Attachment Quotes

My trouble is that I think there is a track that things should stay on. I'm hooked to a belief that life should go a certain way. I develop an attachment to Plan A and set up my expectations accordingly. An important part of spiritual practice is to learn to let go, to recognize that Plan A exists only in my head.

~ Denise Roy

A child's attachment process begins within the first year of life...

~ Asa Don Brown

Attachments that are not fostered may lend to the child's inability to properly attach or have no attachment at all.

~ Asa Don Brown

Secure attachment has been linked to a child's ability to successfully recover and prove resilient in the presence of a traumatic event.

~ Asa Don Brown

It’s sad to see how many relationships start as just a distraction from boredom, a cover up so they don’t have to ever deal with the true pain below

~ Evan Sutter

As a child, I was very careful not to erase my mother's writing on the chalkboard because I would miss her.

~ Joyce Rachelle

A secure attachment is the ability to bond, to develop a secure and safe base...

~ Asa Don Brown

Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. By this time, they should have mastered the following tasks:1. The ability to be emotionally attached to others, yet without giving up a sense of self and one‘s freedom to be apart, 2. The ability to say appropriate no's to others without fear of loss of love, 3. The ability to take appropriate no's from others without withdrawing emotionally. Noting these tasks, a friend said half-joking, They need to learn this by age three? How about by fourty-three? Yes, these are tall orders but boundary development is essential in the early years of life.

~ Henry Cloud

Although psychology and pedagogy have always maintained the belief that a child is a happy being without any conflicts, and have assumed that the sufferings of adults are the results of the burdens and hardships of reality, it must be asserted that just the opposite is true. What we learn about the child and the adult through psychoanalysis shows that all the sufferings of later life are for the most part repetitions of these earlier ones, and that every child in the first years of life goes through and immeasurable degree of suffering.

~ Melanie Klein

Research on organised abuse emphasises the diversity of organised abuse cases, and the ways in which serious forms of child maltreatment cluster in the lives of children subject to organised victimisation (eg Bibby 1996b, Itziti 1997, Kelly and Regan 2000). Most attempts to examine organised abuse have been undertaken by therapists and social workers who have focused primarily on the role of psychological processes in the organised victimisation of children and adults. Dissociation, amnesia and attachment, in particular, have been identified as important factors that compel victims to obey their abusers whilst inhibiting them from disclosing their abuse or seeking help (see Epstein et al. 2011, Sachs and Galton 2008). Therapists and social workers have surmised that these psychological effects are purposively induced by perpetrators of organised abuse through the use of sadistic and ritualistic abuse. In this literature, perpetrators are characterised either as dissociated automatons mindlessly perpetuating the abuse that they, too, were subjected to as children, or else as cruel and manipulative criminals with expert foreknowledge of the psychological consequences of their abuses. The therapist is positioned in this discourse at the very heart of the solution to organised abuse, wielding their expertise in a struggle against the coercive strategies of the perpetrators. Whilst it cannot be denied that abusive groups undertake calculated strategies designed to terrorise children into silence and obedience, the emphasis of this literature on psychological factors in explaining organised abuse has overlooked the social contexts of such abuse and the significance of abuse and violence as social practices.

~ Michael Salter

SELFHOOD AND DISSOCIATIONThe patient with DID or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) has used their capacity to psychologically remove themselves from repetitive and inescapable traumas in order to survive that which could easily lead to suicide or psychosis, and in order to eke some growth in what is an unsafe, frequently contradictory and emotionally barren environment.For a child dependent on a caregiver who also abuses her, the only way to maintain the attachment is to block information about the abuse from the mental mechanisms that control attachment and attachment behaviour.10 Thus, childhood abuse is more likely to be forgotten or otherwise made inaccessible if the abuse is perpetuated by a parent or other trusted caregiver.In the dissociative individual, ‘there is no uniting self which can remember to forget’. Rather than use repression to avoid traumatizing memories, he/she resorts to alterations in the self ‘as a central and coherent organization of experience. . . DID involves not just an alteration in content but, crucially, a change in the very structure of consciousness and the self’ (p. 187).29 There may be multiple representations of the self and of others.Middleton, Warwick. Owning the past, claiming the present: perspectives on the treatment of dissociative patients. Australasian Psychiatry 13.1 (2005): 40-49.

