At full intensity attachment feels blindingly wonderful. At full intensity detachment, its opposite, feels physically-fall-down-to-the-floor-and-stay-there helplessly debilitating. Neither of these vibrational states is unnatural. All mammals have states such as these organically built in.
Towards; Away From or Play Dead
Those are the options we’re given. We hear a lot about the ‘Law of Attraction’ but there’s also a ‘Law of Repulsion’ and a ‘Law of Surrender’, with all three built into our biology. One causes us to move towards a thing; another away while the third causes us to lie down and give up for a while (this third response is also known as the Freeze Response or the Mammalian Disassociation Response and is accompanied by a deep sense of powerlessness). These are Nature’s Laws; whether our egos like them or not. Every single activity going on in your body: your thoughts, feelings, actions, conscious or unconscious, is initiated by the physical connection and disconnection of receptors and ligands – organic locks and keys – millions of them interacting on the surfaces of every single cell of your body - locking into each other, exchanging messages, initiating physical affects, unlocking, detaching and moving on. Connection and disconnection is the entire story of life. This is a physical reality.
It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about our individual cells, ourselves as individuals, individuals as parts of families or organisations and even nations – we operate using the same model atoms do. They vibrate, we vibrate. They pull together, they split apart, we do too. We collide and struggle sometimes finding ourselves sucked in by distractions which pull us away from our own personal journey while travelling between multiple vibrational fields producing, using and wasting a lot of energy as we go (it is our misunderstanding and mismanagement of these energies, particularly the failure to fully discharge them and return to a happy state, which leads to emotional disorders).
We follow the ‘greater mass’; get attracted to certain things within the mass, despite knowing at some point we will inevitably be rejected and feel withdrawn. We do all this knowing everything gained in our lives will eventually be lost; everything. Yet still we find a way to create meaning and that meaning gives us a sense of direction – this is something to be worked on by every one of us otherwise we really are ‘lost’ amidst everybody else’s intentions. It’s a process we’re all united and equal in – this process of happy vibrational living managed through a strong sense of meaning.
First Love Attachment
Between puberty and the mid-20’s I believe we are most susceptible to ‘first love’ attachment, one of the most intense natural attachments we can have (if you have others and want to share them please tell me about it as a comment or send it to me using the feedback tab top left of the page). We regard another sexually attractive idealised person as ‘the one’ then bond to the idealised image we produce. This feels wonderful and works great if you both feel the same way, but when it’s a one way deal one of you is in for a period of suffering.
It helps to realise, when dealing with attachment versus detachment issues, you are not bonded to the actual external person or ‘thing’ or lifelong plan you have invested yourself in – you are bonded to an internal image, or to some other form of electrical sensory construct, to which you have internally attached strong ‘toward and reward’ molecular reactions – nothing less, nothing more. The person or thing to which you attached is not responsible for your attachment/detachment process nor are they required to do anything to resolve this inner conflict. You created it; you alone have the right to keep, transform, learn from, reduce and even remove it.
Blinded by ‘the light’ of first love attachment we are unable to see negatives in the other even when externally those negatives are glaringly obvious to everyone else. As those external negatives signals grow in plain sight we go on to develop denial strategies; desperately attempting to retrieve the bond. We suffer withdrawal symptoms whenever we perceive the internal image as being taken away from us. When the real external person or situation begins to abuse us, either psychologically or physically, the fact something is wrong in the relationship is self evident but the bonded person takes responsibility for ‘fixing things’ by assuming over-responsibility. Internal self rejection follows on from the external rejection and confused withdrawal symptoms kick in as we eventually surrender to the fact we are powerless to achieve connection. We are organically designed, pretty much, to punish ourselves during periods of disconnection. As I say, it’s all built in.
Our reward and punishment mechanisms (the Mesolimbic and the Limbic brains); work to ensure we get rewarded for connecting and punished for disconnecting. The most intense feelings of reward are built around the sex/maternal/parental drives and these drives are produced by powerful bonding neuropeptides – hormones and neurotransmitters. The degree to which we bond depends on our individual mix of genetic, social and personal programming. Did you know there is a gene in males, for example, the length of which decides whether he will be a sexual bonder or a player by default nature?
Say Hello to Your Prefrontal Cortex
Generally speaking our reproductive drives win the battle for control over what we think about from puberty until some time in our mid-20’s. You have to wait until then before the connections between your Prefrontal Cortex and the rest of your body become functionally connected. The PFC, based just behind your forehead, controls how you react to your own thoughts, feelings; impulses and actions in regards to your physical and social environments. By the time the PFC finally connects you may already have reproduced without consciously meaning to before being fully ready for the responsibilities of parenthood. Unless, that is, you’ve had a good relationship with another trustworthy adult possessing a fully formed Prefrontal Cortex of their own, and you’ve used their PFC as a proxy guide.
This is why (in my neighbourhood anyway) there’s necessity for so much heavy duty sexual health education for teens. The Government is attempting to act as PFC for these young folks. Reproducing on the basis of your sexual or maternal impulses makes Nature happy and to demonstrate it’s happiness with you it pumps you full of intensely bonding gratification responses to compel you to meet that agenda even against your own conscious will.
