The Attachment-Style Changer’s Attitude

1)   The deliberate executive control or plan to engage in some cognitive operation.

The first step here is to take active and constructive ownership of your conscious mind's way of processing emotions, memories, behaviors, and cognitions.  Here's an example of one attachment-style changer's attitude:

"I am the permanent CEO of my own nervous system.  I am the worldwide leading expert on my attachment system. I can and will control and redirect where my attention goes, how my biases influence me, how much space and time I give my obsessions, all my conscious thoughts.  I am absolutely the best person to run the information centers of my mind." 

2)   The person's ability to attentionally "boost" or activate relevant schemes,

 The second step involves our ability to redirect our objective towards those things we know to be healthy even when they don't offer the intense emotional pull of, say, a date with someone profoundly unavailable or disrespectful, a destructive activity, or fruitless distraction. 

"I will redirect my attention to those places when and where I need to adopt a more secure strategy. I can pull my thoughts and feelings away from old bad habits and point my pursuits toward healthier activities, friends and emotional investments.  I can do this even when I'm tempted to wander into destructive routines." 

3)   The person's ability to inhibit or interrupt the activation of irrelevant interfering schemes, and

 You're the best person to identify ways to break destructive patterns.  You know how to successfully, whether with a gentle reproach, firm admonition or harsh correction, break the cycle of self diminishing behaviors.

"Whenever I need to I can interfere, interrupt, block, or otherwise stop the automatic reactions that continue to lead me into unwanted problems and pain."

4)   The capacity to produce closure in consciousness of a single   

       integrated whole from a set of activated schemes

 You know how much information you need to convince yourself of reality.  You only need so many pieces of the puzzle to "get it".  Once you recognize the negative pattern or destructive yearning you know how to quiet your mind, reroute your efforts, even when you know you still have feelings of missing, loss or disquiet.

"I don’t need all the answers, nor confirming feelings, in advance to response to common sense solutions.  I no longer wait on the magic billboard in the sky to tell me what I already know." 

Based on Greenberg, Leslie S; Rice, Laura N & Elliot, Robert, 1993.  Facilitating Emotional Change: The Moment-by-Moment Process, Guilford Press, New York., page 95.  Highlighted paraphrases written by Rob Phillips©2002