Attachment - this phenomenon has a positive coloring in the society, showing that the person has beautiful and kind feelings, emotions that help make friends, maintain family relations, and be involved in other people.
What does attachment mean?
Attachment to man is a multifaceted concept that includes a spectrum of different states: a sense of intimacy, love, interest, deep devotion and loyalty. Often, attachment is painful and destructive, which makes it difficult to disclose the potential of a person and prevents the building of healthy relationships with other important people.
How to distinguish love from affection?
How to understand love or affection - more often this question is asked by women, unable to separate these states due to their natural emotionality. Feeling of affection and love of difference:
- affection - attraction, love - kinship of souls;
- In the basis of attachment, feelings are impermanent, then they flare up, then subsided, love is constant, deep;
- attachment causes a strong sense of anguish, in love the longing of a different order and in its basis a force that moves forward;
- attachment is tied to egocentrism, love is the acceptance of another person and a sense of happiness simply because he is without any expectations on his account.
How to get rid of affection?
How to get rid of attachment to a person, because dependence does not give a normal life, breathe, realize yourself as a person? Psychologists advise in such cases to apply to specialists, it is difficult to get rid of such a problem, if there is no such possibility, do not despair and it is worth trying to start taking steps towards freedom in this direction:
- realize that everything in this world is temporary, and the relationship too;
- explore the object or object of attachment with the help of questions: "What will happen if this person leaves my life?", "Why am I afraid of losing it?";
- attachment is a habit of getting a state of happiness by associating oneself with some particular person, it is important to learn how to be happy independently of others;
- begin to learn about yourself something new, love yourself, set goals - for this you need to go to the depths of yourself, not exchanging for the outside.
Attachment types
Attachments can be divided conditionally into several types, each of them is laid down in childhood, but also depends on the temperament of the child. Attachments:
- Safe (healthy) - is formed in a family where the child's needs in care, attention and affection are fully satisfied. Children in such a family grow up confident, calm and adapt easily in the surrounding environment.
- Avoiding - occurs when the child is systematically neglected, he grows intrusive, depending on the opinions of others, who can not build normal relationships.
- Disorganized - pawned in a family where parents are prone to violence - the child grows impulsive, aggressive towards others.
Emotional Attachment
Any attachment is tied to the emotions of the negative, positive, or a mixture of them. Emotional attachment to a woman or a man arises as a result of sexual intimacy and in women it forms more quickly. Emotional attachment has both a positive aspect: relationships with the inclusion of emotions are difficult to destroy - this is a good reason for couples, but if the relationship is based on destructive emotions or ambivalent, it is difficult for such people to part, they both love and hate each other, creating a vicious circle of painful craving to each other.
Affective affection
Affective attachment in psychology refers to neurotic attachment disorders and is expressed in excessive attachment to the mother, which makes it possible to attribute this type of attachment to other unreliable species: ambivalent, neurotic. Distortion here is observed in the distortions of the relationship: the child is very attached to the mother, but if she goes away even briefly, when she appears there is a splash of joy, quickly replaced by cries, reproaches and aggression towards the mother, for leaving the child alone.
Ambivalent attachment
Obsessive ambivalence in attachment is characteristic of children and adults who were brought up in rigor and received less than caresses and attention, grew up in conditions of "emotional hunger". Ambivalent attachment can cause more serious mental abnormalities - reactive attachment disorder, when a child, a teenager, tries to get attention from completely strangers, which makes him an easy prey for dishonest people.
Manifestations of ambivalent attachment:
- hyperactivity ;
- control their activities and others;
- anxiety, self-doubt;
- inadequate display of emotions (failures, hysterics, anger);
- distrust of the world;
- ambivalent feelings for the mother, close people - from love to hate several times a day.
Symbiotic affection
The frustration of attachment of a mixed type, in which there is a strong separation anxiety and a desire to merge with a significant another, to dissolve in it - this is a symbiotic affection. For a newborn child, symbiosis with the mother is very important for survival, the baby's and mom's brain signal systems work in a synchronous rhythm, feeling each other. But the child develops and must gradually separate from the mother.
The crisis of 3 years, when the baby protests and tries to do things on his own, while the main phrase at this age "I myself!" Clearly demonstrates that it's time to reckon with a small man for his right to secede and to know the world himself. An alarming mother strongly resists this process, it happens because at one time she also had problems with separation from her mother, while feelings arise:
- impotence;
- total fatigue;
- irritation and anger;
- guilt and shame.
Symptoms of symbiotic attachment of the child and mother:
- all his activities the child appeals to the mother, without her and the step can not enter;
- commands the mother;
- needs external stimulation to activity, entertainment, self interest does not arise;
- does not know how to regulate and live his emotional state.
Sexual affection
The need for attachment to a sexual partner in women is more pronounced than that of men. Intimate or sexual attachment is formed under the influence of the release during the sex of a large amount of oxytocin, which in men is a little silenced with testosterone, and in women it is enhanced by estrogen, a hormone with a calming and "binding" effect. Therefore, women can become attached to a partner after the first sexual contact, and attach great importance to sex.
The gap with a partner is perceived by a woman very morbidly. Often, sexual attachment is an emotional one. In men, emotional attachment to a sexual partner is formed over time. For a woman, this attachment is even deeper, because it carries a touch of gratitude for the sensual pleasure delivered by the partner.
Avoiding Attachment Type
Attachment theory characterizes avoiding attachment as a violation typical of an average of 25% of people. Children with an evolving avoidance pattern behave in a way that looks like indifference from the side: the mother leaves or comes to them anyway. With the avoiding type of attachment, a child can safely communicate with strangers. Often parents do not snuff at such children, showing off their friends that their child has independence for years. This type of attachment appears in the following cases:
- early separation from the mother (long departure, death);
- social deprivation;
- excessive supervision and control at an early age;
Avoiding attachment - signs in childhood and adulthood:
- inability to establish long-term relationships;
- inability to seek help, support - live alone;
- lack of attachment to important, important people;
- negative attitude to the appearance of attention from outside, prefer not to be touched.
Neurotic affection
The child's attachment to the mother can be painful. Some children need a constant presence of the mother, and it takes her a few minutes to go into hysterics, and a good mom immediately rushes to calm the child, dragging him everywhere with her. Over time, manipulation by the growing-up child intensifies and begins to cause great anxiety. Such children learn the rule that in order for a loved one to be close, one must suffer and play on his suffering.
In adults, sick or neurotic affection is transferred to all meaningful relationships, but more so in the case of love relationships. How it manifests itself:
- life narrows to one person;
- the need for the other to see in these relations the meaning of life;
- constant anxiety and anxiety for a relationship;
- control over the personal life of another;
- destroying feelings: jealousy, anger.
Disorganized affection
Violation of attachment in the form of a demonstration of conflicting patterns of behavior is a disorganized attachment. This type of attachment is formed in childhood, in a family where parents are prone to violence and treat the child cruelly, as a result, children grow up unable to control their behavior, which is characterized by impulsiveness. This is expressed in lies, theft, harm to yourself and others, violence. They live on the principle "I have nothing to lose!" Signs of disorganized attachment:
- lack of empathy ;
- inability to adequately express their emotions;
- scant speech;
- lack of exploratory interest, curiosity, imagination;
- inability to build close, trusting relationships with people;
- there is no difference between those who can be trusted and those who can not (trusted by casual acquaintances, while close people are perceived as carrying a threat);
- people are perceived as a resource that can be used for their own purposes.