Awakening Self: Connie Habash's Articles and Newsletters

This Month's Article:

"Surrendering the Binky: Letting Go of Attachment and Opening to Freedom"
by Connie Habash

It was time. Our daughter, approaching 3 years old in a couple months, had used a pacifier since she was only hours old. She became dependent on it to fall asleep, and now Mommy had hit the wall. After nearly three years of getting up a few times a night to get my daughter back to sleep, I decided enough was enough. I needed to wean Meera from the "binky", as it was interfering with her natural ability to fall asleep on her own.

I had avoided this for so long for several reasons. I knew it was probably going to be a few nights of crying, and both my husband and I were already too tired to be willing to deal with it. There had been a time, a year ago, when I had successfully go her off the thing at nighttime, and then one cold or cough after another brought the bink back for good. Yeesh. For convenience sake, we avoided the inevitable.

Pacifiers are certainly the embodiment of attachment for a youngster. There are few things that they will cling on to more vehemently. It's their security blanket, soother, and oral satisfier all wrapped into one. It satisfies physical and emotional needs in a quick and easy way.

But as with all attachments, there's a cost. Babies become depenedent on the sensation of sucking the pacifier in order to relax and fall asleep. There are, of course, the dental problems that sometimes result from use, necessitating braces. What may be the deeper issue, though, is how the pacifier tends to prevent young children from feeling and releasing their emotions. For all these reasons, I knew that it was important to finally help her let it go.

Adults have similar attachments, some serious and others more benign, to a number of habits that are adopted for the same purpose - avoidance of feeling. From having a glass of wine to relax in the evening to a bottle of vodka to cut off all feelings, attachment to alcohol can be a soothing occasional pleasure or a life-threatening addiction. Food, one of the great sources of sensual pleasure in life, can be healthy with occasional sugary treats, or a cause of obesity or life-threatening diabetes. Even the rejection of food, such as with Anorexia, can be an addiction, an attachment to maintaining a sense of control of the body.

There are certainly a myriad of other obvious attachments that cause problems for people - smoking, gambling, shopping, etc. And all of these usually surface as a result of the same reason the attachment to the pacifier does: to avoid uncomfortable feelings and sensations. In other words, a quick, easy, and artificial way of feeling happy and relaxed.

My husband and I encouraged the use of the pacifier with our daughter because she wanted to nurse almost non-stop. As many new mothers can attest to, although nursing can be a great joy, it can also be painful if the nipples begin to get sore, cracked, or worse. I had needed a break, and if she wasn't sucking, she was crying. We both needed rest and reprieve, and the pacifier effectively provided that.

Little did we understand at the time that sometimes babies cry as a need to release emotion. Life for an infant is stressful. The innundation of the senses with bright light, loud sounds, smells, and skin sensations can be overwhelming enough, on top of learning and integrating new information every waking moment. You can imagine how exhausted and overwhelmed the little ones must feel everyday. Many child psychologists now feel that crying is necessary for babies, as they have no other way of expressing and releasing their stress and tension.

Most of us didn't get permission as babies or young children how to release this stress through crying. If it wasn't a binky that we used to soothe and distract us from our feelings, it may have been a distraction with a toy, eating food, repetitive movement, or television, and as we got older, we simply pushed the feelings down inside and learned to shut them off from our consciousness. In this day and age, computers, television, and video games, even as babies, provide instant distraction from anything disturbing the psyche or body.

While most of us grow up to be "normal" and well-functioning adults, some remnants of these early attachments and tendencies to avoid feeling and dealing with stress can show up again. Our culture is strongly based on these quick-fixes to our emotional or existential pain. Feeling blue? Go buy a new outfit or a new car. Work stressing you out? Enjoy some chocolate, smoke a cigarette, or have a beer to feel better. Surf the internet, put a video on... we are encouraged to do anything but feel. We develop attachments to certain behaviors or activities as a convenient way to deal with the stresses of life. Rather than "crying it out" like a baby might do to release it from the body and the consciousness, we find the closest "binky".

