrespecting you and dismissing your feelings, you have every right to be angry.

But if you have healthy relationships (romantic and platonic) and still struggle with angry outbursts, then try the following tips to cope:

1. Pause before responding

When you feel the familiar fire brewing in your stomach, don’t respond immediately.

Pause and feel your emotions.

Understand that your nervous system has been triggered and it’s blowing everything out of proportion.

You can simply say, “I feel very upset right now. Can we talk about this later?”

If it’s a conversation over text, just put your phone away and go do something else. Channel that energy into another activity – go for a walk, clean your bathroom, or do anything that helps you blow off steam.

You can also call a trusted friend and get their perspective on the situation. If you still feel upset in 12 to 24 hours, then it’s a sign your anger is justified and connected to the present situation, not a past one.

2. Understand what triggered you

Discovering and understanding your triggers is key to navigating your angry outbursts.

When you know what triggers you, it’ll be easier to discern between a legitimate reason to be angry and a false alarm.

In a relationship context, you could be triggered when your partner acts in a way that makes you feel unimportant – even if that wasn’t their intention.

Their behavior might reopen childhood wounds. It could remind you of when your caregivers didn’t give you the love and safety you needed.

Suddenly, all the intense emotions you associate with those experiences come back to the surface and you blow up.

This doesn’t mean you should never be upset by other people’s actions. Someone could have good intentions and still hurt you. And you’d have every right to be upset.

But it’s important not to conflate emotions from the past with emotions from the present.

When you’re able to do this, you’ll prevent your past from destroying your relationships in the present.

3. Explain how you feel

Depending on how close you are to the other person, you might want to communicate your emotions to help them understand you.

By sharing what goes on in your inner world, you’ll build intimacy and prevent resentment from building in your relationship.

If your immediate response to the idea of sharing your feelings is “I can’t do this, they won’t understand/they’ll use it against me”, pause and recognize that this could be your disorganized attachment talking.

People with disorganized attachment are distrustful, and always on alert for any signs someone will take advantage of them. But opening up is what’s needed to build a long-lasting relationship.

This doesn’t mean you need to go into every painful detail.

It’s enough to say, “I went through some painful events in my past. Because of that, I get intense emotional reactions when someone does X. I’m sharing this with you because I want you to understand why I act a certain way when you do Y.”

As your trust builds over time, you might want to share more about your experiences with your partner. But it’s also perfectly okay to never want to talk about specific events – this is your decision to make.

4. Reach out to a therapist

People with disorganized attachment have experienced some type of childhood trauma.

These difficult childhood experiences also make it easy for you to end up in manipulative relationships, which only make your attachment issues worse.

Sometimes, you need a therapist to help you make meaningful progress in healing your attachment trauma.

In therapy, you’re able to work through these experiences with a professional who understands your condition and what you need to once again feel safe in relationships.

Having undergone therapy for my attachment issues, I can safely say that one of its greatest benefits was learning how to trust again.

Because I was able to trust my therapist with some of the worst experiences that happened to me, I could convince my nervous system that some people are safe.

This gave me enough confidence to let new people in and give them a chance – even when I was triggered and wanted to sabotage the relationship.

Don’t let past anger destroy present joy

When you have disorganized attachment, angry outbursts are so difficult to deal with because the fury feels so real. Even though it doesn’t belong to the present moment.

And it might take you a while to learn how to discern between feeling genuinely upset and being hijacked by an emotion from the past.

Overcoming disorganized attachment isn’t an overnight process. But it’s so worthwhile. Because your past will no longer steal the joy in your present and sabotage loving, fulfilling relationships that you deserve.