Freedom from Attachment

Are you living with secrets? Maybe you're hiding your shopping receipts from your husband, or maybe you're leaving out parts of your stories because you fear the repercussions. In some cases, you might not even be aware that you're withholding information from your significant other. All these secrets stem from one ultimate truth: you're afraid of change. You can't be 100% committed to someone if...

Zehra Mahoon had just moved to Canada from Pakistan with her husband and baby. Then her mother became terminally ill. And her husband had an affair. When they separated, her husband left the country and took his money with him, leaving Zehra in debt with no means of income. Knowing her options would be even more limited in Pakistan as a single mom, she vowed to stay in Canada and make it work… wha...

How’s your relationship with money? They don’t call it a relationship for nothing. Just like love, if you are insecurely attached, your money relationship is probably based in scarcity. Just like love, it mirrors what you believe you deserve. Just like love, you fear it will disappear. Having money isn’t the issue—many insecurely attached folks are financially successful. It’s the feelings and fea...

If you can’t live without someone, and are knee-deep in soulmate territory where you need them to “complete” you, you are very likely stuck in attachment. You have a picture in your head of what you want your life to be and how you want to feel, so you’re trying to fit them into it, regardless of how things really are. So you push and pull, trying to mold them into what you want. Perhaps you cherr...

Allana grew up with a co-dependent mom and drunk dad, leading her to become a people-pleasing “yes” person who was completely disconnected from herself. Always spinning, never still, Allana jumped into her first marriage with a Wall Street guy who encouraged her to go to an ivy league college. Accomplishments made Allana feel safe, which was always her motivation, so she went to Columbia. Inside s...

I get a lot of questions about avoidants. People want to know if avoidant and anxious attachment styles can be happy together, and if there is any hope for their avoidant partner. Well, it depends on the amount of emotional work an avoidant is willing to do because this stuff runs deep. As children, avoidants learned to protect themselves from being hurt, which they carry into adulthood. Most avoi...

Do you choose love, or are you waiting to be chosen? Maybe you believe love has forgotten about you, or it’s reserved for other, more “deserving” people. Instead of opening yourself up to it, you ruminate on what you don’t have, believing you’re being punished by some mysterious force. That, my friends, is playing the love victim. Love is actually a choice, but to get there, you have to see how yo...

Gina DeVee is a published author, speaker, podcast host, business coach and self-made multimillionaire who built the women’s empowerment and lifestyle brand, Divine Living. But she started out as a broke, struggling, co-dependent psychotherapist who made $2,000 month working 75 hours/week and living with her parents. Gina grew up in the Detroit suburbs where money was scarce, so everything was “ex...

Did you grow up with a narcissistic mom? Her behavior may have been unpredictable, and you never knew what was going to set her off. She might have been manipulative, always looking for your validation and sympathy. Whether she was a malignant narcissist or a covert narcissist, her actions shaped your current behavior and your relationship insecurity. Her criticism and inconsistency made you afrai...

While we may be aware of our distrust of love, we often identify our fears as negative (i.e. rejection or abandonment). But often it’s fear of positive emotions—more specifically intimacy—that keeps love elusive. Those of us who fear intimacy actually want it quite badly, but feel we don’t deserve it because our negative beliefs are always running in the background. We pick “safe” partners who don...

“I attract avoidants” has almost become a mantra for anxious pursuers who are convinced they are only attracted to people who shun them. They believe relationships require a lot of effort, thus feeling a deeper connection to partners who reject them. If it comes easy, something must be wrong. This anxious pursuer is always focused on their partner, pushing, pulling and waiting for that “wake-up” m...

Complainers are addicted to feeling bad. Those who constantly compare themselves to others, believing everyone else is better off, are addicted to feeling bad. People who host weekly pity parties about everything that sucks in their lives are addicted to feeling bad. So why would you choose this over feeling good? Because it’s easier. It allows you to avoid your fears, blame the universe for your...

