Thank you for your important question. Our physical bodies carry generations of trauma and the physiological response to the triggers of abandonment and being emotionally overwhelmed. Talk therapy is not going to cut it when the work may need to be done with the body. Each person needs to release these repressed emotions out of the body and then clear the connected thoughts. Each person is on their own journey. Your wife will need to choose to do some of this work and take responsibility for her emotions in order to shift the energy and clear whatever is causing the problems. A disorganized attachment implies a history of significant trauma and women are being asked to purge and heal that trauma now. Since you have young kids, I would find an infant mental health expert who can use the parent-child relationship to help you make progress. In the meantime, we are all being asked to focus on our emotions and perhaps channel them into something more beautiful. Focus less on her and more on your own relationship with your children. See what happens. Spirituality can often help us manage emotions as well and this may be an avenue to explore if you have interest.

Love is the container for which someone can feel safe enough to make changes but the force for change is self-motivation. When we focus less on the other and more on ourselves we invite people to step up to change. It can no longer be forced.

Parenting from the Inside Out is a great book for the topic of attachment and how it haunts generations until the trauma has been healed. Just remember that the emotions need to be heard and released too — that’s the avoidants struggle but we can all learn when we are safe enough to feel our emotions without fear that we will be punished.