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Love

When I think of love, I see that love is made up of many different ingredients. All of these ingredients are needs which we all strive to have met in our lives.
Ingredients of love (list not exhaustive):
Patience (the more understanding, the more patience)
Kindness
Tenderness/tender affection
Friendship
Caring
Peace/contentment/happiness
Trust
Compassion
Life
Unselfish orientation
Respect
Equality
Justice
Nurturing
Humility

“heart”

When I think of a “heart”, I think of it as having 3 sections in it. These 3 sections are:

Section 1: needs of love which are received by others giving them to us.
Section 2, needs of love which we must give to others.
Section 3, needs of love that are given by loving one’s self.

As newborn babies we appear to have all 3 sections of love needs present in our “hearts“ but some are not activated. Activation occurs when we feel a particular need of love being met. The more love-needs that are felt the more content a person will become.

“holes in the heart”

Our caretaker/parents are the first people we rely upon to assist us in achieving our “heart” needs. They are also the first to serve as models on how to administer self-love, how to receive others’ love, and how to express our love for others.

When our caretaker(s)/parents fail to meet any of those needs in Section 1, an “empty space” occurs in the “heart” where escapist behaviors can begin to manifest themselves.

Similarly, when our caretaker/parents fail to demonstrate how to properly express love to others, another such vacuum forms in the “heart“. Finally, if our original caregivers also fail to teach us how to properly give self-love an even greater void opens for escapist tendencies to germinate.

Emotionally attached escapist behaviors

For the needs of love that did not get met, we were not able to generate those good feelings of love that accompany that specific need. When this occurs, each of us in our own time, instead create, what I have come to call, escapisms. We create escapisms to replace unmet needs of love.

There is common knowledge that humans are in agreement with. Which is that there exists good and evil. We all are in need of the good (love) to get fulfilled in our “heart“. When areas of love fail to get met, we use the only available alternative-evil. Evil is the group of escapisms we create for ourselves.

We are emotionally attached to our escapisms because in a desperate attempt to deal with those missing parts of love, we instead attach those feelings meant to be attached to love and attach them to something else, to something that is false-an escapism. This provides for us a false sense of being pacified for our unmet love-needs which also keeps us in avoidance of feeling the pain associated with unmet needs of love.

Also, our escapisms must be repeated over and over and over again. They are rituals that we must keep performing in order to keep up the false good feelings that are being derived from them. When our needs of love get attached to love we derive the love feelings that accompany them, thus our “heart” receives peace and we will not have the desire to perform a ritual-an escapism.

Levels of emotionally attached escapisms

When I notice an individual (including myself) with an emotionally attached escapism, I think of a line scale. One end of the scale being mild emotional attachment. In the middle, a moderate emotional attachment exists. The other end of the scale represents severe emotional attachment. Each case is individual.

Mild emotionally attached escapisms, of course, are easiest to notice and understand. Moderate emotionally attached individuals can be more difficult to understand. Generally, for the moderate emotionally attached individuals, I think that these people would benefit from some counseling/psychotherapy. Severely emotionally attached individuals often end up in mental health facilities for some period of there lives. They tend to require long-term psychotherapy. It would benefit these people the greatest to have a good (healthy) friendship with another. This group includes those persons who are using a fantasy world type of escapism (such as hardened criminals). The heightened level of emotional attachment this group has to their particular escapisms makes self-recognition of the condition extremely difficult for them.

Escapisms uses

A. To avoid feeling, in part or all, the emotional pain that is associated with having unmet needs of love.
B. They provide for us one or more false feel good feelings such as being pampered, nurtured, pretty, special etc. All escapisms provide a false comfort zone.

List of some escapism’s

Important note: The false feelings that I attach with each listed escapism is not intended to give a complete picture of someone using that escapism. I only mention the false feelings being derived from which I have noticed in others and/or in my own personal experience. Again, it does not give a complete false feeling list and I cannot do so because all humans having experienced different lives. Therefore, two people with the same escapism may have some different, yet also some common, unmet needs attached.

1. Drug use, alcohol use, smoking cigarettes. Unmet self-love needs.

2. Pet escapism. This can provide false feelings of being needed, depended upon by another living being. To use animals to feel unconditionally loved, and accepted. Etc.

Some people may want to have a baby instead of or in addition to using animals as an escapism.

3. Sport escapism. Can provide false feelings of masculinity of being a real man/woman. Engrossed in sports to not feel like a weak person in physical strength and/or abilities. Etc.

