Paul Brian
In this article I’m going to tell you why you get emotionally attached so easily.
How do I know?
Because I have exactly the same struggle, and I’m currently working on solutions and improvements to it myself.
Not all of this will be easy to read, but I guarantee it will help you if you are having difficulty with getting too emotionally attached too quickly.
This is the stark, naked truth about emotional attachment and how to address it.
You’re stuck in a cycle
I’ll cut straight to the chase here and drop the truth.
Emotional attachment isn’t love:
It’s depending on somebody else for your own sense of wellbeing.
If you’re getting emotionally attached very easily it’s because you’re looking for fulfillment and happiness outside of yourself.
This is often part of a broader pattern of seeking comfort and solace that will come to us and complete or “fix” us.
But the more we try to fill a hole we may feel inside, the bigger it seems to get.
No matter what we try to use to feel happier, it just feels like every crash back to reality is worse than the time before.
Indeed, we don’t only get emotionally attached to other people:
- We get attached to unhealthy behaviors
- We get attached to addictive substances
- We get attached to negativity and victimhood
But in terms of emotional attachment to fellow humans, it follows a common and damaging pattern.
If I had to sum up the main impact of emotional attachment it would be the following:
Disempowerment.
Emotional attachment detaches us from ourselves by making us dependent on somebody else for our satisfaction and wellbeing.
Emotional attachment is a warning sign, because it shows us that we are outsourcing our own life and power.
The more we search for fulfillment and validation outside of ourselves, the more others pull away, creating a vicious cycle.
The cycle of emotional attachment is very damaging:
We end up feeling broken, insufficient and alone and then seek validation even more desperately, causing a chain reaction. And so on…
The truth is that the pattern of emotional attachment can be broken, but it requires looking yourself squarely in the mirror and realizing the following disturbing fact:
You’re undervaluing yourself
Liking someone or even loving them is a wonderful part of life.
Becoming emotionally attached to somebody, especially very quickly, is what happens when you undervalue yourself.
By this I don’t mean some kind of cheap self-help mantra will turn things around or that you necessarily have low self-esteem.
It goes a lot deeper than that, usually back to early childhood and the formative influences that made us who we are and established the way we give and receive love.
Our parents and formative influences in childhood often teach us ways to give and receive love that carry over into adulthood.
One theory of the attachment styles developed by British psychologist John Bowlby, for example, holds that we often become anxious or avoidant in how we relate to intimacy and other people.
This means that we seek attention and validation to reassure us we are worthy and loved…
Or we avoid intimacy and love that comes our way out of the feeling that it will overwhelm us or stifle our freedom and identity…
The anxious-avoidant individual, meanwhile, cycles between these two polarities, alternately pursuing love and attention and alternately running away from it.
All of these are reactions to patterns usually ingrained at a young age.
Both are based on ways of undervaluing our own power and chasing or fleeing love that comes our way in an unhealthy way.
This comes from doubting our own power to be a stable, strong individual who can relate to love and relationships in a healthy and secure way.
The reason why you get so emotionally attached so quickly is almost always because of the following reason:
You’re outsourcing your power
When you undervalue yourself and your own capacity to be fulfilled and thrive alone, you seek another source of power and fulfillment from outside.
This leads to getting very attached to others romantically and also socially in numerous ways.
We may become hung up on what we feel is expected of us, what makes us acceptable in the eyes of society or what we need to do to “fix” or upgrade ourselves.
The New Age movement is one area that sadly often takes advantage of this, encouraging people to “raise their vibrations” or “visualize” a better future and make it a reality through the power of manifestation.
These all present the solution as some kind of inner state which you need to reach in order for the dream reality to pop out and materialize.
They present you as broken or “low” in some way and needing to embrace a “positive” and pure version of reality.
Positive vibes only!
The problem with this is that it outsources your power just as badly as depending on other people to make you happy.
You may begin to seek other “states” that will make you happy or bring you your heart’s desires.
Or you may seek to repress all your desires and kill your ego.
The problem is that this is still trying to seek a “fix” to yourself or some kind of answer that will bring you what you want.
We seek satisfaction in other people and their opinions or emotions about us…
We seek satisfaction in society and its roles…
We seek satisfaction in trying to embrace new and “higher vibration” states of being…
But we end up disappointed each time and feeling like maybe there really is something cursed about us or fundamentally broken beyond repair.
The answer, instead, is to approach this in a completely different way.
Break the chains of your mental slavery
If you want to know why you get emotionally attached so easily, you need to look at the way you relate to yourself.
As I’ve written, emotional attachment and dependency often has roots in early childhood and forms our reality of who we are and how we fit in the world.
Emotional attachment is a form of mental and emotional slavery, because it puts us in a passive position.