~ Warwick Middleton

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

~ Beryl Markham

Stop falling for those who won't raise you up in the future.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Sticking to one person for a lifetime is not a waste of time or lack of better ones, it means you've found your place of eternity.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Strangers were a fairytale full of possibilities not yet corrupted by reality while caregivers were the reality – and everything that couldn't be counted upon.

~ Donna Lynn Hope

Avoiding awareness of our own reality is often an attempt to deny thoughts, desires, or intentions that we feel will threaten or contradict the needs of those with whom we feel strong attachment. We instinctively hide feelings and thoughts we assume would be threatening to other people, and might cause them to leave us. . . People who learned early in life to adapt to parental needs to an extent that we were unable to focus on our own developmental tasks and needs will often continue to play out this working mode” of conditional attachment. “You will attach to me as long as I meet your needs.

~ Mary Crocker Cook

When our caregivers are unavailable, most of time it has nothing to do with LOVE for the child, however, the child cannot possibly know this. The child winds up believing that the unavailable parent is not available due to some defect within the child. We believe that if we were “enough” the parent would CHOOSE to be available.

~ Mary Crocker Cook

Along with our over-giving is our own conditional giving pattern, which can fuel so much of our resentment and feelings of “victimization” by the people to whom we are giving. We may be completely unaware of our expectations of those we assist, and our own anger and resentment may catch us off guard. This is why our martyrdom is so hard on those around us. They are aware of the price we are exacting, even when we are in denial about our own motives and expectations.

~ Mary Crocker Cook

Love should not cause suffocation and death if it is truly love. Don't bundle someone into an uncomfortable cage just because you want to ensure their safety in your life. The bird knows where it belongs, and will never fly to a wrong nest.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

An attachment grew up. What is an attachment? It is the most difficult of all the human interrelationships to explain, because it is the vaguest, the most impalpable. It has all the good points of love, and none of its drawbacks. No jealousy, no quarrels, no greed to possess, no fear of losing possession, no hatred (which is very much a part of love), no surge of passion and no hangover afterward. It never reaches the heights, and it never reaches the depths.As a rule it comes on subtly. As theirs did. As a rule the two involved are not even aware of it at first. As they were not. As a rule it only becomes noticeable when it is interrupted in some way, or broken off by circumstances. As theirs was. In other words, its presence only becomes known in its absence. It is only missed after it stops. While it is still going on, little thought is given to it, because little thought needs to be.It is pleasant to meet, it is pleasant to be together. To put your shopping packages down on a little wire-backed chair at a little table at a sidewalk cafe, and sit down and have a vermouth with someone who has been waiting there for you. And will be waiting there again tomorrow afternoon. Same time, same table, same sidewalk cafe. Or to watch Italian youth going through the gyrations of the latest dance craze in some inexpensive indigenous night-place-while you, who come from the country where the dance originated, only get up to do a sedate fox trot. It is even pleasant to part, because this simply means preparing the way for the next meeting.One long continuous being-together, even in a love affair, might make the thing wilt. In an attachment it would surely kill the thing off altogether. But to meet, to part, then to meet again in a few days, keeps the thing going, encourages it to flower.And yet it requires a certain amount of vanity, as love does; a desire to please, to look one's best, to elicit compliments. It inspires a certain amount of flirtation, for the two are of opposite sex. A wink of understanding over the rim of a raised glass, a low-voiced confidential aside about something and the smile of intimacy that answers it, a small impromptu gift - a necktie on the one part because of an accidental spill on the one he was wearing, or of a small bunch of flowers on the other part because of the color of the dress she has on.So it goes.And suddenly they part, and suddenly there's a void, and suddenly they discover they have had an attachment.Rome passed into the past, and became New York.Now, if they had never come together again, or only after a long time and in different circumstances, then the attachment would have faded and died. But if they suddenly do come together again - while the sharp sting of missing one another is still smarting - then the attachment will revive full force, full strength. But never again as merely an attachment. It has to go on from there, it has to build, to pick up speed. And sometimes it is so glad to be brought back again that it makes the mistake of thinking it is love.(For The Rest Of Her Life)

~ Cornell Woolrich

To be happy with your woman, make her emotional, but never become emotional!