How do we know if we've developed an attachment? After all, we can have an occasional drink or a piece of chocolate, enjoy a television show, or certainly buy a new coffee table and it's not an addiction. Well, there are some simple clues that can let us know when we're avoiding feeling, not just buying a necessity or enjoying a simple pleasure. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

Does it feel like a relief when I get to have that item or do that activity, rather than simply enjoyable?
Do I crave this on a regular basis? Do I HAVE to watch that movie, eat that cookie, or go running right now? Will I get stressed out, angry, irritable, or feel out of control if I don't?
Am I unable to relax and enjoy anything else until I do that activity or have that item? Do I become obsessed with it?
Do I spend a good amount of time justifying it, fantasizing about it, getting defensive with others or myself about it, or bargaining for it?
Does this action allow me to better consciously deal with the stresses in my life, or does it simply distract me from them?
Am I afraid of what would happen or what I would feel/experience if I didn't have it or do it?

The answers to these questions might lead us to conclude that we have some attachments. Some of them may be mild attachments, like eating cheese puffs every evening during a favorite tv show, and others may be outright addictions. Regardless, there may be an opportunity to feel more at peace and happier if we deal with whatever we're avoiding underneath. As we allow ourselves to feel emotions and process through difficult situations in our lives consciously, we cultivate more internal freedom, not needing to depend on external attachments, like the binky, to get us through life.

I knew that when I decided Meera needed to let go of the binky, it wasn't going to be easy. It was predictable that there would be a lot of crying, and indeed, there was. Anger, pushing, and bargaining (just for a little while, Mommy? Can I have something to eat? I need something in my mouth!) were all part of the hour that it took that first night to get her to sleep. Waking up and wanting the binky, she screamed and cried in the middle of the night until she fell back asleep. Facing an attachment brings out whatever feelings are suppressed, plus it can make us feel out of control, lost, and alone for a while.

Meera is fortunate - she has two supporting and loving parents to help her through this transition, and allow her to express her feelings while staying firm that she's not going back to the pacifier. Most of us, however, may not have so much support. It's tough to give up an attachment by ourselves, and even if we have a loving partner to help out, that may not be enough. This is why there are so many support groups out there to help us through the cravings, pain, and frustration of making a difficult change, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, various dieting centers, churches and spiritual centers, counseling and therapy groups, and personal growth workshops. Everyone needs extra support when one chooses to surrender an attachment.

The most challenging attachments to overcome, however, haven't even been mentioned yet in this article. They are our habits of thinking, acting, and speaking. We may have developed a habit of criticizing ourselves or others to compensate for not feeling good enough. Our minds may spend hours in reverie about fantasies in order to avoid unpleasant tasks. There may be a tendency to clam up and hold in our feelings, avoiding confrontation but building up anger and resentment within. Whatever the internal habit, it still serves the same purpose - avoid what's uncomfortable, difficult, or downright scary. But the cost can be losing friendships, feeling incompetent, or cutting off our hearts from others and even ourselves. The stress of life still builds up inside until we find healthy ways of expressing, releasing, and transforming difficult emotions. When we are able to do this, we find internal freedom - peace and contentment - in our minds and hearts.

We can also develop attachments to things like power and love. Some people become addicted to relationships and feel they can't live without someone loving us. Others may be very successful in business, and then become attached to feeling important or influential, basing their sense of self and worth on money, power, and achievement. Yet these attachments, too, can be avoidance of dealing with feelings, often that have been present within us since early childhood.

Yoga, of course, has solutions for overcoming attachments. Vairagya, non-attachment, is lauded as an essential component to attaining freedom from the aggitation of the mind, in addition to Abhyasa, unceasing practice. So, one step towards freeing ourselves from attachments is to take a step back from them - see them as the acts themselves, and not as a solution to our stress.

We can occasionally enjoy a cup of ice cream for the sweet, cooling treat that it is, but then let it go and remind ourselves that it cannot change our lives or make us feel better inside. If we can walk away from ice cream for months at a time with ease, we know we no longer have an attachment to it. According to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, Vairagya (non-attachment) is conscious self-mastery: freedom from craving seen or heard objects. Even if we think of ice cream, the one who attains Vairagya can choose to let that thought go in an instant. He has mastery over his own mind, not vice-versa.

