louise glück, the white series // claude monet, houses in the snow // fyodor dostoyevsky, the gentle spirit // jane o. wayne, with solitude //reddit user artsykate, winter nocturne with lonely road // joseph brodsky, to m.b. // fyodor dostoevsky, poor folk // caspar david friedrich, winter landscape // audre lorde, the cancer journals // mahmoud darwish, memory for forgetfulness
Attachment styles are the ways people feel and act in relationships, based on their early experiences with parent or guardian. There are four main types:
Secure Attachment:
Healthy: Feeling comfortable with your partner and being able to share your feelings and needs openly. Trusting them and supporting each other without feeling overly worried about the relationship.
Unhealthy: Becoming overly dependent on your partner, feeling anxious or upset if they spend time away, or constantly seeking reassurance and validation.
Anxious Attachment:
Healthy: Expressing your emotions and needs to your partner, and valuing emotional closeness. Feeling secure when your partner reassures you and staying connected during difficult times.
Unhealthy: Constantly worrying about your partner leaving you, feeling jealous and possessive, or becoming too clingy and demanding in the relationship.
Avoidant Attachment:
Healthy: Valuing your independence and personal space while still being supportive and caring toward your partner. Understanding your emotions and expressing them in a balanced way.
Unhealthy: Pushing your partner away emotionally, avoiding discussions about feelings or conflicts, or being emotionally distant and unavailable.
Disorganized Attachment:
Healthy: Recognizing and addressing past traumas, working on building trust and emotional stability.
Unhealthy: Reacting impulsively or unpredictably in relationships due to unresolved traumas, struggling with forming and maintaining deep emotional connections, or experiencing extreme emotional highs and lows.
When love is unreliable and you are a child, you assume that it is the nature of love – its quality – to be unreliable. Children do not find fault with their parents until later. In the beginning the love you get is the love that sets.
Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Disorganized (aka fearful-avoidant) attachment style is overanalyzing/overcorrecting when you think your partner might be pulling away from you, but then pulling away from them when they draw close to you.
It is both craving AND fearing intimacy so deeply that you grip people tight in your hands lest they leave you, but keep them at an arms length lest they love you.
So I came across this video and it blew my mind. All these decades of feeling misunderstood, bullied, laughed at for not being able to remember things, it was all due to childhood trauma. There's justification for the memory loss and I'm not flawed. It's been a hard journey, but change and growth is always hard. Cheers to myself and everyone else going through this super hard journey of abuse/trauma recovery. Every single piece of knowledge we gain about understanding ourselves is a win against those who have used, abused and hurt us so far.
“who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me?” i whisper to myself, knowing full well that anytime someone comes remotely near my kitchen i scramble and hide in the fucking dishwasher
bpd culture + anxious/avoidant attachment is seeing your fp talking and laughing with someone else so you think don't look don't look at them don't even acknowledge what's happening just keep smiling because then it can't hurt you just don't look and everything will be fine and then realising this behaviour is reminiscent of a child covering their eyes in the dark because if you cant see the monster then the monster cant hurt you.
If you know me, you know I am obsessed with neuroscience. I devour countless articles and never miss an opportunity to dive into a book on the topic. I recently came across this, and found it very interesting!
Both attachment and deep love light up different parts of the brain. Attachment mostly uses a part of the brain that's connected to bonding, and chemicals called oxytocin and vasopressin help with this. On the other hand, deep love activates the pleasure and reward parts of the brain. The chemical called dopamine makes us feel really good and excited when we're in love.
You can be very close in a not so good relationships. You might be really attached, but it doesn't mean there's real love or respect between you.
You can feel deeply attached without really being truly in love. Attachment is a bond created with someone based on shared experiences (good or bad), dependency or habit. Experiencing big moments in life together, like moving houses, can bring you closer, even if it's not about love but make it hard to let go for this reason.
Love means having strong and deep feelings towards someone, from really admiring them to deeply caring for them. It's about feeling connected, caring, and drawn to someone. You can have love without attachment. You can care deeply about someone without needing them around all the time. Some believe it's good to love without being too clingy or controlling. So, yes, it's possible to love someone without always being attached to them.