Anxious Attachment: A Compassionate Response

You’ve grown and matured. You’ve been through a lot of emotional pain in your own life; a lot of it was from when you loved someone, but they did not love you back in the same way. Your heart broke over and over for them; still, a piece from you is missing. They moved on faster than you. You’ve moved on too, but sometimes a picture or a song will bring back that deep grief of loosing them. It’s the only feeling that you have that only you can feel; no one else can experience it other than you.

Often, though, you forget the heartbreak you have been through. And when faced with others who love you in that same anxious way, you simply get pissed off. They’re just so incredibly immature. They cannot cope with their own feelings for you. You’ve already been through those feelings yourself, and you are no longer like that. So why should you go back and deal with their issues too?

Do you remember that one person. The one person who taught you to be strong. Although you did not continue a romantic relationship with them, do you remember the patience they gave you? Do you remember the love they extended to you, when all you could extend to them was burdensome anxiety?

Of course, we can remember. But it does not mean that we want to remember.
We recognise that part of them which we used to be. The reflection is so horrible that it triggers us.

But confronting our anxious lover is like facing an iceberg. We fear that we will hit it and sink. We forget that we have been reconstructed through the storms of our past; the engine still burns with fire but the hull is nevertheless stronger than before. We are a stable as a ship on the high seas, however sometimes our ego forgets that some are still overwhelmed by the waves.

So what does our experience allow us to do?

Show empathy.

We know, in all honesty, that we’ve also been in that anxious place before. And we can use that experience to humble ourselves and be compassionate to that person who is so hopelessly anxiously attached to you, or me, that they do not know how to control themselves.

We can share the designs of how we became the strong ship that we now are. The blueprint of our strength can become the first step for their stability. We can carry them through what they feel, so that they learn to love others in the same way that you were able to love them — stronger and more stable; which in turn, will last to longer friendships and relationships.

Through growth into wisdom, we know that entertaining their feelings is unwise. Leading them into strength away from their anxiety can bring them into freedom to love without the burden of a chain.

This Valentines Day, we should remember that true love is not selfish. This day gives us an opportunity to love selflessly, even to those who we might not have strong feelings for.