Insecure Attachment Quotes

Just like the first time you walk on ice or sit on a new chair, at first your muscles are clenched, waiting to see if the ground under you is secure or about to fall away. If the ice has always been solid, or you have never had a chair break under your weight, you may assume that you can relax quickly into your seat or head out onto the ice and skate. You have no reason to think otherwise. If, however, you have had a chair break under you, you may think hard about sitting down again and may take longer to relax into the secure base. If the chair has never been there for you at all, you may decide you simply don't need chairs and prefer to stand. These are insecure attachment styles. ~ Nora Samaran

Failure is another emotion I cannot stand to feel, because in adult life I have conditioned myself not to fail at anything. Failure takes me straight back to the feelings of worthlessness I grew up with as a stammering, reclusive little boy. ~ Jake Wood

The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women in the world
the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make "informed decisions" that will guarantee the successful course of our children's lives. It tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers
from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we will have no one but ourselves to blame. Because to point fingers out at society, to look beyond ourselves, is to shirk "personal responsibility." To admit that we cannot do everything ourselves, that indeed we need help
and help on a large, systematic scale
is tantamount to admitting personal failure. ~ Judith Warner

Sometimes you're a psychiatrist and sometimes you're a group therapist. The dynamics in between people and the misgivings sometimes that artists have when they get into the studio because they're under a different level of scrutiny. A lot of them can be insecure about it. My job is not simply to make musical determinations but sometimes to just keep people from flipping out during the process. ~ Todd Rundgren

The kind of people I absolutely cannot tolerate are those who never let you forget they are religious. It seems to me that a truly religious person would let his life be example enough, would not let his religion interfere with being a human being, and would not be so insecure as to have to fawn publicly before his gods. ~ W.P. Kinsella

After years in the Chinese workforce, I had developed an emotional attachment to money. My earnings were my hard work and long hours; my savings were comforts deferred. ~ Hyeonseo Lee

But let me just say that talking dirty is so important in sex. And it's pretty easy. To wit: establish from the very beginning that you like this. And trust me, you want to do it early on. Because if you wait too long to introduce the concept, your Special Lady Friend will be a little thrown and might not take you seriously. Think of it as a hat. If you never, ever wear a hat and one day you try to rock a fedora with a feather, all of your friends will be like, "Dude - why are you wearing a fucking fedora with a fucking feather?" You'll feel insecure and never wear it again. Now imagine that scenario, but in bed with your hardened dick out and it's your girlfriend saying, "Dude - why the fuck are you talking like that?" Not good. ~ Olivia Munn

Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine, renouncing attachment and looking upon success and failure with an equal eye. Spirituality implies equanimity.
[Trans. Purohit Swami] ~ Anonymous

My parents felt that acting was far too insecure. Don't ask me what made them think that painting would be more secure. ~ John Hurt

I've been doing this a long time- manipulating people to get my way. That's why you think you love me. Because I've broken you down and built you back up to believe it. It wasn't an accident. Once you leave this behind ... you'll see that. -Caleb ~ C.J. Roberts

As a group, attachment-challenged children need to be looked at differently. This is a group of children who have experiences and fears of being separated from parent figures. Until they can rebuild some of their emotional security, their time in child-care must be restricted. ~ Deborah D. Gray

I sometimes wonder why I pushed myself so relentlessly in weight lifting. My motive, I think, was not an uncommon one; I was not the ninety-eight-pound weakling of bodybuilding advertisements, but I was timid, diffident, insecure, submissive. I became strong - very strong - with all my weight lifting but found that this did nothing for my character, which remained exactly the same. ~ Oliver Sacks

There's a lot of wisdom that my dad and my grandparents and my uncle have been able to impart on me, and what I've treasured the most is I've seen examples in my life of people embracing their creativity, not feeling insecure about their artistic inclinations. ~ Bryce Dallas Howard

We can see that there are many ways in which we actively contribute to our own experience of mental unrest and suffering. Although, in general, mental and emotional afflictions themselves can come naturally, often it is our own reinforcement of those negative emotions that makes them so much worse. For instance when we have anger or hatred towards a person, there is less likelihood of its developing to a very intense degree if we leave it unattended.


