Dear Mina:

You are welcome.

In case it isn’t clear, I qualified emotional attachment “to another person” because people do get attached to things, which is not the case here.

Looking deeper at attachment is what I did in my reply to you. I can elaborate a bit more: when you formed an emotional attachment to your boyfriend, there was a feeling of safety in that attachment, for you, much like a baby feels in the arms of her mother, safe. The threat of losing the mother feels like a great danger because safety is taken away. In nature baby animals do die when losing their mother, so the feeling fits reality.

In a romantic relationship, when you form an attachment, there is also the feeling of safety in it and when the relationship ends, so is the safe feeling and the person goes into a kind of shock, as if the ground you stood on is shaking and you can fall, or maybe you feel like you are falling.

The good news is that you are not a baby or a young child and in reality, you will survive this. It only feels as bad as it feels, but it isn’t. Back to the comparison to the ground shaking underneath you: the ground will settle after a while and you will feel safe again.

What to do in the meantime? Take good care of yourself, be kind to you just like you would be if a young child who lost her mother was in your care: be gentle with yourself at this time, rest, watch a good movie, listen to your favorite music, take a nice walk, a nice bath, etc. Don’t look far into the future, take one hour, one day at a time. Eventually the ground will settle and you will feel okay again.

anita