Do you say to yourself (or others) that you are the prize, and your partner is lucky to have you? And do you actually believe it, or is it just false bravado? Maybe you overcompensate for your true feelings that you don’t measure up by working hard to “be the prize.” Or you go the other direction and withdraw because deep down you not only believe you’re NOT the prize… you feel completely worthles...

Sarah Merrill is the woman behind “Big Kid Problems,” a wildly popular Twitter, Instagram, blog and podcast about the daily struggles growing up and navigating the adult world. But, like many of us, this was not where Sarah expected to end up. The only thing she knew she wanted to do after graduating from college was leave Florida, which never felt like it fit. So off to New York she went, living...

Many of us associate pain with love. We may not consciously think so, but it’s beneath the surface of our desire for love and all its glory in our lives. We don't realize we actually bring pain into our relationships (because it’s what we've known). We don’t see it as a choice, but self-awareness can set you free. If you're an avoidant like me, it can keep you detached from relationships, in searc...

Are you holding yourself back from receiving the love you want and being your badass self? Or does your need for control and “giving to get” keep you stuck in the same paradigm? Let’s be clear: a badass is not someone who struts around, pretending they don’t need anyone. That’s a victim wearing a suit of emotional armor. A badass when it comes to love is open-hearted, trusting, courageous and vuln...

Do you know what impostor syndrome is? Perhaps you’re familiar with it in your professional life, it means the fear of being found out for being fake or phony. The you which you present isn’t really who you are or you feel others will not think it is who you are. For me, I always waited for people to find out I was a bad person, even though nothing about me is…it’s what I dreaded, personally and p...

Are you stuck in an anxious-avoidant loop? No matter how much you “think” you want a relationship, you find excuses not to date or in a relationship, you look for problems with your partner. Oh wait! There’s more. You may find yourself dating, which you do trepidatiously, and voila there’s chemistry. You feel the pangs of anxiety and know you’ll be hooked by dinnertime. Whether you are the pursuer...

Karen Fagan struggled with insecurity, as many young women do, so when she was 13 years old she looked for a book on self-confidence. That led to 10 full years of reading about the subject… which unfortunately didn’t work. She hadn’t cracked the confidence code. Then life presented her with two pivotal moments where she was confronted with a question: Who did she want to be? Karen’s answer was sim...

Some of us people please to be liked or because we feel obligated. The problem with placing ourselves in this position is that it's not genuine giving, and it makes us feel disconnected from ourselves. We are trying to control instead of being who we are. We believe we can control how others perceive us, and create an image that we feel is acceptable, but doing so places ourselves in a prison of l...

Settling, and the fear of missing out, is a reflection of not feeling good enough as you are right now. When you search for perfection—or even just better than you have—you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist. Many people who are attached struggle with this “not good enough” belief, driving them to sabotage their relationships and create obstacles to happiness. If you second guess your rel...

You don’t have to be alone to feel lonely. Loneliness is a sense of internal isolation which serves as protection. Instead of opening up and sharing your feelings, you retreat because it feels safer. This not only disconnects you from others, but also from yourself. True connection requires vulnerability, which is uncomfortable and the last thing you want to do. You probably feel something is wron...

There are so many ways we don’t love and value ourselves—in work, relationships, etc. A lot of us don’t even know what it MEANS to love ourselves because there is no functional knowledge of what a healthy relationship is. We may think we know, but it’s usually based on unrealistic expectations. Our partners are actually a mirror for us; we attract people exactly where we are as far as emotional he...

Mike Zeller is a serial entrepreneur. But when three of his businesses EACH lost more than $100,000 in a single year, he knew he needed to recalibrate and refocus. “Your setbacks are your setups to prepare you for your comeback.” –Mike Zeller Growing up, Mike learned the value of hard work from his immigrant father, so ambition always propelled him forward. Partway through college he became a Chri...

Early childhood is where avoidant seeds take root. If you fall into this category of insecurely attached Avoidants, you probably developed a pseudo-independent identity, going to great lengths to prove you could take care of yourself. You acted like a little adult, holding yourself to pretty strict standards. This self-sufficiency carried over into actual adulthood where you had little or no desir...