However, if we think about the projected injustices done to us, the ways in which we have been unfairly treated, and we keep on thinking about them over and over, then that feeds the hatred. It makes the hatred very powerful and intense. Of course, the same can apply to when we have an attachment towards a particular person; we can feed that by thinking about how beautiful he or she is, and as we keep thinking about the projected qualities that we see in the person, the attachment becomes more and more intense. But this shows how through constant familiarity and thinking, we ourselves can make our emotions more intense and powerful. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

She had a strong, if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and literature, and where no one ever got married or succeeded in remaining engaged. ~ E.M. Forster

I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages. ~ Jane Austen

In our personal spaces, where there are no eyes to guide our better nature caressing our intentions, we sometimes gnaw in the agonizing realization that, although we charitably took on the rough task with smiling faces, our condescension has produced our worst nightmare. For a new work has triggered our insecure buttons, birthing the fear that the author may flow past our selfish desires, and find their way into the ocean of our faith, leaving us alone and desperate. And so we must, with the extremest prejudice, bomb their potential future by damming all of our congratulations. Rendering Goodreads a stale pond of green algae and used condoms. But do we not know that this same pond we all must drink from? Instead of filing another dead weight upon our self-deprecation, we should condescend to our own little devils, transforming them into loving companions with our guidance, so they may sprout wings in our charity, by praising this new work loudly to all of our friends and acquaintances. Instead of a dam, we can fashion a fountain of ascension, whose poetic mead, we may all get drunk on. Then, one day, those that we have assisted, we may one day find them returning us the favor by building us a fountain. That's my opinion on the subject anyway. This has been an exercise in poetic articulation. Signing off. ~ Sun Moon

Mindfulness should guide all your actions and your spiritual endeavors. Whatever you do, always apply three essential points: undertake the action with the intention of doing so for the good of all beings; execute it with perfect concentration, free of attachment to concepts of subject, object, and action; and, finally, dedicate the merit you have created to the enlightenment of all beings. ~ Dilgo Khyentse

Yeah. I can see what you bring out in him. You don't know this because you've never experienced it, but Four without you is a much different person. He's ... obsessive, explosive, insecure ... "
"Obsessive?"
"What else do you call someone who repeatedly goes through his own fear landscape?"
"I don't know ... determined." I pause. "Brave."
"Yeah, sure. But also a little bit crazy, right? I mean, most Dauntless would rather leap into the chasm than keep going through their fear landscapes. There's bravery and then there's masochism, and the line got a little hazy with him. ~ Veronica Roth

There is no simple harmony between what is good for social or personal stability, for civic commitment and attachment, and what is good for genuine freedom of the mind. ~ Thomas L. Pangle

When you feel insecure or like you don't measure up -remind yourself of how far you've come. And in the moment you'll realize you've climbed mountains and can overcome anything. ~ Brittany Burgunder

As a culture women are brought up to be fundamentally insecure ~ Lisa Ling

Then you're going to take off your suit and show me just how much you missed your phone cord."
"And the attachment."
"And the attachment. ~ Sylvain Reynard

I felt all the things that other teenagers felt. I was insecure in lots of ways, over-confident in others. I was very emotional. Excitable. ~ Molly Ringwald

I think it helps the writers to sell their books if they announce my attachment. But it doesn't mean that I'm going to make the movies in the next year or two or three. ~ James Franco

When you are insecure, it turns people off. To spend money, people have to give away a part of their security. When they make the transfer of money to you, they have to feel solid; they have to feel they are getting something that will make them more, because they are paying out and becoming less right now. If you are solid and contained and secure, it helps them feel solid, so they transfer their cash more readily. ~ Stuart Wilde

Empowered Women 101: Only an insecure woman with control issues will look outside her relationship and say other people are to blame for her husband's lack of focus, love and respect. A real woman knows that the problem isn't other people; it is her man. If he truly loved you he wouldn't have ever made you an option and went looking for what he felt you didn't have. Don't waste your time trying to convince someone to see your worth by destroying others. There will always be someone prettier, smarter, more spiritual and more accomplished than you to distract this person. A real woman knows her worth and will never have to train anyone to recognize it. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Gentleness is the ability to bear reproaches and slights with moderation, and not to embark on revenge quickly, and not to be easily provoked to anger, but be free from bitterness and contentiousness, having tranquility and stability in the spirit. ~ Aristotle.

God says only one thing if you want to have attachment towards worldly life; go ahead and get attached to it; or else, get attached to Me. If you get attached to Me, you will get permanent happiness and if you get attached to the worldly life, you will not find contentment! ~ Dada Bhagwan

I find it's usually the bullies who are the most insecure. ~ Tom Felton

Katz couldn't have said exactly why Walter mattered to him. No doubt part of it was simply an accident of grandfathering: of forming an attachment at an impressionable ago, before the contours of his personality were fully set. ~ Jonathan Franzen

No one "makes" you feel jealous or insecure, the person who makes you feel that way is you. [...] when you blame someone else for how you feel, you disempower yourself. ~ Dossie Easton

There are few things that weigh on a person's ability to grow and thrive more than insecurity. One critique, one insult, one harsh act could cripple a person who is not confident enough in their own skin to ignore the comments. ~ Carlos Wallace

The more a country makes military weapons, the more insecure it becomes: if you have weapons, you become a target for attack. ~ Albert Einstein

She had seen too much of the world, to expect sudden or disinterested attachment anywhere, ~ Jane Austen