The maturing of the Prefrontal Cortex connection, in terms of the level of control it exerts over the Natural agenda we’re subjected to, isn’t automatic – we have to work at it all our lives. To be happy most of the time you have to pay properly focused attention to what and how you attach to things emotionally. To be ‘mature’ means to have a properly connected, fully functional Prefrontal Cortex and we’re all at different stages of development in this regard.
If we don’t pay attention to what the PFC tells us in private we become dependent on the external social world for managing our internal world and, because the external world rarely operates with our personal happiness in mind, we can find ourselves rapidly switching backwards and forwards between the two vibrational states of attachment and detachment, without any idea how this switching came about or how to stop it.
Amazing You to Stupid Me in Five Seconds then Back Again and Forth Again and Back and Forth Again
I’m talking with a 19 year old who’s big dream is to be lead guitar player in a band. Right now though his problem is he hasn’t eaten in several days. He has no money and nowhere to live. He tells me he has a problem discussing his problems with people but I point out to him I’ve known him all of 10 minutes and I get a different impression.
From the information he’s given me so far that big band dream of his looks to be a realistic possibility; as long as he survives long enough to reach it! When we discuss the dream you can see the dopamine-induced power it has on the way he talks and physically moves in his chair. He comes bright and alive during those moments. Dopamine is the neuropeptide which gives us a sense of excitement about the new, the sparkly, the interesting – it is one of several important natural ‘bonding agents’ we have and a prime ‘attachment’ driver. Talking about his big dream even gets me excited and thinking about my own. Wow. Big Dreams, eh? But we have to come back to reality. In the short term, today, - and maybe for a few more weeks or months, he’s got to focus on more mundane things such as eating, sleeping and having a roof to do both under. I remember a time I was his age and having pretty much the same difficult experiences he is.
I start discussing (and drawing out on paper) the steps I regard as mundane but necessary solutions to his problems. I’ve done the same things with hundreds of people before and I know they work so for me there’s no sense of mystery or wonder to them. To him, though, it’s all new information because the problems he’s dealing with right now are also relatively new (the depression’s been going on a while, he tells me, and my personal interpretation of the reason for that is he’s feeling trapped with few immediately obvious available escape options).
As I’m outlining each and every step and how it will resolve a particular problem he goes into a temporary reaction of ‘wow’ at the end of every step discussed. He looks off into the distance, eyes glazing over as though he’s looking at yet another big dream and says. ‘Wow, if you can get that problem sorted for me that’ll be so amazing. That’ll make my life sooooo much better’. As we finish talking about the final step his attention turns back to me, he seems to physically shrink into himself and with a sullen look on his face says ‘I’m so friggin’ stupid, I should’ve sorted this out before. It’s my own fault. I’m sorry for wasting your time. I’m an idiot, I always have been. My whole family tells me but I just can’t sort my head out. It’s this depression thing’. Throughout the chat I notice I’m getting this ‘switch from hope to despair’ response repeatedly; a kind of habitual ‘you’re cool but I’m a nightmare’ thing’s going on inside his head.
We go see a few of my other colleagues who help sort some of his money and food problems; then we have a second meeting to discuss progress so far and start talking about the way he alternates between ‘wow’ and ‘I’m stupid’ during our conversations. He asks if I know why he has this ‘switching’ habit. I tell him I think he uses it as a motivational tool and it looks as though it’s become an unconscious habit; I tell him some of the things I’m going to say below and he nods and tells me I’ve opened his eyes and he ‘gets it’.
Using Detachment and Attachment as Motivational States
Most of us have used the ‘harsh’ approach to get something done now and again – this approach, when used against others, threatens ‘social detachment’. Sometimes it becomes necessary to do this where people are being determinedly difficult and don’t want to change. I’ve used it as a shock tactic, admittedly sometimes inappropriately, in a bid to protect my own health or someone else or get a particular job done. Others attempt to use it on me. The reason most of us don’t like it, though, no matter how it’s used is because although it gets a particular job done, it damages the overall relationship (and sometimes the approach can backfire). That’s fine if you want the relationship to end anyway or you’re willing to take the risk of paying the consequences when things go wrong. Usually though, even if everyone involved agrees harsh motivators are necessary, the result is a social atmosphere that ‘stinks’.
The same thing happens if you’re using negative motivators on yourself, automatically, and can’t physically ‘leave’ after creating an internal stink. What you’re doing when you negatively motivate yourself is breaking your inner bond – trying to motivate yourself by threatening to dislike yourself if you don’t achieve something. Do you like yourself? Your ugly bits too? You should because liking and having compassion for yourself are the only shields you have against mistreatment from others. Tell enough people out there you don’t think much of you; tell them your negative life experiences are happening because a faulty you is attracting them, and you’ll soon find yourself with a ‘raving support network’ willing to confirm the theory. That theory soon becomes a standard operating procedure you deliberately refuse to change - until the internal pain gets so great it forces you to challenge and change your interpretations.
