How to Let Go of Your Attachment to Your Feelings, Expectations and Beliefs

Image by Andreas Dressler from Pixabay

I was reading my course notes on healing attachment wounds this week and marveling at the ways my attachment to certain feelings, expectations and beliefs shows up in my life through relationships.

While I learned about attachment theory at university many years ago, I’ve enjoyed this deep dive into understanding the neurological wiring and physiological responses the survival part of our brain drives depending on whether closeness or distance feels safer to us.

As Briana MacWilliams explains, this wiring is determined by the extent to which the parenting we received was supportive and loving versus critical and demeaning and many of us grow up with insecure attachment styles. That said, our wiring is malleable and will change if we meet the growth challenges. In other words, I can feel more secure by:

• understanding attachment wounds more
  
• recognising when I’m triggered
  
• learning to differentiate between what is reasonable and unreasonable
  
• developing better communication skills
  
• and meeting my own needs while also respecting those of others.
  

Attachment styles can be thought of in the sense of whether we behave in ways that are highly avoidant or highly anxious, with those who are low in both avoidance and anxiety being considered more secure in themselves. There are many ways and layers with which to define this, but broadly those with:

• anxious attachment tend to struggle with feelings of unworthiness, respond to a familiar type of emotional unavailability in partners, are terrified of abandonment, will do anything to preserve the relationship and tend to get stuck on potential and wind up settling for “the best they could hope for”. When they feel threatened they try to control the situation. In other words, this type will avoid anxiety by searching for temporary relief through an outside source. As Briana says, “It’s like putting numbing spray on a festering wound”.
  
• avoidant attachment tend to struggle with feelings of rejection and a fear of being consumed.  They believe that relationships come at the cost of personal freedom and need a lot of space. In other words, this type will avoid anxiety by being dismissive and cutting themselves off/withdrawing from outside sources. In Briana’s words “It’s like cutting off a whole limb to treat a minor abrasion”.
  
• disorganised/fearful avoidant attachment (who can be both highly avoidant and highly anxious) want love and connection but are also afraid it’s a façade, that they are being manipulated and used. They tend to be predictably unpredictable and to cut themselves off, dissociate and then attempt to reconnect. In Briana’s words “It’s like numbing a wound before cutting off the limb and then trying to sew it back on again”.
  
• secure attachment generally are open to new relationships, believing they meet people when the time is right. They are looking for shared values, goals and emotional honesty and know that compatibility is the true foundation for lasting relationships and connection.
  

One of my close friends and I often fall into what’s popularly called “the anxious –avoidant trap”. The person with anxious attachment (me in my unconscious “wired” state) moves towards intimacy, and the person with avoidant attachment (my friend) moves away from intimacy to regain their space. It’s been very useful to recognise this pattern, though in truth my friend is probably more wired with both anxiety and avoidance reactions.

It is perhaps a sign of rising to the growth challenges anxious attachment presents that I am able to now recognise this pattern and, despite loving them deeply, have no desire to be in a romantic relationship with them while they maintain such a fear of emotional intimacy. I’m quite happy to have them as just a friend.

I have noticed, however, just how often my old patterning can kick in and I feel quite hurt about something they have said or not said). When this happens I now take a look at the narrative in my head running those hurt feelings, and unearth whether these (generally) unspoken expectations are reasonable or unreasonable.

Once I shine a light on whatever is driving the narrative I often discover I’m being unreasonable with both myself and them, and old patterns and beliefs are running the show. I acknowledge that is not always the case, I have also learned the hard way to discern through other relationships when more toxic patterns emerge, like gaslighting, and then it’s time to disengage.

However, if I can see I’m being unreasonable, and old patterns and beliefs are at play, it provides a good opportunity for me to reframe the narrative in a more healthy way. I described one way to do that in What Resentment, Frustration and Pain Have to Do With Your Boundaries but there are many ways to do this and it’s been a matter of finding what works for me in which situations.

It’s with regularity lately though that I see that many of the painful feelings inside me are less about unearthed healthy boundaries, and more about a narrative that no longer serves me or that I actually even believe anymore.

Just this week in a conversation with my friend about something that happened many years ago, I felt that familiar pain arise and started to take stock. My whole “poor wee me” narrative was just one perspective, my friend had quite a different take, both wounds were fuelled by fear and had elicited our typical anxious/avoidant dance.

Then I realised there is no feeling they can elicit from me that isn’t simply a reflection of what is already within me. And it’s a choice as to which of those feelings, which of those expectations and beliefs driving those feelings, are actually true for me now.

I have no need to subjugate myself. That was a coping mechanism which, as Briana MacWilliam puts it, “was once the most functional way to get one’s needs met in a dysfunctional system or environment”.

More often than not, it’s a simple decision to take a more mature, more secure stance that shifts the feelings within me. It’s about holding true to the types of feelings I want to feel but letting go of attaching those to any particular person. That can also mean letting go of relationships with specific people entirely on occasion, but more often than not it just assigns them to a different category in my mind.

In this way I can see I’m actually not so quite “attached” to my feelings, expectations and beliefs are I thought I was. As I grow, emotional fragility becomes emotional intelligence, gullibility becomes adaptability, self abandonment becomes forgiveness, desperation becomes expression, smothering becomes nurturing, people pleasing becomes more healthy generosity and kindness and self depreciation becomes self reflection.

In what ways could you grow by reexamining and attaching new meaning to your feelings, expectations and beliefs?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy I Really Want to Go From Overwhelm to Clarity and Confidence, Ways to Reach for Growth Rather Than Reacting With Old Conditioned Constriction, Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results  and Overcome the Greatest Human Fear – Be the True You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. With thanks to BrianaMacWilliam for the insights and guidance.