You may have heard of the BIG, SCARY, EVIL thing known as “attachment” [mwah-haha]. Spiritual beliefs vary from one spiritualist to the next. Our practices and beliefs are very much personal BUT there are a few things we can come to an agreement on. One of them is that attachments are best unformed. Before you roll your eyes, hear me out.
After months of wanting to share my journey with worthiness, I struggled to figure out how to get my experience out into words. I gave myself grace and understanding that I was not prepared to have the conversation and opted not to force it. Since I’ve caught myself slipping (you’ll know what that means if you read the prior post), I noticed how disconnected I’ve been from myself causing me to decline mentally. I began committing to my embodiment practices again. That’s when I was able have a clear knowing, and I’m ready to share my experience.
Attachment is not the star of the show, it’s just the best way I can explain my worthiness journey. It’s quite easy to form an attachment to what we think will make us feel worthy, even though it does not benefit us to do so. Attachment is always beckoning us to give in (certainly me). Whether we do or not boils down to self-worth.
Now, what is attachment in the sense I’m referring to it? It’s holding a strong emotional link between you and an idea, a person, thing, feeling, image, outcome, situation, or way of being. A link so strong that it makes you feel as if, if you don’t have this thing, this person, this feeling, this WHATEVER, in this particular way or at a particular time, you are not valuable. It makes us feel like we need to constantly change to fit an ever-changing mold, OR that we can’t allow ourselves or others to change and outgrow it. It makes us feel like we need to be something more, rather than just being and enjoying. It’s a chaotic fucking energy and I know it quite well. Possibly you do too?
What is worthiness? It’s feeling secure and deserving of. Deserving of love, support, safety, security, care, comfort, respect, praise, generosity, space, being heard, being seen, grace, of evolving, of decency, of kindness, of nurturing, of creating, of success, of openness, of honesty. We are all innately worthy, and yet there are times I don’t feel it, and I have some thoughts on why. I’ve assessed when I both feel worthy and not, and I want to share what I found. I think it could likely apply to you as well. Maybe it will also help you understand what worthiness feels like for you and how to find your way back to the feeling when you get lost.
Let’s shed some light on this bitch! But first, brb, I need to take a self-care break so I don’t begin the slow process of losing myself. It starts off with me taking time away from one thing that seems insignificant to do something I love like writing, only for that something I love to take over and next thing I know I look around and months flew by and I’ve maybe gained some weight, accumulated some acne, not taken care of myself, and I’m burnt out and not even doing that thing I loved in the first place. So…. long story short, let me go and do that. You do the same if you haven’t already.
Okay, back! And yes, I did actually take a self-care break. I needed to shower, wash my face, brush my teeth, clean my cat’s litter, feed him treats, refill my Brita, and load my dishwasher. All the things that keep me feeling my best and functioning smoothly.
Now, back to the regular scheduled program.
Attachment. You tell me what you think. I think you can have passion, you can show care, love, and interests without being attached to something. I ask this because I don’t know if I want to say attachments are just flat out negative and we should avoid them like the plague, all because it’s never served me personally (and I do mean never). I can’t recall a single time I’ve been attached to something and it went well for me. But as with all things, there is a favorable and unfavorable side. Perhaps I just don’t know the favorable side of attachment (though I can’t imagine one).
Holding an attachment can create volatile outcomes. The things we hold attachments to are usually things that we’ve been told will make us feel worthy. Someone may have expressed fulfillment through something and wanting to feel that fulfillment ourselves, we find ourselves following their blueprint. Not questioning if the thing we are striving for is what our souls are actually wanting to experience. Accomplishing things and acquiring the things you strive for feels good. It should be done if what you are striving for feels right for you. We should not strive for it because it made someone else happy, and I think that is where many of us get caught up.
If it feels like you are nothing if you do not live up to an accomplishment, or it’s draining and causing inner conflict at every turn, it’s very likely that path is not for you (or at least the approach to the path is not for you). I wonder how many of us are doing for the sake of feeling accepted and worthy, vs. it being and doing what truly feels right for us? How many of us feel we need to obtain something, live up to something, or be with a particular someone to be considered valuable and worthy?
