Nepo' s Recipe For Attachment

"The truth is that this is how we evolve inwardly: by separating and rejoining, each time rearranging who we are....."*

Beyond Awakening's 100th interview on Sunday featured poet Mark Nepo. I remembered purchasing a book by Nepo several years ago, reading part of it, putting it on the shelf. I wondered what I would think now.

Making time to listen to Terry Patten interview Nepo appealed to me. Maybe there would be insights into attachment. I believe Nepo spoke of attachment without using the word. 

Here's a paraphrase of what I heard; see if it speaks to you of attachment:

"Things come together quietly; when they fall apart, they make a lot of noise."  

Attachment, according to the two Nepo quotes, may be as much about separation as it is about togetherness. What do you think? Do you need spaces in your attachments? If you need space, how do you go about getting it?

Please reply to this email or go to the blog by clicking on underlined exploring the mystery below or click on the word comment. I'm getting attached to hearing from you!


Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

*Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk (2005).

Balancing Act: Autonomy & Belonging - #153

exploring the mystery cannot be accused of ignoring attachment as an important component of life. If your sense of autonomy has been begging for recognition: relief follows!

You may recognize a portion of the following quote from a previous blog. If you do, congratulate yourself for remembering - this is a great quote to have in your heart:

"We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others.

"We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being.............

"We are here to become more and more ourselves."*

If your attachments/relationships encourage you to become more and more yourself, congratulate yourself once again. Regardless of where you are now in your life, keep working to make autonomy and belonging, separateness and attachment balance!

Is it more difficult to be yourself when you are in a relationship? Please let me know by replying to this email or going to the blog by clicking on exploring the mystery at the bottom of this page.

Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

*What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life by James Hollis, PH. D.

Photo materialized in my kitchen recently. Similar to the Buddhist practice of making beautiful sand mandalas, and then sweeping them away, this sculpture is no longer in existence.  

Midweek: Why Do We Live Disembodied?

A creative exploring the mystery reader suggests our first attachment may be  to our body - not to our parents.  Go to blog comment section March 10, 2015, to read her thinking.

Attachment suggests connection. When we are attached to someone or something, we spend time making certain the person or object is safe. If our first attachment is to our body, why do many of us struggle with, and many times fail, our attempts to care for our bodies?

Most of us, self included, spend our waking life in our minds, intellects, or heads (whatever label you choose). This interferes with our ability to feel our feelings. 

Disappointment can be a path to our emotions. We don't get to know feelings by thinking, we get to know feelings by feeling. Feelings need exercise.  

Anger is one feeling that I don't exercise very often. Longtime readers will remember when threats of the emerald ash bore led to a plan by the Homeowners Association to cut down perfectly healthy trees in my yard. 

My first response to the news was disappointment. I would miss these trees, I commune with them every day. Staying with the disappointment, feelings of powerlessness appeared. Not liking the feeling of powerlessness, anger erupted from a deep place inside me  The anger helped me speak up and save the trees.   

Does your mind get in the way of exercising your feelings? Do you have ideas about our first attachment? Please let me know in an email or in the comment section. BTW, I use emotion and feelings to refer to the same thing in this post.

Thank you for exploring the mystery of attachment
                                                                     - Nicky Mendenhall

The photo (and the camel photo last post) is from a feeling engendering photo exhibit at The World Food Prize building, downtown Des Moines. I am currently unable to locate the name of the photographer.  

You Gotta Have Attachments! - #152

"The need for attachment never lessens," writes Bessel Van Der Kolk, in one of my favorite new books: The Body Keeps the Score (2014).

In our daily lives, we watch people attach to others through work, friendships, and family. Humans cannot tolerate being disengaged from others for very long. Of course this varies depending on the person's attachment style.

Bessel* writes that people who cannot bond with others, in the ordinary ways listed above, find other ways: illnesses, lawsuits, or family feuds. He continues: "Anything is preferable to that godforsaken sense of irrelevance and alienation.".

This is not permission to blame people who exhibit these less than optimal strategies. Remember, people don't choose these strategies consciously. 

Life is challenging when you enjoy positive attachments; think what it would be like to be lonely.  As we move into the spring season, people come out of their winter hibernation. Greet each person you meet with kindness and compassion.

As for the camels, I've decided that once in awhile I'll use an image I love but that doesn't necessarily reference the post. The challenge is for you to make a connection - then let me know. We will create meaning together! Keep me posted on your view of attachments and remember if you are riding a camel, be attached!

Thanks for continuing to explore the mystery of attachments - 
                                                               Nicky Mendenhall



*I take the liberty of using Van Der Kolk's first name after hearing his personable presentation for NICABM

MidWeek: Good News About Attachment Styles

Our exploration of attachment will initially focus on the psychological meaning of attachment. Exploring Buddhist ways of thinking about attachment will be in future posts. 

Psychologists describe attachment as exhibiting four styles: secure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized.

All of us want to be persons with secure attachment; not all of us are that lucky.  Bowlby* (1988) believes a person with secure attachments will "feel bold in his explorations of the world."

