Cutting Cords of Attachment -- Could That End an Addiction?

Brain imaging shows that a failed love relationship can be as hard to release as a cocaine addiction. What wasn't studied for this article in the Journal of Neurophysiology? Cutting cords of attachment. By Rose Rosetree, author of "Cut Cords of Attachment: Heal Yourself and Others with Energy Spirituality."

The idea hadn't occurred to me until I learned about some startling research in my trusty Washington Post. On September 5, 2010, Ellen McCarthy reported on a study that appeared in the Journal of Neurophysiology. It didn't have to do with cutting cords of attachment, but keep reading and I'm sure you'll be able to connect some mighty interesting dots.

The research team was headed by psychologist Art Aron (the husband of another psychologist, Elaine Aron, who has written about Highly Sensitive Persons and pioneered this field). Aron, anthropologist Helen Fisher, and others studied romantic rejection.

If you have been through that icky terrain, be sure to keep reading. If you have friends who are stuck there now, in the pain swamp, please send them a link to the post. Okay, back to the research....

All subjects recounted heart-wrenching tales of woe, such as one who told an interviewer, "I can't sleep. I just lie there, wondering what happened and what could have been."

What Aron and his four fellow researchers did was to study activity in their brains. Their finding?

The romantically rejected don't just have obsessive thinking and craving for emotional union. They think about the person who rejected them 85% of their waking hours. Also they may cry a lot, beg to be taken back, call and email a lot, and drink too much. Neurologically, this pattern is similar to what cocaine addicts suffer during withdrawal.

* Where cords of attachment come in

The kind of pain described about letting go of a love relationship -- that's very familiar to me as someone who does sessions of Aura Healing and Transformation. It's a shame that, so far, psychologists like Aron aren't studying deeply enough into the patient's experience.

Sure, there are insights on the level of psychological healing, thoughts and feelings and patterns to analyze. Sure, brain imaging research seems to be profound... and is, while researchers are still paying attention to the surface of life.

But where is the energetic literacy? The human energy field is a deeper level of reality where healers today are using techniques that removed stored emotional problems (what I often refer to as "STUFF"). STUFF can be healed, but not through psychology or brain imaging. To permanently remove STUFF, a practitioner needs to be able to perceive the STUFF and also use a dedicated skill set that is effective on that level.

Psychotherapy and psychiatry are great. And they work. But they don't make changes on the level of STUFF. They don't cut cords of attachment. (Neither will they wash and wax your car.)

* What are cords of attachment?

When you become seriously interested in another person, a cord of attachment will be formed between you and the cordee. It's a permanent structure that records whatever is most distressing to you that happens during the relationship.

Afterwards the cordee might break up with you, never speak to you again, even die. Regardless, you will be stuck with that cord. It will imprint you 24/7. That means recycled heartbreak until the last minutes of YOUR life.

Think "Achy Breaky Heart" playing on your ipod until the bitter end.

Only it is possible to permanently cut a cord of attachment so you will never have one again. That's what I have done with clients since 1986 and what I teach readers to do for themselves with the how-to book Cut Cords of Attachment.

Why aren't researchers yet exploring chakra databanks, how they are affected by relationships, and how they heal when a cord of attachment is cut?

Before McCarthy's fine article, I never thought about the similarities between romantic distress and a cocaine addiction, or other addiction. But I have done aura reading research on people with chemical addictions. (In fact, I wrote about this for a whole chapter in READ PEOPLE DEEPER: Body Language + Face Reading + Auras.)

I have helped clients with substance problems, who really wanted to get well. We moved out cords of attachment, not necessarily to lovers but to people who had played a part in forming or exacerbating the addiction.

I think of Joe, whose alcoholic father started pushing liquor on him when he was younger than 10.

I think of Gladys, whose grotesquely troubled parents staged a death scene where Gladys was forced to embrace her alcoholic father on his deathbed and tell him, "I forgive you."

Clients like these have made significant progress at overcoming addictions. Because cords of attachment repeat their energetic messages (what I call "cord dialogue") 24/7 on the level of the aura and subconscious mind.

The last session I did for Gladys, she had been in recovery from alcoholism for some two years. She had me facilitate cutting the cord of attachment to a pretty troubled sponsor from Alcoholics Anonymous. I also helped Gladys by doing some aura reading research on a potential new sponsor. Am I ever proud of Gladys, who takes her recovery in stride. She is breaking a family pattern. She is really, truly getting a life.

* Cutting cords of attachment vs. Waiting to heal

Such a sophisticated study done by Dr. Aron et al.! How exciting that brain imaging reveals similarities between romantic addiction and cocaine addiction!

How sad (but not unusual) that the great work stops right there, on the surface, problems intact. Because what does the study propose by way of solution?

Having made the clever observation about love being like a drug, the study goes on to show that subjects did recover, slowly, over time. So the brain documents that? How nice!

Dr. Aron is quoted as saying that their finding is "consistent with the notion that time heals wounds."

But is that a healer's or psychologist's job, to outsource healing to "Time"? When will the medical community start researching the benefits of 12 Steps to Cut Cords of Attachment(R)?

When researchers go that deep, they can findsolutions, not merely document suffering.

Incidentally, "Cut Cords of Attachment" doesn't just have 3 screens of hits, as it did before that book was published, but (as of now) 1,300,000 hits. When will old guard scientists catch up with today's mind-body-spirit community?