What is not non-attachment

First things first. You are born. If all goes well in interaction with your mother/father/primary caregiver, you form a bond in the subsequent months and years, a bond which tells you that you are accepted, loved, secure, and that you have someone to rely on. Dependence is a normal stage of development that can’t be skipped. A securely attached child normally goes on to become a secure, independent adult with healthy self-esteem and satisfying relationships.

But the caregiver can be inattentive or unresponsive; abusive or ambivalent. Attachment disorders – impaired capacity to form relationships – can result.

In adult relationships, we tend to seek out people who confirm our beliefs about what an attachment relationship is like. Individuals are described as falling into four categories of attachment styles, depending on two characteristics: avoidance and anxiety.

Basically, anxiety means how much you worry whether people really love you and how much you fear rejection. Avoidance means how much you refuse to rely on other people and how much you are unwilling to open up to them.

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If you’re preoccupied, you demand lots of attention and intimacy. You need to constantly be in a relationship and you worry that you are not valued or loved enough. You have emotional highs and lows, a small gesture of attention can make your day and the next thing you worry that the same person does not like you. You are constantly monitoring your relationships for problems.

If you’re fearful-avoidant, you are afraid of being hurt by allowing others too close, although at the same time you wish for more emotional intimacy. You tend to see yourself as unworthy of a positive response, and don’t trust others’ intentions. You frequently suppress or hide your feelings.

If you’re dismissing-avoidant, you feel no pull to form intimate relationships, and find little pleasure in being with others. You need to be independent and self-sufficient. Research has shown that avoidant children’s stress hormones and heart rate indicate that separation from parents does distress them, although they act cool and disinterested. Dismissive-avoidant adults, however, were already able to successfully suppress physiological responses to distressing attachment-related thoughts.

Critical, rejecting, and interfering parents tend to have children who avoid emotional intimacy. Abusive parents tend to have children who become uncomfortable with intimacy and withdraw. Parents who are perceived as frightening or frightened tend to have children with disorganized attachment: both avoidant and anxious-preoccupied. One common behavior is "indiscriminant" attachment. Neglected children are "loving" and will hug virtual strangers. They do not develop a deep emotional bond with relatively unknown people; rather, these "affectionate" behaviors are actually safety seeking behaviors.

An estimated one third of the population is insecurely attached in some way.

Enter Buddhism. “Attachment is the root of suffering.” This can feel very validating to the ~20% of the population with avoidant tendencies. “Non-attachment views desire as faulty, thereby deliberately restraining desire.” You are encouraged to be “separated” from the world, and the avoidant ego goes, “Hell, I’ve always known I was closer to enlightenment; I’m not attached to anything or anybody, I don't prefer anyone. I don’t care about this relationship. I can drop anything and just go on to what’s next, nothing bothers me. Buddha says that “nothing is permanent”. So I’m already free.”

Thus the unenlightened Buddha goes on emulating an enlightened experience, creating a two-dimensional mask of buddhahood and eagerly holding it to his face, secretly hoping his belief in it would be enough that no one would notice the difference. Feeling quite smug about all those poor people who still experience attachment.

It is not liberating anything, the quest to be super-human, before allowing yourself to be fully human.