Pursuit of Proximity and Separation

To begin forming attachments we need to understand a few key things.

1) How we attach--(see roots of attachment)
2) Pursuit of Proximity and
3)Separation

The Pursuit of Proximity is the desire to be close to.
This can be to parents, friends or even things. When its not to parents, or to the person who is caring for the child, we call this a competing attachment. This can spell trouble when trying to parent. I will touch on this in Competing Attachment Posts.

The need to be close to someone is a primal basic instinct we all are born with. When we seek out that closeness and it is denied we feel a sense of separation. This is the most wounding feeling we as humans feel.
Whether the separation is expected or unexpected as in the case of the death of a loved one, the feeling of loss and separation is the same. Sometimes the separation we feel has been inflicted intentionally. Think how wounding that is.
We as adults even use separation as a punishment..We time out our kids, send them to their room, ask them to leave, etc. If we now understand that the pursuit of proximity is instinctual and a primitive need, think how wounding it feels to be denied this closeness. In essence we are saying to our children ,you can't exist in my presence right now, until you are good. We are giving the message that we as the adults in their lives don't have what it takes to deal with all that they come with, good and bad.

As adults, we even use this punishment on each other. We use separation as a means of controlling others.

Recently a friend of mine was denied a group membership to a local community group. The drive to belong to something for her children was thwarted by a small group within the larger group who felt she was not worthy of her pursuit to proximity to belong. They used separation as a means to control the situation, thus exacting their"power" without the larger groups knowledge.

Clearly this group is peer orientated and are operating on the superficial roots of sameness and belonging. They are not in fact loyal to each other as this friend had once been a member in the past and had made great contributions within the group.

When we attach at these first roots, without delving deeper into the soil with the other roots, we operate only superficially. Think of teens. They dress the same, talk the same, listen to the same music. They have attached to each other at the sameness root. We call this peer orientation. If they are attached to their peers, then they they are not attached to their parents. Who by the way are seen as DIFFERENT. We don't dress like them, we don't talk like them and we don't think like them.The friends become the competing attachment and we then can't parent them..They take their cues and advice from friends. Not their parents.
Like the group mentioned above, they took their cues  and advice from each other . Their was no individual thought or self -reflection. Or maybe fear played a role in speaking out to the group. Perhaps fear of being bullied or fear of SEPARATION from the group was a motivating factor in their decision. This is called the gang mentality.Or Lord of the Flies Syndrome.

It is seen all over school yards and until the maturation process happens, we could lose our children to their friends or to gangs.

So how do we stop this from happening??

Stay tuned......