ATTACHMENTS
AND DEPRESSION
Attachment
is no more than a safety blanket to overcome fear—fear of change and of the
unknown from that change. To cope with that fear, all attachments become
distractions.
We are
living in a world with many problems that confront us in our everyday life, and
many of these are not only unavoidable but also insoluble. To overcome these
daily challenges, many of us just turn to attachment as a means of distracting
ourselves from facing our problems head on, or adapting and changing ourselves
in an ever-changing environment. All of our struggles in life, from anxiety to
frustrations, from anger to sadness, from grief to worry—they all stem from the
same thing: our attachment to how we want things to be, rather
than relaxing into accepting and embracing whatever that might happen after we
have put forth our best effort.
Attachment
is the source of human depression. No attachment, no depression!
Career
attachments
Your
career may span over decades, involving many ups and downs, such as promotion
and unemployment, changes of career and pursuits of higher qualifications,
among others. They may have become your problematic attachments.
Money and
wealth attachments
Money
plays a major role in life. You need money for almost everything in life.
Attachment to money and the riches of the material world is often a result of
an inflated ego-self. You may want to keep up with the Joneses—driving a more
expensive car than your neighbors and friends.
Relationship
attachments
Living has
to do with people, involving agreements and disagreements, often resulting in
mixed emotional feelings of joy and sorrow, contentment and regret, among
others, and they become attachments to the ego-self as memories that you may
refuse to let go of—forgetting and forgiving, for example, are hurdles often
difficult to overcome.
Success
and failure attachments
Success in
life often becomes an attachment in the form of expectation that it will
continue, bringing more success. Failure, on the other hand, may generate
disappointment and regret—an emotional attachment often difficult to let go
of.
Adversity
and prosperity attachments
In the
course of human life, loss and bereavement are as inevitable as death. Loss can
be physical, material, and even spiritual, such as loss of hope and purpose.
You may want to attach to the good old days, and refuse to let go of the
current adversity. Adversity and prosperity attachments stem from the ego-self.
Time
attachments
Time is a
leveler of mankind: we all have only 24 hours a day, no more and no less,
although the lifespan of each individual varies. Attachment to time is the
reluctance to let go of time passing away, as well as the vain attempt to fully
utilize every moment of time, leading to a compulsive mind, such as texting
while driving.
Sometimes
we are so busy in the outside world that we seldom have an opportunity to look
inside of ourselves, to understand who we really are and what really makes us
happy—probably not the material things around us.
Attachments are the underlying causes of depression, a
mental disorder affecting millions of people worldwide.
Stephen
Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
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