~ Ramana Pemmaraju

Marriage is never static. There are peaks and troughs, cycles. It is easy to forget that this shifting landscape is really only ever a reflection of the self. Our capacity for attachment determines the kind of mate we attract, and it is through this mate that we are forever transformed – marriage as alchemy, but also as a mirror.

~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Whatever work you do in this world; the work itself has no value. If there is attachment-abhorrence behind that work, then only you are responsible for the next life. You are not responsible if attachment-abhorrence don’t occur.

~ Dada Bhagwan

God says only one thing if you want to have attachment towards worldly life; go ahead and get attached to it; or else, get attached to Me. If you get attached to Me, you will get permanent happiness and if you get attached to the worldly life, you will not find contentment!

~ Dada Bhagwan

When attachment does not occur when someone gives flowers and no abhorrence occurs when someone throws stones, that is considered equanimity.

~ Dada Bhagwan

The worldly vision is filled with infinite infatuations and attachments and no one can escape from it, [hence] there is no alternative other than staying in Gnani’s feet [surrendering to the enlightened one is the only alternative].

~ Dada Bhagwan

When there is no attachment-abhorrence, one is on the path of liberation [moksha].

~ Dada Bhagwan

It is called equanimity when one has no attachment with the good (the auspicious) and no abhorrence for the bad (the inauspicious). The one without duality is in equanimity-state. In worldly interactions, people identify tolerance as equanimity!

~ Dada Bhagwan

Equanimity means that one does not do abhorrence at the time of abhorrence (generating incidents) and one does not do attachment at the time of attachment (generating incidents).

~ Dada Bhagwan

Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.

~ Lionel Shriver

John Donne's 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' concerns a sea voyage, and uses the image of a circle as an antidote to the abyss of loss and separation. He pictures the invisible but precious bonds which link carer and cared-for, lover and beloved in an attachment relationship as slender threads of gold.

~ Jeremy Holmes

Grief is a good thing. It's the way we get through the transitions of life.

~ Rick Warren

We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.

~ Pema Chödrön

You can find hope in despair. Dwell on positive thoughts.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It was if we all sensed we'd be gone someday soon in a sudden instant--often it happened in the middle of the night--and didn't want to get involved. Or else it was that none of us wanted to know anybody later on who was the way we were now.

~ Richard Ford

When I consider the men (like my father) I have treated in psychotherapy, I recognize the challenge I face as a counselor. These men are in counseling due to an insistent wife, troubled child or their own addiction. They suffer a lack of connection with the people they say they love most. Chronically accused of being over controlling or emotionally absent, they feel at sea when their wives and children claim to be lonely in their presence. How can these people feel “un-loved” when (from his perspective) he has dedicated his life to their welfare?Some of these men will express their lack of vitality and emotional engagement though endless service. They are hyperaware of the moods, needs and prefer-ences of loved ones, yet their self-neglect can be profound. This text examines how a lack of secure early attachment with caregivers can result in the tendency to self-abandon while managing connections with significant others. Their anxiety and distrust of the connection of others will manifest in anxious monitoring, over-giving, passive aggressive approaches to anger and chronic worry. For them, failure to anticipate and meet the needs of others equals abandonment.

~ Mary Crocker Cook

Relationships for women are more than taking off the clothes and wearing them back. It is about attachment of emotions, and feelings, but on the other hand, men are like fast and furious.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

[On marriage and permanent attach

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

At the most basic level, therefore, secure attachments in both childhood and adulthood are established by two individual's sharing a nonverbal focus on the energy flow (emotional states) and a verbal focus on the information-processing aspects (representational processes of memory and narrative) of mental life. The matter of the mind matters for secure attachments.

~ Daniel J. Siegel

Why are...poor people more ready to share their goods than rich people? The answer is easy: The poor have little to lose; the rich have more to lose and they are more attached to their possessions. Poverty provides a deeper motivation for understanding your neighbors, welcoming others and attending to those who are suffering. I would go so far as to say that poverty helps you understand what happiness is, what serenity is in life.

~ Piero Gheddo