4. Material escapism. Rewarding self with wants to take the place of not feeling the love need-appreciation. This escapism can give the false feeling of being happy, satisfied, more content with self.
Included in this escapism are those people who excessively pamper their vehicles. Excessively washing, waxing, cleaning, and covering up vehicles. To place such high value on an object because of not being able to place this kind of value upon self and/or another human. Also, may not have another human to pamper, nurture and take care of. Therefore, do it to a vehicle instead. A vehicle can also be used to give false feelings of being more masculine, confident, bold. etc

5. Body revealing escapism. Showing, in part or all, of bodily private parts. This escapism can be fueled by a partner not making one feel beautiful, sexy, attractive enough to him/her. From what I have seen, this tends to be a factor involved when that person is in a relationship. There may also be low self-esteem/self-respect (missing self-love), depression etc.

Detailed example: Let’s say that I am overweight and I don’t like the effects that it has on my appearance and in order to avoid feeling & dealing with this painful truth, I instead, tend to publicly show off a portion of my breasts. When those people respond by looking and showing pleasure in their facial expressions, this gives me a false feel good feeling about my body appearance. In this example, I am using others to fuel my escapism. Also, just like any escapism, I am able to keep myself in avoidance of taking care of my unhealthy overweight problem (a.k.a. not meeting self-love needs).

A person doesn’t have to be overweight to find something wrong about themselves in order to perform these kinds of escapism’s.

6. Gossiping escapism. This escapism is an easy one to commit. So easy, in fact, that (including myself) I have not met one person who has not committed this one. Gossiping about others allows us to avoid taking a closer look at our own unmet needs.

7. Arrogant escapism. Using this escapism to give false feeling of, I am good enough. A false feeling of having an individual identity, at least in part. A false feeling of being someone who matters to others and/or self. In the more moderate to severe emotionally attached level it can give a false feeling of being just in committing crimes, in committing adultery. A false feeling of being a whole man/woman. Etc.

8. Body accessory escapism. Using jewelry, make-up, body paints, and body piercing, etc. To make self falsely feel pretty/attractive, confident and/or having some control over one’s self/security etc. I have noticed that some people will also talk prissy-like and tend to slur certain letters of the alphabet. They tend to have prissy-like body movements, more specifically, hand-arm movements. They also tend to use the hand-arm movement more in favor of the hand/arm that contains the most jewelry.
When they take off the accessories their prissy-like body movements, generally, will change back to normal.
I have seen some with spoiled-brat behavior as well.

For some, this escapism and private body part revealing escapism are mixed together.

9. More escapisms: living as helpless victim, perfectionism (relates to OCD), religions/occults-good for fueling fantasy world in one’s mind, unhealthy sexual lifestyles/behaviors. Etc.

People we choose

We may choose a friend and/or partner, who provides us with some fuel for our escapism (like mentioned earlier). A parent (s) can provide us fuel for our escapism too. Some people in our lives may also have the same escapism that we are using which provides fuel to each other. Example: You are using pets as an escapism and you only want a partner who is also an animal lover .

We want other’s to provide us fuel so we can more easily keep up feeling those false feel good feelings we are deriving from our escapism. Again, also keeps us in avoidance of dealing with the painful truth of love-needs having gone unmet.

The cure for escapism’s

We must allow ourselves to feel the emotional pain of each need of love that has gone unmet. What worked for me, with past unmet pains, was to begin with my earliest memory and proceed to go forward through every year of my life up until that present time. I looked at my parent’s, siblings, friends, partner relations, and including pets. Etc. I allowed myself to feel the emotional pain of my unmet needs of love that I did not receive from others (a.k.a. injustices done by others towards me).

Next, I again started with my earliest memory and proceeded to the present time with looking for my unmet needs of love that I needed to give to others, but failed in doing so (a.k.a. the injustice’s I committed towards others). As for self-love, this has been the most ongoing learning process in which I am still currently engaged, as well as needing to currently fix a few other areas that effect my love towards others and will effect their love towards me in return!

In Closing

No matter what the degree of emotional attachment is to each of our escapisms they all can be summed up by saying this: all escapisms (a.k.a. evil/wrong doings) are projections/manifestations of our unmet needs of love onto something else and/or someone else.

Author: Louanne Smith

Filed under: Depression, Emotions, Motivation, Relationships, Self Esteem/Confidence, Self Help