We rapidly form an attachment to someone we’re attracted to, hoping against hope that they feel the same way and feeling crushed and desolate if they don’t or if that interest wavers…
We rapidly become dependent on society’s views of us and whether we’re attractive or considered successful and worthy according to the view of the collective…
It’s time to break the chains of your mental slavery and get out of the box.
A breakthrough for me came from taking the Out of the Box online course from the shaman Rudá Iandé.
This guy is no-nonsense and he’s been through all the same shit as the rest of us.
But his perspective and solutions are groundbreaking.
He doesn’t sugarcoat the truth and he doesn’t tell you what to believe…
Instead, Rudá gives you the tools and methods for actually putting you in the driver’s seat of your own life and relating to yourself and other people in a completely new and much more empowering way.
If you’ve been struggling with emotional attachment like I have then I know you’ll get a lot out of this and really relate to Rudá’s teachings and methods.
Here’s a link to a free video that explains more about the Out of the Box program.
There’s nothing wrong with you
One of the things I loved most about Rudá’s Out of the Box program is how it doesn’t rely on guilt or false promises of perfection.
It’s all about working with what you have and understanding there’s nothing wrong with you.
Your emotional attachments and dependency come from a real need and a valid need, it’s just that you’re trying to fill this need in an ineffective way.
Far too many people from psychologists to religious leaders to gurus will try to tell you that you’re broken, sinful, rotten to the core…
You’re living in illusion, deficient, stupid, or lost in a “low vibrational state.”
Bullshit.
You’re a human being.
And like all human beings, you seek love, interrelation, belonging and intimacy in some form.
When we’re a child we cry out for attention and love, demanding that our hunger and thirst be satisfied…
We may receive ample attention and love, or even too much, and then become avoidant and stifled, seeking to avoid intimacy.
Or we may not receive enough attention and love and become desperate and sad, seeking validation that we are worthy and accepted, that we are noticed.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be loved, noticed, worthy…
The problem comes when we believe that these descriptors can only come about from the outside.
And it’s this inner belief that can make us far too susceptible to emotional attachment…
Here’s the good news (or the bad news?)
The good news (or bad news, depending on how you look at it), is that getting emotionally attached very quickly is extremely common.
Even your favorite celebrity or friends and colleagues who may seem “above” this sort of trap are almost definitely not above it.
I can guarantee that at least in the past they themselves have become emotionally attached more than they realized at first and been hurt by it.
Everyone has.
But a big part of the human condition and bettering our lives is learning from our mistakes and taking this tendency of rapid emotional attachment and deconstructing it.
The love you need, the approval you crave and the belonging that you want, is all within your grasp.
But the more you chase it the more it runs away…
This is where getting out of the box and approaching it in new ways becomes so crucial.
The same old approach won’t work, and many of us have to learn the hard way…
For example, by ending up with somebody we’re emotionally attached to and realizing we still aren’t happy and then becoming emotionally attached to someone or something new that also leaves us unsatisfied…
Like a drug addict realizing that no ultimate high will ever be high enough, emotional attachment eventually must be left behind as a way of relating to the world.
For this to happen:
There are changes you need to make
To summarize, emotional attachment happens when your sense of wellbeing depends on others.
It happens when you undervalue yourself and outsource your power.
The solution is to jump out of the framework which you’re living in and the way that you give and receive love.
In order for this to be effective, there are various changes you need to make.
Rudá’s Out of the Box program is one recommendation I have about making these changes and looking at emotional dependency in a completely new way.
I also recommend that you begin to do an inventory of your life and see the things which make you feel complete and joyful without needing anyone else involved.
Do you love playing music?
Maybe you love gardening or exercising?
What about designing fashion or fixing cars?
These may sound like trivial things, but a huge part of not getting emotionally attached so quickly is realizing and putting into action all the various ways in which you can bring joy to yourself.
And I’m not talking about temporary giggles or rushes of euphoria.
I mean projects and activities which can bring lasting satisfaction and interest to you. Things you would do even if nobody else cared about it or gave you any recognition or praise.
These activities themselves aren’t even really the point:
The point is that you have the tools you need to live your life, and that you are far more interesting, talented and self-sufficient than you may believe.
Any signals or impressions you’ve received to the contrary is just radio spectrum pollution.
Think of it this way
If you had a plot of land and were working to build yourself a cabin, you might encounter many challenges.
These could include a lack of wood or building materials, low energy, lack of other people to help out, bad weather, a poor location or lack of tools or knowledge about how to build it.
These are all problems which could be addressed as you work to build the cabin. As you did so perhaps others would join in to help, perhaps not. Your goal is to build the cabin and have a nice roof over your head.
But if you spent that time desperately wishing your friend would come help you build the house as she said she would or that the wood was better quality and you had been given proper tools to start with, you’ll end up with nothing getting built and sitting in despair on the ground.
Choose option one!
Instead of getting emotionally attached to what could or should happen or how other people feel about you, get emotionally attached to your goals and your own inner fire!
The rest will come, believe me.
