Chapter 4: The Fool
How we connect with others and our ability to find love is deeply rooted in our experiences with parents and caregivers during our infancy.
Understanding attachment
Attachment is how we connect and feel safe in relationships, starting from our earliest days. It’s the natural way we develop close, trusting bonds with others, especially during childhood. It’s how we learn to feel safe, loved, and supported by those around us. Our early experiences with parents and caregivers shape how comfortable we are with intimacy, independence and trust as we grow, influencing how we relate to others throughout life. When attachment feels secure, we trust love and feel safe opening our hearts. When it’s insecure or unbalanced however, we might struggle with fears of abandonment or pushing love away without even realizing it.
Engulfment
Similarly, if we felt “too attached” or smothered in infancy due to blurred boundaries, this can also affect our ability to relate. Engulfment is a fear of losing our sense of independence or self in relationships. It’s that feeling of being claustrophobic, overwhelmed, drowning, confused or controlled to the point where we might feel like we’re losing ourselves. In relationships, engulfment can lead to patterns like pushing loved ones away or clinging too tightly. We might avoid deep intimacy because it scares us, or we might become overly dependent, fearing abandonment. This push-pull dynamic keeps us stuck, making it hard to find balanced, healthy love.
The role of our mother
The level of love we experienced from our mother especially and the attachment style we develop in early childhood profoundly influence how we relate to love later in life. If the love we received was inconsistent, overly critical, neglectful, or limited, we may carry unresolved wounds and insecure attachment styles. These patterns can create barriers to trusting, opening up, or feeling deserving of love.
Releasing from the influence of the mother’s role in particular is important because it allows us to break free from inherited patterns that no longer serve us. Letting go doesn’t mean losing her or forgetting or dismissing our early experiences but rather integrating and healing them. This process empowers us to redefine our relationship with love on our terms, grounded in our true worth and present awareness.
Coping mechanisms
From the very beginning, if our needs for safety, comfort, or reassurance weren’t consistently or appropriately met, we develop certain patterns to cope. For example:
Anxious attachment often arises when caregivers responded inconsistently, making us hypersensitive to rejection and craving closeness to feel secure.
Avoidant attachment can develop when caregivers were distant or discouraging emotional expression, leading us to prioritize independence and keep emotional distance.
Disorganized attachment may occur when caregivers were unpredictable or frightening, creating confusion and fear around closeness.
These early patterns create a polarity that unconsciously shapes how we approach love. For instance, someone with an anxious attachment might seek constant reassurance or attention but fear abandonment, while someone with avoidant tendencies might push love away to protect themselves from the deep fear of losing independence or being overwhelmed. We can also flip from one to the other, leaving the other person confused by ‘hot and cold’ behaviour.
Timing
While these patterns might be noticeable from the beginning of a connection, they typically start to show up after the ‘honeymoon’ phase a few months in, as the connection builds and feelings develop. This is suddenly when the fear of losing that person, of seeing seen, vulnerable, and opening up, and all the related emotions start to kick in more strongly. In dating, it can explain why someone who seemed super into you suddenly gets ‘cold feet’ and backs away, for example.
Impact on finding love
This polarity influences our ability to find and maintain healthy love because while we may think we want love, we often unconsciously push people away to protect ourselves, or fall for partners who mirror or trigger these insecurities. Unconsciously, it can feel ‘safer’ to fall for someone who is avoidant if we’re secretly also afraid of what real love would mean, rather than fall for someone who’s emotionally available and supportive in a way that would require us to truly open to the vulnerability of love.
This is critical to understand, as without awareness, we can get caught in unconscious patterns such as clinginess, push-pull dynamics, or withdrawal that keep us stuck or repeating familiar relationship struggles.
Healing
Healing involves recognizing these early influences, understanding your attachment style, and working consciously to develop healthier patterns. This creates a more secure foundation within yourself, allowing genuine, balanced love to emerge, free from old fears and automatic reactions. It’s about finding that sweet spot where love feels safe, supportive, and free, not overwhelming or controlling.
EXERCISES
Identify your attachment style
~ Think about how you typically behave in close relationships. Do you crave constant connection and worry about being rejected? Do you prefer to keep emotional distance or feel uncomfortable with intimacy? How do you react when conflicts arise? Do you tend to cling or withdraw?
~ Notice your feelings during conflict or separation. Do you feel anxious, overly dependent, or jealous? Or do you feel indifferent or prefer to be alone?
~ Ask yourself key questions. Do you often seek reassurance or feel insecure? Do you avoid closeness to protect yourself? Do you feel comfortable with intimacy or tend to pull away? How do you react when a partner is distant or upset?
~ Observe yourself over time. Your attachment style isn’t fixed; it can evolve with awareness and healing. Pay attention to how your behaviors shift in different relationships and circumstances.
~ You can also ask friends or take an online quiz to get more feedback around this.
Releasing your mother
~ Begin by allowing yourself to fully feel any pain, anger, or sadness related to unmet needs or wounds from your mother. As we’ve been doing, practice grounding and self-compassion to create a safe space to welcome all of these emotions without judgement.
~ Now go to a safe space in your imagination, somewhere in nature where you feel peaceful. Imagine your mother joining you, as she was in your childhood. See her for who she is as a person rather than ‘your mother’. Connect with her hopes, fears, and difficulties. Inviter her to express what it was like for her while you were growing up.
~ Be open and practice forgiveness and compassion towards her. This isn’t about condoning harmful behavior but about releasing your grip on resentment and anger. Visualize her with compassion, understanding her human imperfections. Recognize how it’s human to make mistakes. Say internally or aloud: “I forgive you, and I release the pain I carry.” Repeat this until feelings of holding on soften.
Then let her walk away into the distance, watching and releasing her and the burdens of the past until she fades.
~ You can repeat this for any other primary caregivers you may wish to release.
Become your own parent
~ Identify and areas now where you may still be dependent on parents or parental figures in your life such as mentors or teachers. Ways you might be dependent on them for money or accomodation, or ways you might be looking to others for guidance and answers when you can find them within yourself. In what ways can you reclaim your own sovereignty from these dynamics?
~ Hint: often, we feel like we need to wait for something to change in our lives but really it’s the other way around: WE need to make the decision to release those binds, and then the universe can constellate around that new reality.