Quotessence
Home / Topics / Attachment Quotes

Attachment Quotes

Browse 988 quotes about Attachment.

Related topics

Attachment Quotes

“Chit’s tendencies can become pure [transparent] in front of God, but people don’t have this knowhow. The easiest solution to purify chit’s tendencies is to associate with a person who has the least amount of desires and the ultimate solution to make them pure is the inner visual contemplation (niddidhyasan) of the Vitarag (the enlightened ones who are free of all attachments).”

“There is no means other than vitrag-science (science that frees us from all attachments) that will give Final-Liberation [Moksha]. Other means [methods, instruments] will cause bondage; they only help to pass the time; [whereas] means to attain the Eternal Thing (experience of Pure Soul) can be attained from the ‘Gnani Purush’ (the enlightened one).”

“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.”

“Ultraindividualism is a mental illness (Sonnet 2716) Ultraindividualism is a mental illness, and once the honeymoon wears off with yourself, that's when you start to feel the suffocating absence of other people in your life - even the brightest of star sometimes just needs to be the satellite in someone's orbit - we build our lives around each other, that's not weakness, that's our biggest strength as a species. Under a microscope a lonely neuron struggles desperately to find a connection, stretching out dendrites in the dark, so does a human being, and once that existential urge for attachment is overrun by newage primitivities like ultraindividualism and what not, that's the end of consciousness, that's the end of civilization, that's the end of the human race.”

“Under a microscope a lonely neuron struggles desperately to find a connection, stretching out dendrites in the dark, so does a human being, and once that existential urge for attachment is overrun by newage primitivities like ultraindividualism and what not, that's the end of consciousness, that's the end of civilization, that's the end of the human race.”

“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.”

“These associations, between childbirth and feminine effacement, and between feminine silencing and violence, would, for the first time, become imprinted on the subconscious in relation to birth, creating, in place of passionate and proud attachment, a terror-based antipathy between mother and child, and between the feminine and its biology.”

“Our infant muscles let go and mold to the shape of our mother's bodies when we are securely held. Our bodies learn the meaning of the sensations of hunger and thirst from the interpersonal sweetness of our need being seen, met and satisfied by our mother as food is offered. We take in her attentiveness along with the nourishment, and this shapes our openness to all kinds of nurturance throughout our lives. Our hearts beat more slowly and our amygdalae calm when she is in a ventral state, her presence reassuring us of the possibility of safety in connection.”

“If we want our children to be independent, to go out and take on the world, we have to give them full confidence that they can come back to us as needed. Autonomy and connection: That’s secure attachment.”

“I thought of Bobby, of the last look he had given me, and at that moment I understood one of the differences between man and cat: man knows he's going to die, so he can get ready and be willing, even eager, to go. A cat knows the end is near, but that's all. He can't accept death: he can't trust in it; cats are perhaps too metaphysical an entity to need to believe in the idea of a beyond; a cat is his own god and man his creation.”

“John Bowlby understood that our need for someone to share our lives with is part of our genetic makeup and has nothing to do with how much we love ourselves or how fulfilled we feel on our own. He discovered that once we choose someone special, powerful and often uncontrollable forces come into play. New patterns of behavior kick in regardless of how independent we are and despite our conscious wills. Once we choose a partner, there is no question about whether dependency exists or not. It always does. An elegant coexistence that does not include uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability and fear of loss sounds good but is not our biology. What proved through evolution to have a strong survival advantage is a human couple becoming one physiological unit, which means that if she’s reacting, then I’m reacting, or if he’s upset, that also makes me unsettled. He or she is part of me, and I will do anything to save him or her; having such a vested interest in the well-being of another person translates into a very important survival advantage for both parties.”

“One might say that the difficulty in rearing children has to do with the ambiguities of independence. The child must separate from the parents; the parent must allow the child to discover his or her own reality. Where there was one, there must be two. But this separation, though necessary, is a complex and often tormented experience. The relationship between separation and loving attachment has to be negotiated each time afresh... There is no theory that can totally guide the parent...In the act of creation, there is perhaps inevitable sadness…(p.20)”