life is a series of attachment and losses

• the nature of our psyche is based on change, growth, curiosity, and imagination. But there are very conservative elements within us that retain a commitment to the known, the familiar, even when it is based on constrictive perspectives.
• the more we resist change, the more we are allied against the developmental agenda of our own psyches and the nature of nature — the very definition of neurosis
• we lose parts of ourselves as we adapt to the demands of the world ... for whom we care are often lost through death, divorce, or dysfunction. Whether we absorb those losses into our system and soldier on or remain stuck at the level of the loss is the question
• those who have experienced betrayal in their lives often remain attached to the wound and the implicit message of that experience ... sustain their attachment to an earlier self-image rather than learn from it and move on
• longing for the freedom of our chains
• patterns of cultural influences and personal biographies
• tenacity of provisional definitions of ourselves