Love, Loss & object constancy

There is nothing like the imprint grief leaves on our hearts. As I write this, images of my clients holding deep sorrow, anger, shame, longing, and anxiety because of their grief floods my mind. I can tell you stories of their many losses from COVID-19, abuse, alcohol, death, abandonment, trauma, fear, divorce, deportation, and estrangement. The list goes on and on, and the pain that comes with it is immensely palpable.

In my own heart I too, hold the pangs of grief. Grief over the death of loved ones, the loss of friends, the loss of Self, the ending of romantic relationships, and even the loss of cities, former homes, and items I have held dear. 

As you read this, you can probably think of your own losses and the grief that accompanied it. 

That’s because as humans, we all have been wounded by loss to some degree because we all have experienced love and in the words of author E.A. Bucchianeri, “grief is the price we pay for love.” 

Love, Loss & Attachment 

Loss is inextricably connected to love, and love is inextricably connected to loss. The two are intertwined creating a delicate dance since the beginning of time. 

However, if you struggle with attachment I have found that the dance becomes incredibly hard. You find yourself stumbling on toes and failing to do your rhythmic part. 

And here’s why: secure attachment teaches you how to courageously experience love and loss, while an insecure attachment teaches you how to fear love and loss.

For those who have secure attachments to their primary caregivers, you learned how to courageously love and lose during the first three years of your life. When your caregivers left, you may have shown some distress but you were able to understand that they would come back and that their absence didn't mean you were no longer loved. You were able to feel secure in loss because you internalized your loved ones as safe, nurturing, caring, and always there even when they physically couldn’t be. 

For those who did not experience a secure attachment, you didn’t learn this skill. For the insecurely attached, loss meant no longer knowing how to love and love meant always fearing loss, which also prevented you from grieving in a healthy way.

That’s because in early childhood if you experienced traumas like abandonment, neglect, an emotionally absent parent, sudden loss, then it shaped your understanding of object permanence or the psychodynamic term, object constancy. 

Psychologist Jean Piaget was the first to coin the term object permanence through his studies of children. Jean Piaget found that children develop this cognitive skill in the first few years of life. Essentially they learn that when objects or people go away, they still exist. In other words, they can love and “lose” what they love, because they understand the permanence of human existence does not rest in whether or not they see the object. 

You can learn more about his theory here. 

As you get older object permanence becomes object constancy, which is the psychodynamic term and emotional equivalent for the same phenomenon. Essentially, you experience that you can still be loved in someone’s absence and losing someone or something doesn’t make you any less lovable. You can also experience the nuisances that come with relationships, without it impacting your sense of self or your ability to love others.

Signs of struggling with object constancy in adulthood include: 

-Holding onto relationships that are unhealthy 

-Constantly questioning your relationships 

-Being overly clingy and needy

-Being overly dismissive (out of sight, out of mind thinking) 

-Struggle with people pleasing 

-Having very black and white distorted thinking patterns (Ex. If he doesn’t want to be with me, that means I am unlovable. If she makes a mistake, then she must be the wrong person for me).

-Projecting your feelings unto others (Ex. Since I feel like I am not worthy, he must think I am unworthy.)

-Losing yourself when you lose others (Ex. Neglecting your self-care. Not knowing what you like or what you believe in anymore)

-Internalizing loss (Ex. If he broke up with me that means I am no good). 

-Feeling sad or tearful when you have to say goodbye 

-Often making irrational assumptions when you don’t see your loved one 

-Needing constant reassurance 

-Being overly preoccupied with the past or overly worried about the future 

-Feeling incomplete or inadequate when you are absent from loved ones 

For those with more insecure attachment styles, as you can see, loss is incredibly damaging to one’s self-image and ability to be in loving relationships with others. 

But if you are willing to love, you have to dare to lose. 

Whether you have a secure attachment or not, in order to truly live you have to be willing to accept that nothing is truly permanent and constant, except love. Love remains even when we no longer see it or feel it. We might feel deep loss over many different things, but love never really goes away. It is always existing even if we cannot physically see it, just like the psychodynamic concept, object constancy. 

Consider St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) 

Love always remains and it truly is the greatest, but with love, comes loss, and with loss, comes love. They are always co-existing in order to make our lives more fulfilling and connected to the Love we have been created for.

In the Bible, Jesus tells us that the cost of discipleship rests in our ability to love and to lose. 

We see this perfect relationship between love and loss in John’s gospel when Jesus says goodbye to his followers before his crucifixion. St. Peter doesn’t want Jesus to go (he doesn’t want to lose who he loves) and wants to “follow him” to wherever he is going. Jesus then tells him that he can’t just yet. Peter must stay behind and continue his vocation to love. In fact, right before Peter asks to join Jesus, Jesus administers a new commandment: “love others as I have loved you.” (John 13:34-36). 

That’s because in the absence of those you love, just like St. Peter, you still have a vocation to fulfill. Jesus calls us to love those who are physically here and trust that even if you lose them physically, you eventually will “follow them” to where they are going (God willing to Heaven). You can find your security in the fact that love will always unite you to others, even in the face of loss and you really never lose those whom you truly love and who truly love you. 

For those who experience loss from divorce, abandonment, heartbreak, neglect, or estrangement it makes sense that you would feel that love has truly gone away. However, you can find security in the fact that God’s love doesn’t. You still have a mission to “love others as God has loved you” and your identity doesn’t rest in whether or not people love you or fail to love you. 

You also have to understand that people do not belong to you. They belong to God. They are never yours to possess. If you are too busy grasping for what you have lost, you will miss the opportunity to fulfill what you are called to do in the here and now. You also won’t be able to truly give love and receive love from others. Instead, you will be only using people to fill the insecurity you feel deep inside and unconsciously attract people who most likely will be doing the same thing to you. 

That is why love also requires that you establish a secure attachment. Fortunately, it is never too late to establish this. Although it may be more challenging as an adult, God equips you with all that you need to create safety and security within your body so that you can be able to fulfill the mission to love and be loved, and to accept the feeling of loss that often comes with it. 

Establishing Security 

In inner child work I teach my clients to first support the wounded and angry parts of yourself that most likely feel most afraid and insecure to lose. It is through this process that they learn to nurture these parts and establish safety. Once these parts feel heard, seen, attuned to, and supported, they most likely won’t come up so intensely when they are threatened by loss. They will begin to understand that their identity and worth is not tied to what they no longer see, and that it is okay to love and to lose. They can still move forward, experience security, and live a fulfilling life. 

It’s important to remember that as children, we cannot grasp this concept. As children, our entire identity is tied to our caregiver’s ability to be present and to respond to us with nurture and love. When we experience loss too early, we do not have the mental capacity to understand that we are still loved and we can continue loving and being loved. The absence of a caregiver is death. We essentially stop living as we were created to. 

So practically when you feel feelings of insecurity, or intensity of feelings tied to loss, it’s important to simply remind the child within that they are safe, God’s love remains and they are going to be okay moving forward. You can take a couple of deep breaths. Invoke the Holy names of Jesus and Mary. Pray with your inner child in mind but whatever you do, aim to acknowledge this part of you that may be coming up who is in need of your support and offer that part, love. In the end, it is this kind of love that mirrors God’s love, that can never be lost and makes all the difference in their healing.

If you want to learn more about building a secure attachment, love, loss, inner child work, and fulfilling your God-given mission using a spiritual and psychological approach, subscribe for more blogs sent directly to your email. Also follow me on Instagram. Each blog is accompanied by a series of posts on Instagram to help you better dive into these topics.