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Unrealistic expectations and attachments can set us up for failure and can negatively impact our mental health.
The emotional ties you develop as an infant with your primary caregiver are known as attachment. The degree of bonding you experience in your initial connection frequently influences how well you relate to other people and respond to intimacy throughout life.
Fundamentally, this is an interpersonal connection that meets essential emotional needs like comfort, security, and belonging. Understanding your attachment style will help you better understand how you fit into social and relational dynamics. However, there are certain attachment styles that can degrade your mental health:
Anxious Attachment: When parental attention and affection for the kid is inconsistent, this attachment style develops. Generally, this style leads to excessive dependence on partners.
Disorganized attachment: This style may lead to excessive attachment and may shift to detachment at the same time. That can lead to significant problems for you and your mental health.
Impact of Excessive Attachment on Mental Health
There's a fine line between healthy and unhealthy emotional attachments. All of us yearn to bond and emotionally connect with people.
This connection can, however, deteriorate when our wants lead us to give up our sense of worth, tranquility, and freedom. Among the warning indicators of an unhealthy emotional relationship are:
1) Measuring Self-Esteem Based on Relationships
When you completely depend on a relationship to define your worth, value, and lovability, you develop an unhealthy emotional attachment.
After ending such a relationship, you could feel more sadness and become critical of yourself, as you may have linked that person's connection to your self-esteem. That's obviously harmful, as you are ceding your power.
Attachments affect our perception of ourselves, level of self-confidence, and potential. In contrast, if you develop excessive attachment, it may result in self-deprecating thoughts, despair, or concerns about your ability for self-love.
2) Fear of Being Alone
Being in a constant relationship and never being alone are symptoms of unhealthy emotional connection.
You become co-dependent on others to meet your wants when you don't give yourself the time or space to develop a relationship with yourself.
As a result, you become excessively attached to someone who might eventually impede your personal development. Additionally, you're more likely to accept circumstances that can be emotionally damaging, unproductive, and stagnant.
3) You Stay in Harmful Relationships
It's an indication of too much attachment if you continue to be in a relationship that causes you to experience frequent bouts of tension, anxiety, sadness, and prior trauma.
It's important to realize if you are putting your well-being at risk to maintain a relationship. Even if it could first appear that continuing the relationship could be beneficial in the long run, it's bad for your health.
Only a healthy attachment can result in resilience in the face of stress, optimism, strong self-esteem, confidence, ability to self-disclose and be aggressive, and regulate challenging emotions.
4) Need for Constant Approval
When faced with a difficult choice, we all need some guidance, and it's fine to ask for assistance from people we love and support.
However, feeling unable to make a choice without turning to a close friend or family member for confirmation can signify excessive dependence. Typically, those who seek approval do so out of a lack of confidence or fear of failing.
You put off making decisions till you have the chance to speak with someone you believe is best qualified to make them for you, as you lack the confidence in yourself to take chances. This dynamic may indicate an unhealthily attached state, but it may also provide the groundwork for codependency.
5) Excessive Jealousy
People who tend to get too attached may experience jealousy. For instance, you might continually check your partner's phone in case they speak to someone else. You may also keep asking for proof, as you secretly think they might be cheating on you.
The idea is that having a 'guarding' mentality towards your partner is a sign of excessive attachment and a mindset that could eventually create barriers.
Takeaway
The feelings you experience as a result of emotional attachment include a sense of security, protection, belonging, comfort, dependability, and optimism. Emotional attachment is a necessary stage of growth.
It might, however, turn unhealthy. If you're unable to emotionally connect, you may develop anxiety, distance, rigidity, and worries about your ability to find connections or love.
Janvi Kapur is a counselor with a Master's degree in applied psychology with a specialization in clinical psychology.
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