We’re like little herded sheep, only instead of being led by the shepherd (Source, our spirits, our souls), we’re led by other lost sheep who are just walking in circles following another lost sheep.
The variables of the things we hold attachments to are constantly changing. The needle is always moving. It makes it hard to grab hold of the feeling and keep hold of it. Some of us find ourselves constantly chasing, trying to keep up with the changing variables, or doing nothing at all and living in worthlessness, or willing to do just about anything to be deemed as worthy by others. In reality living in what others deem as worthy breaks down our self-worth further and further. We convince ourselves it’s productive and admirable even to play this game. Being willing to abandon ourselves to be accepted. While some of us try to control the variables through manipulation, making not only our lives but the lives of everyone around us miserable.
Chase and control. That is the name of the game with attachment. All while never giving yourself a break from it all to determine if the thing we’re chasing or controlling even aligns with us. SPOILER ALERT: If it aligned with us, we wouldn’t need to chase or control it. The process would feel good. Let’s say you are fascinated with the mind and you want to enter a professional field that allows you to study it. You’re going to enjoy the learning process (not to say it will not be challenging) and complete the tasks needed, and enjoy your work. Or love for example. You know yourself enough to live the life that feels right for you. You find the people that love similar things and are on a similar path as you and love flourishes from it.
Now, let’s say, you don’t know much about yourself but you feel external pressure to be a high earner for example, and so you go to college for lets say business because it sounds universal enough and you can be that high earner. You may find you fucking hate it. You hate the process, you don’t have an entrepreneurial mindset, and it’s torture. You don’t know yourself. You beat yourself up for not being good at something that does not resonate with you. You feel like you’re supposed to just get it and it should just click. You may drop out, give up on college all together, get any job that you can find. Maybe spend the days listening to crypto bros and feeling shitty for not living up to some bullshit societal expectation and you become depressed. You treat yourself like shit and move through life regurgitating the bullshit expectations you felt compelled to live up to, to the next person. Or let’s say, you prevail in college and end up in a career you hate but feel stuck in.
These are all very flat examples, lacking nuance and depth, but I’m trying to get a point across.
Do you see how creating attachments prevents us from learning about ourselves. It causes us to stunt others form learning about themselves. It keeps us focused on the thing we think we need to be accomplished and worthy. It’s an illusion! What we really need is time with ourselves, to experience the world, to learn who we are and what is and isn’t feeling good for us so we know who we are and can cultivate acceptance within ourselves. So we can follow our own inner truth to what will feel fulfilling to us personally.
If you feel so close to something, that it will crush you if it does not work out exactly as you imagined it. If you feel you or the people around you have to behave in a very particular way to be worthy, perhaps it’s something we need to take a break from. Take some time for yourself to see what actually is happening within you.
Speaking for me personally, I have quite a few things I’ve attached my worth to. I can only speak about these things because I know what it feels like to try to keep up. It’s been my appearance, it’s been my financial status, it’s been my intellect, it’s been the way I speak (annunciation, speaking fluidly, not using “um”, and so on), it’s been my ability to be low maintenance in relationships, it’s been my ability to hold conversations, it’s been the level of engagement I’m given from others, it’s been, it’s been, it’s been. What it’s actually been is exhausting, anxiety-inducing, and thankless.
Having attachments to not one, not two, but to multiple external things is weakening. It’s made me so susceptible to so much bullshit. I can make myself vulnerable to so much and not in the ways that I yearn to be vulnerable, but instead in ways that make me feel small, and exposed like I’m wearing my organs on the outside of my skin. Constantly susceptible of being punctured or infection. It’s a lot to keep up with, nurturing and tending to all these attachments. I can find I’m expecting others to tend to them as well and easily upset when they aren’t. I wasn’t giving myself room to be. I wasn’t giving that space to others either. I wasn’t taking the time to learn myself. If even just one of my attachments were to be poked at (intentionally or otherwise), oh baby, I’m down bad. I was wide open to being at the mercy of this imaginary thing I’ve been taught I should be aspiring to be; otherwise, I would not be fit to take up space in the world.
