How is psychological attachment formed
Attachment is a connection that attracts and holds a person next to someone or something when neither a feeling of love, nor interest or benefit connects him with it.
To whom or what people are not attached to! To your beloved spoon and puppy, to work and place of residence, to the old jacket and to each other … Some of these attachments are understandable and justified, others are more like eccentricities, some are a big nuisance. Most modern people are attached to comfort, to a TV, the Internet, a mobile phone – they are drawn to all this, even when a person understands that you can do without it and even better to do it. People get used to their favorite chair, to jeans, to a tennis racket – these are also options for household attachments. Moreover, everyone knows the affection between people – friendship affection, affection between children and parents, love and conjugal affection.
Such interpersonal attachments can have a different nature: once worldly, and sometimes psychological attachment. Everyday attachment is an attachment to the usual conveniences and circumstances of life, sometimes a reluctance to strain oneself with indefatigability and troubles in case of departure. “Why don’t you scatter, is it difficult for you with each other? – And where will I go alone with the child? I have nowhere to go, no apartment, no money to rent an apartment either. ” Psychological attachment is more interesting – a connection between people, manifested either in a desire for constant closeness and a sense of security next to a person, or in pain from loss of intimacy or fear of such loss.
The most famous type of psychological attachment is the child’s attachment to the mother, as, however, the opposite is the mother’s attachment to the child. As a child grows up, one should distinguish between a child’s affection for mother and a child’s love for mother. The more children become adults, the more love and less affection should be in a relationship.
Psychological attachment can be both healthy and sick. A healthy (conditional) attachment is a close emotional connection when it is needed, and the possibility of an easy termination of attachment when it is irrelevant. If the attachment ceases to be soft, when the absence of the subject of attachment causes pain already, one speaks of a sick attachment. Neurotic, sick attachment is a rigid psychological connection, when even the idea of existence without an attachment object causes fear and pain, breaking at the soul level. All the more difficult are the experiences when a person loses the object of his sick attachment …
In cases where attachment turns into something that deprives a person of any freedom, it is already said about addiction, such as addiction to alcohol or drugs.
Once again, let’s go through the concepts: I’m used to eating apples for breakfast and eating without noticing them is a simple habit. I’m used to it and I want apples for breakfast – this is attachment as a kind of habit. I can’t apples, I scold myself, but I’m eating apples for breakfast – this is addiction. Attachment is like glue – if the glue is sticky, it’s easy attachment. If the glue is seized tightly and it is necessary to tear it off with blood – this is a dependency.
Indeed, psychological attachment is formed primarily as a habit, simply as the result of a lasting contact, that is, a repetition of significant experiences. If people who were previously unfamiliar people begin to live next to each other and a relationship is established between them, over time these relations almost inevitably develop into attachment.
Women, entering into close relationships with an attractive man, usually initially gravitate toward relationships with attachments, towards the family of WE, while on the part of the man, apprehension and a desire for more distant, freer relationships are more frequent. I plus I. Wise women who know the nature of occurrence attachments, “dutifully” agree to the I plus I relationship, and sometimes they craftyly offer them to especially cautious men, they know the main thing: over time, all I plus I relationships naturally melt into the WE family …
If people are indifferent to each other, then attachment between them does not form even with a long contact time. Unfriendly people paradoxically also become attached to each other (see Stockholm Syndrome), most quickly psychological attachment arises in a relationship where the background of a mutually positive attitude alternates with bright moments of negative outbursts. The longer the relationship lasts and the brighter the experiences that accompany them, the faster attachment arises and the stronger it becomes.
Small supplements of discomfort from loss of intimacy increase attachment, but in large doses, attachment is either destroyed or converted to a sick attachment format.
As a habit, psychological attachment is formed gradually, however, there are frequent cases when attachment arises almost instantly, by the mechanism of anchoring.
