Many of you who are familiar with psychology have probably heard about the four attachment styles of relationships. The four attachment styles are secure attachment, dismissive (avoidant) attachment, pre-occupied attachment, and fearful avoidant attachment. This is NOT what this blog is all about. Those are psychological models used to describe different ways people develop emotionally from childhood into adulthood. Spiritually speaking, an attachment is emotional dependence upon another person outside of yourself for your own happiness. It is where your ability to experience joy, feel love, fear, pain, and so on, all depends upon how those close to you treat you. It's what psychologists call co-dependency.
Emotional attachment is a spiritual problem, because it is often used as a substitute for love. Emotional attachment makes a person feel that they have bonded with their partner, but the truth is that no bonding has actually taken place. It is a one-sided relationship where one or both parties are clinging to a relationship where both sides are not seeing eye to eye, and are not connecting spiritually or emotionally. Both partners are out of harmony with each other, and are operating on different wave lengths and out of frequency with each other. You can't bond if there is disharmony and discord. Disharmony causes conflict - not bonding. So in order to correct the disharmony, some couples attach - meaning they commit themselves to stay the course of the relationship because they feel emotionally BOUND or attracted to each other. They feed off each other's wounds, and the conflict continues, because what is holding them together is some subconscious attraction for each other. Spiritually speaking, this is nothing more than spiritual bondage. It is where you are bound, and tied up in a relationship that is not working for you, but you can't escape, due to being spiritually attracted to the negative relationship patterns. You feel that staying is better than being in no relationship at all. You feel that being free is not worth the agony of not having someone in your life. You feel that all your chances of happiness in this life are wrapped up in this one relationship,and if it ends, you will never find happiness. The attachment can get so bad that even when you leave the person, their memory remains lodged in your subconscious mind, and you keep re-living the relationship over and over again in your head. I have known of people who were so attached, that after they left the bad situation, they immediately sought ways to get back their abusive ex-partner, resorting to even stalking behavior. All of this is misinterpreted as love, yet this is NOT love, but emotional attachment.
To love without attachment means that you can love without clinging or feeling needy, or feeling fearful of losing out on love. It means that you are not afraid of letting go of relationships that are loveless. Loving without attachment saves you from being in emotional bondage to relationships that do not serve your highest good, and that do not contribute to your emotional well-being. To bond with another person is good, but to attach is bad. Bonding is when you are both able to integrate and harmonize your lives, without violation of personal dignity and self respect. The two partners complement each other, and thus are stronger as a couple. There is no loss of your self-identity as in attachment, where mismatched partners try to force their personalities on each other. In emotional attaching, one or both parties succumb to the pressure, at the cost of great unhappiness to both. The most important thing to remember is that love is NOT attachment. Attachment actually keeps you bound in bad relationships so that you cannot experience love. If you want to truly experience love, then my recommendation is that you break the strong hold of attachments. As a spiritual counselor, I can help you with removing attachments with my Emotional Baggage coaching program. The program is as follows:-
Week One: Making Peace with Your Past
Week Two: Increasing Love and Appreciation of Self
Week Three: Increasing Positive Programming
Week Four: Making Peace with God
Week Five: Managing Stress
At the end of the five-week program, you will be able to sever your emotional attachments and find the freedom to find love. For more information about all my coaching programs, please visit my website.
No comments:
Post a Comment