The formula for secure attachment: 

Being seen, understood, met, and loved as we truly are.**

Don't worry, research now tells us that if as a child you aren't lucky enough to receive these from your caregivers, you don't have to be saddled with a less functional attachment style forever. 

Insecure attachment (and anxious and disorganized attachment) is subject to change! 

The good news: what happens to us in childhood can be modified.

Scientist now know neuroplasticity makes it possible for neural networks to shift and change and as they do, attachment styles can be modified.

Next post will continue to explore attachment in all its complexity. If you have questions or comments, I would be pleased to hear them. Email me or (let's see if it works this time) go to bottom and click on exploring the mystery that is underlined. This will take you to the blog. Scroll up and down to find the comment box.

In case you are wondering - here is the answer to the quiz last week: "a" or "b" or "a&b". It turns out there could be no wrong answer. 

Thanks exploring the mystery of attachment -  Nicky Mendenhall

*Bowlby quoted in A Psychotherapy of Love (2010), Firman & Gila, page 32.

**Attachment sections (I lost the page & I want to go to bed!) in The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy (2010), Cozolino.

Attached to Attachment - #151

If you visited the comment section* of exploring the mystery this week, you already know the meaning of the word attachment varies depending on its context.

Regardless of whether or not you understand the complexities of the word attachment, please choose a or b in exploring the mystery's first quiz:

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, would agree with which of the following definitions:

a. Attachment refers to the nature of our interactions with others.  

OR

b. Attachment refers to an unhealthy tendency to project good qualities onto people and then cling to them, expecting they will bring happiness.

FYI: a and b are both bonafide definitions of attachment. 

Do you choose a or b?

And the next question - which definition do you want to explore first? 

If you have a preference, email me by replying to this message, letting me know if you are more interested in exploring the "nature of interactions" or exploring the dynamics of "projecting and clinging".  

Thanks 4 exploring the mystery of attachment - Nicky Mendenhall

*At the bottom of this post you will see Comments. Click on it to go to the blog, then scroll up and down to see the comments. While there you can enter your comment or read other comments.

**HH is a nickname for the Dalai Lama. I learned this while traveling in India. HH stands for His Holiness.

Midweek: The First Attachment

My maternal grandmother lived in the house pictured above sans red door and decorative circle. 

Our first attachment is to our parents. Our attachment to them is influenced by their attachment to their parents. Norman Fischer, in Taking Our Places,* writes:

"In the end our maturity demands that in accepting our parents we find a way to be grateful to them, no matter how terrible a job they may have done with us."

Fischer continues: "......to accept our parents with gratitude is to accept the world as it actually is and to understand its suffering and confusion with a wide wisdom."

So as we explore attachment to our parents, I hope to keep his wise words in mind. Accepting the world as it actually is - where did you learn to do this?

More to come in Post #151 on attachment. In the meantime, please consider what comes to your mind when you think of the attachments in your life - and tell me, Do you accept the world as it actually is? Let me know what you think and feel. We're going into another complicated mystery!

Thanks for Exploring the Mystery of Attachment - 
                                                                        Nicky Mendenhall

The Secret Life of Attachments: - #150

Today I felt a pain in my thigh as my massage therapist was working on my legs. I asked, "What is that?" She answered, "An attachment."

In the lovely relaxed atmosphere of her office, free association took over: I have an attachment to my husband and three sons and their families, my two stepdaughters and their families, eating organic food, being surrounded by beauty, watching the sunset. 

Then, like the unwanted previews on Netflix DVD's, my less wholesome attachments began parading across the screen: my need to have decisions settled and decided right now, my need to be on time, my need to know everything. 

The pain in my thigh was related to an attachment. Does attachment often lead to pain?

I wanted to write about this today as it was fresh on my mind. The more I mulled it over, the more I suspected that attachments are mysteries to explore and that the subject is not going to be closed in one blog post. 

More exploration of this is needed.

What are you attached to - both on the positive and less flattering side? Please let me know on the comment section on the blog or hit return to this email.

Thanks for exploring the mystery of attachments - 
                                                                    Nicky Mendenhall
Photo captured while waiting for green flash purported to happen when sun dips into the ocean. San Diego, CA.

Rilke Recommends Insecurity

It's Midweek - time for a word from Rilke. 

Today's reading, titled 'Not Prisoners' from A Year With Rilke, made me question whether I focus too much on security. As I age, I want to try new things - go in all the rooms of my house but I find myself being more reluctant and afraid. 

Will I have the courage to explore the mystery? Do you try new activities or do you settle in and do the same things over and over with the same people?

And another quick midweek comment - as winter goes on and on, I am beginning to feel a bit like a prisoner. Are you ready for a change of season? I am!

Now here's Rilke to explain what rooms and prisons I mean:

"If we imagine our being as a room of any size, it seems that most of us know only a single corner of that room, a spot by the window, a narrow strip on which we keep walking back and forth. That gives a kind of security. But isn't insecurity with all its dangers so much more human?

We are not prisoners of that room."*

Tell me what you think about Rilke's conclusion that taking risks is what makes us human and that to be insecure can be liberating.

Thank you for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

The photo is of my CA granddaughter's courage and free spirit.

* A Year With Rilke translated and edited by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows (2009).