Among [Applewhite's] other teachings was the classic cult specialty of developing disdain for anyone outside of the Heaven's Gate commune. Applewhite flattered his would-be alien flock that they were an elite elect far superior to the non-initiated humans whom he considered to be deluded zombies.[ ... ]Applewhite effectively fed his paranoid persecution complex to his followers to ensure blind loyalty to the group and himself while fostering alienation from the mundane world. This paradoxical superior/fearful attitude towards "Them" (i.e., anyone who is not one of "Us") is one of the simplest means of hooking even the most skeptical curiosity seeker into the solipsistic netherworld of a [mentally unbalanced] leader's insecure and threatened worldview. ~ Zeena Schreck

A securely attached child will store an internal working model of a responsive, loving, reliable care-giver, and of a self that is worthy of love and attention and will bring these assumptions to bear on all other relationships. Conversely, an insecurely attached child may view the world as a dangerous place in which other people are to be treated with great caution, and see himself as ineffective and unworthy of love. These assumptions are relatively stable and enduring: those built up in the early years of life are particularly persistent and unlikely to be modified by subsequent experience. ~ Jeremy Holmes

As soon as we identify ourselves with the work we do, we feel miserable; but if we do not identify ourselves with it, we do not feel that misery. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Sirri al-Saqati, who died in 867 of the Christian Era, said:
'True wisdom is: non-attachment to self and devotion to Truth. ~ Idries Shah

Miserliness has its own conveniences, otherwise nobody would be a miser. If you are not a miser, you become more insecure. If you cling to money, to things, you feel a certain security: at least there is something to ding to; you don't feel empty. Maybe you are full of rubbish; but at least something is there, you are not empty. ~ Rajneesh

But if anyone turns away from My reminder, his life will
be a dark and narrow one and on the Day of
Resurrection We will gather him blind. (Surah Ta Ha:
124)
Only belief can save us from a life of anxiety, for we
cannot find true happiness on our own. Even if people are
rich, they cannot properly enjoy their wealth or enjoy the
blessings they possess. In order to do this, they must
understand how to appreciate them. For example, they
must realize that a carnation with perfectly arranged petals,
as well as its scent, softness, and incomparable beauty,
is a great blessing of creation. But only believers can
really understand this, because they know that whatever
exists is a gracious gift from Allah and that all blessings
come from Him. Therefore, they contemplate His infinite
creative power in every beautiful thing, thereby increasing
their love and attachment to Him. ~ Harun Yahya

See how everything is temporary, and wanting it to be permanent will only cause you to suffer. And then see how letting go of that wishing, and accepting the changing nature of things, and being unattached to each moment of those changing things, will help you to be calmer and happier. Embrace the non-attachment. Embrace the changing nature of things as beautiful. Accept the impermanence. ~ Leo Babauta

I'm insecure about everything, because ... I'm never going to look in the mirror and see this blond, blue-eyed girl. That is my idea of what I'd like to look like. ~ Cher

I'm afraid I don't believe there is such a thing as blasphemy, just outrage from those insecure in their own faith. ~ Stephen Fry

In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard. A utopian vision of the patriarchal family remains intact despite all the evidence which proves that the well-being of children is no more secure in the dysfunctional male-headed household than in the dysfunctional female-headed household. Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. In future feminist movement we need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism positively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family. Ending patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love ~ Bell Hooks

Attachment was a vexing thing, as pernicious as weeds. ~ V.E. Schwab

Everything comes out of nothingness and goes back into nothingness. Hence there is no need for attachment, because attachment will bring misery. Soon it will be gone. The flower that has blossomed in the morning, by the evening will be gone. Don't get attached; otherwise in the evening there will be misery. Then there will be tears, then you will miss the flower. Enjoy while it is. But remember, it has come out of nothing, and it will go back to nothing. And the same is true about everything, even about people. ~ Rajneesh

Some persons are so inclined to mortify themselves that at every opportunity they have, they do so. What a beautiful practice this is, and how profitable! ~ Alphonsus Rodriguez

Sometimes people are mean because they feel insecure about themselves. ~ E. Lockhart

The most jealous and insecure are the ones who are guilty of betrayal. The ones who are the angriest are those who are pulling cons themselves, only to find out they're being conned as well. A thief hates to be robbed, and a cheater always wants you to be loyal while they are being unfaithful. When suspicions arise and the questions start, they are always defensive, always volatile. A thief takes being robbed personally, the same way a player falls apart when he finds out he is being played. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

After all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant
it is not fit
it is not possible that it should be so.
Edward will marry Lucy ~ Jane Austen

Ask a child "what do you want to be when you grow up", they would say "I want to become a doctor and save lives - I want to become a cop and protect the innocent - I want to become a soldier and defend my people." But ask the same question after they finish their education, and their answer would be "I want to get a highly paid job - I want to buy a large mansion - I want to be a millionaire". Here I ask you, who turned a hero into a selfish, insecure narcissist? It's our system of education. ~ Abhijit Naskar