Worthiness has been a big struggle for me. I’ve learned through practice not to give in, but I’m still in the early stages, where if I am not consciously choosing not to give in, I could easily revert. Remembering that these things I’m holding attachments to are things I’ve been and am actively being wired to place value in is not only coming at me from a mass societal scale but also has been reinforced in my smaller community who are also wired to hold value on these external things. I can easily get caught up. That is why taking time to be with myself, in reflection, in my body, not taking in any content, is something I have to do to keep track of what desires are from my soul and what is from repetitive, possibly subliminal, and sometimes overt messaging that tells me what I need to care about and I should want. Otherwise, I get sucked in, caught slipping, and I’m back in the anxiety inducing, thankless, exhausting, unattainable race trying to attain this elusive, unstable we call acceptance and motivation.
I say fuck attachments. I want nothing to do with it. I can’t imagine you could convince me that there is good in it. One could argue that having an attachment to something favorable, like love, freedom, and evolution, could be the positive side of it. And while that would be the more favorable way to do it if you’re going to do it, I still see it creating problems when those variables aren’t doing what we desire them to. It makes it hard to give ourselves grace, compassion, and understanding even still. I just don’t see it for attachment. I’m sorry.
What do I specifically do when I feel a desire to attach?
I back away from it. I give myself space from it or the idea of it. I spend time in my own energy. I don’t consume content of people having the thing I’m in the midst of working to detach from. If I am still consuming content, I consume something in a different genre. I sit with the discomfort of wanting the thing I don’t feel I possess. I question what the feeling of having the thing will bring me and why. I question what I am seeking in having the thing. I ask if I can give that feeling I’m looking for through the thing without (or before possessing it, if you’re manifesting). Am I looking for validation, appreciation, acceptance, fun, orgasms, intimacy, nurturing, a good meal, belonging, peace, love, etc., etc.? Can I give that thing to myself? If my answer is ever no, I need it (not want but need it) and from something externally, then ou baby, I need to sit with myself longer and dig deeper. That could require therapy to help support me. I personally believe it’s not acceptable to hold so much of my value on something outside of me. The second I realize I’m doing it, I’m taking a step back ALWAYS.
Taking time to connect inward with myself gives me clear directions. I don’t always see my distant future, but I know what feels right for me in the now moments. I get information for the short-term future (maybe just a few days or weeks ahead) that will guide me to what will feel right for my soul’s journey. As I go inwards more and more I get more and more bricks laid in front of my feet to follow. I have a clearer understanding of myself and what it is I actually want to feel, create, and how I want to show up. I feel my most whole when my guidance is coming from within. I can show up in the world confidently and securely as a result. I’m much more accepting of the ebbs and flow of life, myself, others, and understanding of the impermanence of things. I can find joy in the death and rebirth of transitions.
Things we truly want, dreams, relationships, require time, care, and dedication. It’s not likely to be an easy and smooth ride for anything that is worth it. Even a relationship with the self takes patience, dedication, time, focus, and energy. Naturally, it will be the same, extending to things outside of us. Everything has a cost. Things require effort, vision, love, and enjoyment. If the journey with whatever you are journeying for/towards is unbearably hard, and unsatisfactory at almost every turn, but our worth is attached to this thing working out, so we refuse to let it go, then it’s not for us. We are barking up the wrong tree. That particular thing may be for someone, just not us, and that’s okay. Our things are elsewhere, and guess what? We innately know where to go if we just listen to our internal navigation system. My internal navigation system has brought me here to this blog.
This has been something I’ve wanted to discuss for a long time, and I could go on and on, but I hope I made this clear, and I hope you got something out of this. I hope you walk away from here understanding your worth, where it actually lies, and when you are and aren’t feeling it. Perhaps understanding your own reasons why, and the importance of caring for and connecting with yourself. Feel free to let me know your thoughts on attachments and worthiness and how it’s affected you. I look forward to your perspective.
As always, I’m sending you love, compassion, and grace. Give in to yourself a little if you aren’t already.
-Tales of a Nobody