The Yoga Sutras also warn us against attachment to amazing powers and experiences - even those can be subtle distractions from mental or emotional habits that no longer serve us. "By non-attachment even to tremendous powers, the seed of bondage is destroyed and thus follows Freedom." (Yoga Sutras III:51) Great or small, we all have attachments within us that keep us from experiencing ultimate freedom within.

Vairagya, non-attachment, is developed through Abhyasa - unceasing, steady, consistent practice. We have to be willing, again and again, to look at our attachments and what we're avoiding underneath, day in and day out, in order to make a change. Then, we must take the step away from the attachment and work through whatever arises. Deal with the pain, fear, frustration, loneliness, anger and find ways to heal. When we develop non-attachment and steadily practice it on the path of yoga, our mind becomes free of struggle, aggitation, distraction - peace prevails.

Meera, my daughter, has had to surrender her attachment to her binky. But at her age, she hasn't been able to step back and develop Vairagya. The most she's been able to integrate is the fact that "babies need binkies" and "I'm a big girl now - I'm not a baby". But what has been the deciding force that is helping her over this hump of learning to sleep without the binky has been love. This is the final component that helps us surrender an attachment.

When you're not quite 3, you need a lot of love from your parents and others outside yourself to fill you up with love. As adults, although we certainly need love in our lives and it helps tremendously to have caring support, we ultimately need to look within for that love. The source of that internal love is the Divine within us. When we are lacking in the internal connection to the Source of Love (God or whatever you choose to call the Supreme Consciousness), we turn to these attachments to distract us from the emptiness and suffering.

Yoga also talks about this Divine Love. The path of Bhakti Yoga, the Yoga of "Love and Devotion to the Divine", asserts that through our connection to the Divine source of love, we become free from anxiety and fear (see the Bhakti Yoga Sutras, verse 79). When we allow ourselves to be filled with love from God, we become filled with peace. It takes being willing to release our attachments in order to open ourselves to the possibility of love filling us up. That includes attachment to the idea that we're not lovable, good enough, worthy, smart enough, etc.

My daughter has a fairly easy attachment to surrender - her pacifier. A few days of crying and resisting, and she'll be just fine and free of it. But for most of us, our attachments aren't so easy to be rid of. It takes work, dedication, consistency, and the willingness to be uncomfortable in service of finding a deeper, true state of peace and happiness. How can we do this? Here are some suggestions:

Write down what you think your attachments that are no longer serving you are. Prioritize them in terms of what you feel are the most important to deal with first.
Spend time every day writing down your feelings and thoughts. Let them all come out, no matter how embarassing, scary, or upsetting they are. Give yourself a supportive space to let them out on paper, through your voice, through artwork, or even hitting a tennis ball against a backboard.
When you are wanting to do the behavior you've identified as an attachment, get the paper and pen out and start writing down the feelings you're having as you resist doing it. If you're wanting to go on a rant in your mind about how stupid someone else is, come back to yourself and identify what you're feeling in the moment about yourself and your life. Keep the focus on yourself, your feelings, and your experiences, not anyone else.
Seek support from others. Find a group - preferably in person, but online can also be helpful, too. Or tell a friend what you are working on. Find a good therapist to guide you in the healing work. Have someone that you're both accountable to doing the work with as well as someone who will be kind, loving, and compassionate with you as you're going through your "withdrawals".

Practice loving yourself and the idea of opening to receive love from the Divine. Whenever your mind blocks the idea of love, have compassion for that thought and find something lovable about yourself. Anything is fine. Start somewhere and when you can love the freckle on your arm, work up to something bigger.
Imagine that love is filling up the empty space inside, or is a healing salve being poured on whatever pain, anger, etc. you may be feeling under your attachment behavior. Breathe deeply and allow it to happen.
Find some books that support you in this process: self-help, personal growth, spiritual, religious, or yoga books are good possibilities.

It's the third night of surrendering the binky, and Meera only protested briefly, then went off to sleep ten minutes later. It does get better. Imagine that you have the support you need from something greater than yourself. And imagine yourself liberated from the attachments, feeling more empowered, loved, authentic, and worthy. My daughter doesn't know it, but she's now a little more free without the binky (and so am I!). You may not believe it now, but when you let go of attachment, you'll feel more free, too.