The Attachment Wound Is a Self-Worth Wound, Is a Lack of Abundance Wound
It is a sense of scarcity wound.
I’m finding that in the past when I have fixated on a significant other and grown an unhealthy and addictive attachment, it is because in some way my self-esteem has been lacking.
At the time I thought it was because I had found in them something I couldn’t find anywhere else. Connection, warmth, meaning, belonging, beauty. Or, I was sourcing a large proportion of my self-esteem in this other.
Attachment is healthy, and it is normal to feel validated by deep connection to others who love and appreciate us, and I do not wish to shame this. This is to speak about attachment that has veered into an imbalanced and self-deluding place.
The attachment wound stems from a part of the self that feels very small and inadequate, a part deeply thirsty for love. It then clings onto a fantasy of the other as the only available or safe source of this love, growing addicted to them. The attachment wound is perhaps like a babe that wants to curl up, held but also imprisoned, in the womb of another, absconding our own magnitude.
Healing attachment wounds is healing self-worth. When I know my value and desirability, I no longer need to desperately cling onto a specific connection to give it to me. When I know how much connection is available to me there is this wonderful feeling of the world opening up, like each person I pass in the street is an opportunity for relating, can meet me, there are smiles and conversations and glimmers of love and possibility everywhere.
When I am operating from the narrative of the wound, there is a sense of worthlessness and scarcity. I am “not good enough” for connection to others, and so the world closes down, feels very isolated. Suddenly, the few scant places I have felt connection, or the possibility of it, feel incredibly alluring, like an oasis in the desert, and I fixate on them. “God I miss x, I felt so much belonging there”, “if only I was with y now, she made me feel like nobody else can.”, “nobody will ever love me like z did.”
I am not sure if deep connection is rare from the vantage of openness, confidence and self-love. I feel it might be everywhere.
Sadly, there can be a recursion here as we get stuck in our fixation, we deprive ourselves of evidence of anything contrary.
One morning I woke up mourning a lover, and in the wounded “why doesn’t she want me?” headspace the world felt very lonely. I felt very small, damaged by the rejection, like nothing else would make me happy. I picked myself up and went for a walk, feeling very glum. People I passed in the street felt far away, after all, I was glum, sad and small and didn’t feel like very much good, why would there be connection there? Why would they be interested in me? The world was grey.
I went for a swim in the river and did a workout, and something shifted in my state, the movement and nature connecting me to my own potency and my own body, the action and decision helping me to feel alive and vital. I refound my own sense of self and worth.
Walking back the same route, I found the world had changed, too. The people I passed in the street suddenly felt wonderful. There were smiles available to me. I could start conversations if I wished, there was connection all around me. It was like the sun had come out.
And too the attachment I had fixated on felt much less pressing, I could see it more clearly. I remembered my magnitude.
