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I found an excellent, very informative article (2005) online today as I was searching for the ‘difference between empathy and compassion’ as they relate to attachment.  The article represents the thoughts of an Israeli and three American researchers, and is titled:

Attachment, Caregiving, and Altruism:  Boosting Attachment Security Increases Compassion and Helping.

These researchers use the attachment measures for amounts of anxiety about attachment and avoidance of attachment.  Anxiety and avoidance are found in the insecure attachment patterns – and are absent in the secure attachment patterns.

This article takes some thoughtful time to read, but is well worth the investment.  There is a lot of information here, and as I read it I could place people I know and have known along the dimensions the authors describe as I realized that people FIT PATTERNS of attachment that then makes them very much like one another depending on these pattern types.

I am too tired at the moment to say anything more right now, but I hope you follow the above link and take a look at this article.  I hope to spend some more time taking notes in a few days as I process the information this article contains.

Depending on the variety of early caregivers around us that we could form attachments to — or not — our body-brain development was set down a course before we were one year old along the attachment pattern dimensions this article describes.

Once we reach adulthood these patterns, built right into our physiology, can be extremely difficult to change.  I believe that for the most part people with the avoidant dimensions of insecure attachment live their lives in such a way that they can appear cold and self-absorbed and don’t seem to even know it, let alone care.  On the other hand, people with the anxiety related insecure attachment patterns are far more likely to KNOW there is something wrong so they are most commonly the people who might identify their problems so that they can find new ways to relate to others.

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