Releasing Attachment (Practice Day 2)

Mindful Journal: Day 2 — Releasing Attachment (By Jaclyn Bae)

When we release attachment, the heart grows light — and freedom quietly opens new paths.

Day 2 · Releasing Attachment

What have I been holding on to so tightly? My children? My husband? Money? Or perhaps… my idea of who I must be?

I wanted my children to graduate from good schools, to have stable jobs, to live successful lives. I believed I had to achieve enough, own enough, meet the high standards I quietly built for myself. Over the years, those beliefs hardened into frames — and maybe those frames became attachments, too. The attachment we hold to rigid outcomes and idealized self-concepts is psychologically defined as 'inflexibility'—a primary cause of distress in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). When our deeply held beliefs ("I must achieve enough," "My children must succeed") harden into unyielding frames, we lose our ability to respond adaptively to life’s reality. True liberation begins with 'cognitive defusion,' the process of stepping back and seeing these expectations not as absolute truths, but simply as passing thoughts or rules we created. The freedom found in non-attachment is the freedom to define success based on internal values, rather than external, impossible standards.

When things didn’t unfold the way I imagined, I labeled it as failure. I became discouraged and pushed myself harder, chasing a life I thought I “should” accomplish.

But today, I see it clearly — it was my own attachment tightening around me. When I opened my hands and let go, the world turned out to be wider than I ever expected. In that spaciousness, freedom entered. And with freedom came possibilities I could not have imagined before.

A turquoise alleyway in San Diego, symbolizing openness and new possibilities
Releasing Attachment — where freedom begins


© 2025 Jaclyn Bae · San Diego

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