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Attachment Quotes

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Attachment Quotes

“Children who feel that they are unloved can believe that there must be something very wrong about them which makes them unacceptable. The stinging sense of being not right causes them confusion and hurt, but they do not give up the desire for love and acceptance. They despair of it, certainly. They pine for it and perhaps fear it. But their pursuit of love and acceptance will dovetail with an attempt to change themselves into someone the child himself can accept.”

“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.”

“Whether working in the yard or just going about the daily business of life, you are continually adjusting, trimming, touching, shaping, and tinkering with the wealth of things around you. It may be difficult for you to know when to stop. We are all torn between the extremes of taking care of things and leaving them alone, and we question whether many things could ever get along without us. We find ourselves with pruning shears in hand, snipping away at this or that, telling ourselves that we're only being helpful, redefining something else's space, removing that which is unappealing to us. It's not that we really want to change the world. We just want to fix it up slightly. We'd like to lose a few pounds or rid ourselves of some small habit. Maybe we'd like to help a friend improve his situation or repair a few loose ends in the lives of our children. All of this shaping and controlling can have an adverse affect. Unlike someone skilled in the art of bonsai gardening, we may *unintentionally* stunt much natural growth before it occurs. And our meddling may not be appreciated by others. Most things will get along superbly without our editing, fussing, and intervention. We can learn to just let them be. As a poem of long ago puts it, "In the landscape of spring, the flowering branches grow naturally, some are long, some are short.”

“Young Shani Deva was extremely attached to his mother. She became fatally Ill. To get a cure for her, he decided to climb mount Kailash and meet the supreme God. To climb higher and higher, he had to let go of all his baggages, including the baggage of attachment to mother. Then two things happened at the same time: God met him and his mother got cured. Attachment harms our loved ones, love heals them.”

“Releasing attachment to physical form and trusting your life force is crucial in the healing process. Consciousness is a state of non-attachment. Conscious energy organizes and manifests according to the universal field of intelligence. This is unity having an experience of variety. We are all one energy source yet we are having innumerable variations through the physical world.”

“Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.”

“To feel one’s attachment to a certain region, one’s love for a certain group of men, to know that there is always a spot where one’s heart will feel at peace – these are many certainties for a single human life. And yet this is not enough. But at certain moments everything yearns for that spiritual home. ‘Yes, we must go back there – there, indeed.”

“The development of an incipient careseeking/caregiving system involves moving from avoidance to intra-subjectivity. This can be very anxiety-provoking. One person described it as a 'crisis of attachment '. Any past internal relating is likely to have been highly ambivalent at best. This is my face and which internal beliefs, such as being unworthy of care, which were formed in identification with the perpetrator, are challenged. The little creature [a hidden dissociated part of the self] may perceive both caregiving and careseeking as dangerous. He or she may fear being vulnerable to further abuse or exploitation and 'flinches, expecting pain again '.”

“young children, who for whatever reason are deprived of the continuous care and attention of a mother or a substitute-mother, are not only temporarily disturbed by such deprivation, but may in some cases suffer long-term effects which persist Bowlby, J., Ainsworth, M., Boston, M., and Rosenbluth, D. (1956). The effects of mother-child separation: A follow-up study. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 29, 211-249.”

“In healthy relating, we connect but do not attach. We can only really possess what does not possess us. This leads us to the great irony of addictive relating: We attach and thereby do not have. The second irony is that the more we rely on someone for security, the less secure we feel. It is sometimes frightening to realize how much impact a partner has come to have on our life and thoughts. We may react in counter-phobic ways like getting even closer!”

“The mother‘s relationship to her daughter not only forms the earliest, if not primary, foundation for how the daughter formulates her sense of self, but is the basic template for her understanding of how relationships work in the world.”

“By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure.”

“... sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.”

“I want to see her naked, " Mengele said pointing to Marlene. She cried and shock. My mother flung her body in front of Marlene's and said, "You can't have her. I love her, my daughter." My father said, "Take the younger one. She's smarter, " as he pushed me over forward. Marlene cried because father said I was smarter even though he was just trying to manipulate Mengele. The doctor's chest grew large.”

“Bhikkhus, what is meant by ‘pursuing the past’? To pursue the past means to lose yourself in thoughts about what you looked like in the past, what your feelings were then, what rank and position you held, what happiness or suffering you experienced then. Giving rise to such thoughts entangles you in the past. “Bhikkhus, what is meant by ‘losing yourself in the future’? To lose yourself in the future means to lose yourself in thoughts about the future. You imagine, hope, fear, or worry about the future, wondering what you will look like, what your feelings will be, whether you will have happiness or suffering. Giving rise to such thoughts entangles you in the future.”

“Play is also a way to be close and, even more important, a way to reconnect after the closeness has been severed. Chimpanzees like to tickle one another's palms, especially after they have had a fight. Thus, the second purpose of play serves our incredible - almost bottomless - need for attachment and affection and closeness.”

“The Buddha compared attachment to drinking salt water from an ocean. The more we drink, the thirstier we get. Likewise, when our mind is conditioned by attachment, however much we have, we never really experience contentment. We lose the ability to distinguish between the bare experience of happiness and whatever objects temporarily make us happy. As a result, we not only become dependent on the object, but we also reinforce the neuronal patterns that condition us to rely on an external source to give us happiness.”