We probably start the self-criticism habit after experiencing negative treatment from someone we’re dependent on, or currently trust, and who’s opinion is important to us. They point out some alleged weakness of ours, such has having an ‘anger problem’, then we see evidence they may be right and ‘adjust for the better’ in order to receive their social approval. We internalise this whole approach and start automatically associating criticism of the self with social reward, acceptance and relationship maintenance.
This is also why we unconsciously allow ourselves to ‘catastrophise’ – a posh word for ‘building mountains out of molehills’. We create imaginary, emotionally charged negative scenarios, designed to drive us to either avoid or deal with a potential threat, should it eventually turn out to be genuine. Although the threat more often than not turns out to be unreal, the negative emotional charge produced to deal with it is, and once again we’re left with an internal environment that ‘stinks’ unless we take action to clear it out.
Once our self-punishment-to-motivate tactics becomes unconsciously habitual, we create a consistently negative internal world, without even realising we think that way. Like all negative environments, the only thing you eventually want to do is leave. You can make yourself perpetually so sad about all your alleged failings and so angry about all your alleged losses you literally nag yourself into a state of depression. Brain scan studies on depressed people show they attempt to pull their electrical brain activity down into their lower brain areas in an attempt to withdraw from external life, and from themselves. They are attempting to leave. The problem with this is it’s their internal life – the pain inside – actually causing the problem and pulling back causes them to ruminate even further.
All of this, by the way, needs to be ‘accepted’ as normal if you suffer with depression and want to get better. It is a completely normal trap to find yourself temporarily stuck in. The way to release yourself from the trap is to understand the structure of your attachment/detachment process and work with it instead of against it. We need to stop criticising ourselves for criticising ourselves!
The Leap
Down in the doldrums; ruminating in our lower brain; we now get desperate to leap upwards towards the relief of positive feelings again. We use our imagination to work for us by creating an amazing wonderful sort-it-all-out-in-one-humongous-dream launch and this produces a powerful dopamine buzz. For a short while those deliberately over-inflated expectations in the brain work but dopamine needs the feedback mechanism provided by another neuropeptide, serotonin, to balance its affects and restore its own depleted reserves.
Serotonin is our gratification inducer and is triggered when we see we have ‘arrived’ at our big dream (just note here again this is also an internal mechanism which has little to do with what’s going on in the real world – which means if you can find a way to generate your own serotonin triggers you can rebalance your emotional attachment process in regards to your imagined scenarios without needing to rely on the external world for permission). Found mostly around our stomach, but also in our brain, serotonin is the stuff that makes us feel and so think ‘satisfied’. Pump up your dopamine release too high without achieving the big dream before your dopamine depletes and your brain knows the big dream ‘failed’ and serotonin release is held back causing withdrawal symptoms to kick in (eg disappointment; feeling ‘down’). This is a simplified model – there are other bonding neuropeptides involved, but it’s enough information to develop a working mental model and use it on a daily basis.
To rebalance ourselves when entering a state of withdrawal we need to go fully through the negative symptoms for long enough to allow natural production of dopamine to top back up again. Once on the other side of withdrawal we can reduce the frequency of this ‘up-down-see-saw’ affect by lowering our daily expectations while at the same time practicing focusing on smaller daily results thereby releasing serotonin more regularly. What if nothing particularly satisfying happened today? You find something from another day and use that. You trigger this gratification mechanism deliberately rather than expect some random hoped for series of life events to do it for you.
Practising gratitude by deliberately focusing on what we did do rather than what we think we should have is the answer. Big dreams are nice now and again; it’s OK to let yourself be carried along by them for a while - as long as you’re prepared to pay the price for the other side of the equation. We have no direct control of any external big dream but we do have the ability to control our internal world in regards to how we perceive our daily experiences.
I advised the 19 year old to focus on savouring each of his daily successes – regardless of how mundane they may seem – to focus on reflecting on his guitar jamming sessions rather than always using ‘the leap to the big band dream’ for boosting his mood. This will help reduce his getting stuck in that ‘nothing’s ever good enough’ loop.
Attachment Management
Ideas; images; other people; things; plans; directions; sensations; sounds; rhythms; hobbies; experiences; beliefs; places; values; time periods; emotions; body parts; books.
We can attach to a lot of things. Here’s a suggestion:
- Identify a big dream in regards to the kind of person you are or want to be
- What kind of daily, mundane things does that kind of person do? Do those things
- Set daily goals in regards to carrying out those mundane actions proving to yourself you really are that kind of person – you can explore; experiment; research; discuss – while accepting you will only occasionally achieve external recognition – your true achievement is in seeing and liking yourself as you act in this mundane way; this strengthens your inner bond regardless of what others say or do
- Ask yourself at the end of every day if you’ve taken action to be that kind of person you admire then positively fester on the satisfaction gained from the slightest sign you have.
By all means, now and again, think about a big external dream and enjoy the buzz it brings, but remind yourself you do not control the actual results.
Attach to that and you will repeatedly return to a happy state; not quickly maybe; not in a ‘burst of light’; but once you’ve done it a few times you’ll learn to trust and like yourself more and more as time goes by.
Regards
Carl
photo credit: Baby's hand. via photopin (license)
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