Have you ever wondered what or how many things in your life are essential for you? Have you ever had the feeling that if you lose something or someone you will not know how to recover from the loss?
The fear of loss is a characteristic of attachment, and in this post I am going to tell you from my particular point of view what attachment is and what function it plays in our lives, as well as some of its consequences.
Attachment, from psychology it is a dependent link to people, objects, ideas or situations in our life, to the point that we believe in the need to possess it to be happy. It is a feeling of possession and belonging. To be attached to something is to believe that you need that, and that if you don't have it, you can have a hard time. Some examples of attachments are:
There can be different types of emotional attachment. Everything we have around us we consider our property, either because we have bought it or we have acquired it by other means. The people who surround us and are an active part of our life belong to our sphere of relationships and for human beings it is vital to have a circle of relationships, because we are sociable and gregarious.
We have ideas or beliefs about different areas of life, about work, money, friendship, happiness, etc. Beliefs that are ours and we defend as such. We stay attached to all this naturally, but unconsciously.
Attachment is an area of therapeutic treatment due to its great influence on our well-being. People who unconsciously have a high degree of attachment may suffer too much in the moments when they lose what they are strongly attached to, and when you have a bond of this type, you are not prepared for the loss and you do not accept the detachment.
When you depend excessively on something or someone, what is really happening is that you are subjected to a "master", to a superior figure that on many occasions decides and executes for you. In essence it is an emotional dependence.
This is the case of many people who submit to their partner, their parents, the professional environment or many other people, and end up being victims. When this happens, you lose your respect, your most essential values. You also lose your freedom, since you cannot decide how you are going to move through your life. You lose peace of mind and you also lose joy, because deep down your unconscious mind knows that you are not acting with integrity.
Behind all attachment is fear, the fear of losing something forever and that the loss is irreparable. You feel an absolute need to possess so as not to lose the benefits it brings you.
"When you are unable to renounce desire, you are in attachment" Walter Riso, psychologist
In the East they have a highly developed and more integrated concept of attachment than in our Western society. In the eastern paradigm they understand that things go away and they are not forever, that nothing is permanent indefinitely and therefore, they are prepared for loss.
They do not cling to people, or ideals, or even belongings. They are prepared to lose whatever it is at any moment, because above all there is the intrinsic freedom of each human being to choose at each moment how they want to live..
Need, anxiety, discomfort, obsession, dependence, fears, and many others are the consequences of develop a high level of attachment to our relationships, our possessions and our ideals.
In a certain way, we must learn not to feel too attached to everything that surrounds us, since everything in life is fleeting and sooner or later everything ends. Develop the ability to enjoy everything that surrounds us in the present and the ability to adapt to a short-term loss.
Learning to do without something or someone is very important because when you do it, you are much closer to being free and self-sufficient.
We all have attachments to a greater or lesser extent, it is a matter of identifying what types of attachments can cause me discomfort in the future, and if it is worth sticking to certain things in life.
"One man may be on a throne and have no attachment, another may be in rags and have a lot of attachment" Vivekananda, Indian religious leader and thinker.
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