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It’s 7 a.m. now, and I’ve been waiting since 2 this morning for the sun to rise. Silly me. My waiting doesn’t make the sun come up one second earlier than it will otherwise.
Maybe my waiting is connected to my worrying, the same worrying that no doubt got me up out of bed so early this morning. I have a whole palette of things to worry about, yet worry itself seems like such a complete waste of time.
Because I already know that my insecure attachment pattern-disorder to and in the world forms the bedrock of EVERYTHING about me, I have cause to wonder this morning what the connection might be between ‘attachment’ and worry. Let’s see:
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Expectation and Attachment – The Anti Buddha Consciousness of Anxiety, Fear and Worry
By Glen Russell
“Expectation and attachment are the worst enemies of man. These two simple words keep humanity trapped in a place of anxiety, fear and worry. Fear can only exist if you have an expectation and an emotional attachment to an outcome either happening or not happening.
In Earth society expectation and attachments are actively promoted and humanity is encouraged to adopt these as part of its psyche. Humanity is conditioned to chase after this and to chase after that. Humanity is conditioned to form emotional attachments to many different things. Yet the cost is great.
The cost is humanity suffers and its inner peace is now gone. Whenever you “expect” an outcome to happen or not happen – and it either does happen, or doesn’t happen, or doesn’t happen quickly enough, anxiety, fear and worry is created within your mental body and your emotional body. You then feel disappointment, anger, frustration, inner turmoil and suffering. Your inner peace is now gone.
It is not the outcome that stole your peace – it is your decision to have expectations and emotional attachments to a specific outcome that stole your inner peace.” (Click on above link to read the rest of this article)
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My “inner peace,” huh? Severe early infant-child abuse survivors are not likely to have had any ‘inner peace’ built into them in the first place. Can we find it NOW? Infants don’t ‘decide’ to expect their early caregivers to do exactly THAT – take care of them!
Yet as I think about all the things I can find to worry about in the middle of the night (and in the middle of the day), I realize that every one of those worries is fundamentally about TAKING CARE OF SOMETHING, OR HAVING SOMETHING I WORRY ABOUT INVOLVE TAKING CARE OF MYSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE I CARE ABOUT.
“Where do I get the money I need to pay my heat bill? How do I get rid of those ugly finger-sized “C” shaped grubs lying in wait in my soil to eat every root of every living plant I cherish in my garden? How do I baby proof my house before my very very active 9-month-old grandson comes with his mommy to visit the first week of January? Why don’t I want to do a single dang thing for Christmas and will that make my children upset with me? How do I build yet ANOTHER stretch of fence to keep my stupid neighbors’ stupid rampaging buffalo dogs out of my yard? When I go to my early January oncologist appointment will they find my cancer is back? Etc.”
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Perceived attachment: relations to anxiety sensitivity, worry, and GAD symptoms.
“This investigation examined the relation between perceived alienation from parents and peers, anxiety sensitivity (AS), and current worry and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms with the goal of expanding the knowledge base on factors that may contribute to the development of AS and its role in worry.”
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Worry and Coping: An Attachment Perspective
By Colleen J. Allison
“Attachment anxiety…associated with the tendency to worry.”
(Contains excellent references for further reading)
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Fostering Healthy Attachment
An Interview with Dr. Karen Walant
“Creating the Capacity for Attachment looks at how we, as a society, have raised our children with the expectation that they become totally self-reliant and autonomous rather than with the hope that they have the capacity to form close, loving, intimate relationships with others.”
“This unhealthy pattern of reliance on objects is encouraged in the detached parenting styles so common in Western society, and it’s easy to see how, from this tendency, as adults we continue to seek comfort in other non-human objects, such as drugs, food, money, etc.”
“Very early on, children are generally taught not to disclose to others when feeling “weak” or scared, “needy” or alone. Many of the emotions we felt in childhood – what people call the “negative” emotions – we were taught not to share. So, we sought comfort from blankets, pacifiers, and teddy bears, and we learned not to seek comfort from our mothers, our fathers, our family. As we got too old for blankets and teddy bears, we turned instead to other comforts – food, alcohol, money, etc. As adults, we struggle with holding our emotions within because we fear that by sharing our inner souls with others, we will – as in childhood – be discounted, dismissed, or denied.”
“Many people spend their lives feeling like nobody hears their cries – they feel alone, afraid, and powerless. When children are not responded to, in their earliest and most primary relationships, they learn that their thoughts and feelings are burdensome to others and that their needs are shameful. As adults, these same people often go underground with their feelings and seek comfort in substances. Or, alternately, these same people become so vocal in their neediness that, again, they are met with disdain from others and go on to find comfort, as well, in non-human substances.”
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OK, I get it – yet again. Worrying about the fact that I worry is just another piece of my insecure attachment puzzle. Dropping the worry bundle and looking at myself instead as a whole person living in and with a body that was altered in its development due to terrible trauma as I grew this body in the first place allows me to look up at the brightening skyline with hopes that today I will heal some part of myself rather than worrying that I won’t.
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Stop the Storm 