Last year, a visitor said to me, "I've decided to get a cat." It sounded like an ordinary move. Putting it on others, I don’t think it’s anything surprising. But for her who has difficulty entering into intimate relationships, this decision made me hear the sound of the strong walls in her heart opening up a little. During the subsequent consultation, she shared with me details of raising cats, and I saw her growing.

After raising a cat for half a year, her attachment trauma seemed to have been somewhat soothed. She meets someone she likes and has a close relationship with that person. Seeing this, you may be curious - is the connection with pets really so magical? Will our lives really become better with the company of pets? Today, I want to talk about the psychological significance of pets to humans.

Unconditional positive attention Perhaps only pets can tell you stories about people and pets. The first thing I think of is the movie "Bob the Stray Cat" that has healed many people. Every time I watch this movie, I will sigh again:

The healing power of pets is not only companionship, but their love can even arouse a person's motivation to change. The protagonists of the movie are an orange cat and a man. Bob is a stray cat without an owner and often hungry. The man was a homeless man with no fixed abode, a drug addiction, and everyone hated him. When this man meets this orange cat, everything begins to quietly change.

The man moved into the rescue room, and the orange cat sneaked in through the kitchen window. Instead of driving the cat away, the man fed it and allowed it to sleep on his bed.

The next day, the orange cat came to see the man again with blood stains on his body. The man took the orange cat to see a doctor and used the only food money he had to pay for the medicine. The orange cat recovered from his illness, and the man wanted to send it away, but the orange cat refused to leave. It followed the man and accompanied him to sing.

So the man became the owner of the orange cat and named it Bob. With Bob's company, the man completely quit drugs, found a job, and walked out of the abyss of despair. This is a true story, and later Bob became popular, and the story about it and the man was written into a book and made into a movie. Why did the appearance of the cat change this man so much? In fact, cats and dogs are purer than humans and can provide long-term companionship and near-unconditional love.

They are non-judgmental, non-greedy, non-demanding, non-excessive, and non-colorful. As the British poet Eliot said: "Animals are the closest friends. They never ask questions and never accuse." In "Bob the Stray Cat", the man is addicted to drugs and even his father despises him. he. But in Bob’s eyes, when he is hungry, the man will give him food; when he is sick, the man will take him to see a doctor. These are enough for it to trust and love this man. Even if the man is addicted to drugs and tortured into a dehumanized state, it will accompany him affectionately.

When a person is abandoned, ignored and pushed to the edge in the complex human world, what he needs is this kind of "love without judgment". In other words, each of us longs for this kind of love deep in our hearts. But the human emotional world is full of temptation, competition, and comparison. This kind of love is too hard to find, but pets generously give it to us.

No matter whether you succeed or fail today, whether you are exquisite or sloppy, happy or painful, there is always a pair of eyes watching you affectionately, and there is always a little figure following you closely. This is so precious. It's very close to what humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers called "unconditional positive regard." When a person receives unconditional positive attention, he will feel that he is accepted and loved, and he will be able to confirm his own value. The men in the movie never experienced this with their parents or those around them.

But Bob's companionship and love for him made him realize—— No matter how bad you are in the eyes of others, you are still worthy of love and needed. It is this confirmation that gives men more hope and courage to change their lives.

There is a kind of healing that is not "being loved", but "loving". If humans only get it from pets, then the healing power of pets will not be so profound. It is precisely because when we "get" we are also "giving" that the relationship between us and our pets becomes meaningful.

I have a friend who was fostered in her grandmother’s house since she was a child and had an estranged relationship with her parents. When she grew up, she was very afraid of intimate relationships. She always felt that she was incomplete inside. She likes cats and dogs very much, but she doesn't keep one. She has many reasons: such as moving frequently and working overtime.

There is another most important reason, she dare not love - how can a disabled person love another living being? Later, two big things happened in her life: falling in love and raising a cat. After falling in love, she experienced the feeling of being loved even though her boyfriend was very gentle. In fact, her state did not change much.

After raising a cat, she changed a lot. She no longer always had a sad look on her eyebrows, and she no longer moved or changed jobs. She even had a bad relationship with her boyfriend because she often took the cat to her boyfriend's house. Relationships become closer. Why does the cat seem to gain more energy? This is because in a relationship, she is often just the one "loved". She was careful to make sure she was loved, which was certainly healing. But her inner timidity has not been broken through, and her sense of incompleteness has not been fully seen.

She could not tell her boyfriend about the black hole-like longing for love in her heart. She knew that no matter how gentle her boyfriend was, he could not satisfy this need, and no one could. In the process of raising cats, she "takes the initiative to love". Not only to love this little animal, but also to love the child in my heart who once did not receive the love of his parents. Her salary is not high, but she is willing to spend money to buy good cat food and take care of the kitten like a child every day. A few months later, the skinny kitten grew white, fat, fearless, and extremely clingy. My friend was very satisfied. Watching the cat grow up day by day, the incomplete feeling in his heart seemed to be healed.

Because receiving love is a kind of healing, and taking the initiative to love is even more healing. In the act of taking the initiative to love, we see the needs of the other person and assume the responsibility of caring for others. We overcame our inner fears and truly connected with the world.

The most important thing is that we discover that we have the ability to love in our hearts.

As the psychoanalyst Fromm said - love is mainly about giving rather than receiving. There is more joy in giving than in receiving because in the act of giving my life is expressed. It is in the act of giving that I experience my power, my abundance, my ability.

Pets are also a mirror that reflects our insecurely attached side. Whether it is the unconditional positive attention that pets pay to us or the fact that we learn to love through pets, they all confirm our securely attached side. However, not everyone can obtain such healing through raising a pet, and many people will experience a difficult time raising a pet in the first place.

This process also exposes our insecure side in relationship attachment. The first is that they show higher "anxiety" in attachment relationships. People with high levels of anxiety will worry excessively about their pets' safety, be overly possessive of their pets, show extreme emotional reactions when their pets die, and may use excessive love for their pets to avoid social relationships. I once heard a story about a visit that left a deep impression on me. This visitor has a dog and is very affectionate towards the dog most of the time. However, whenever she came home and found that the dog did not come to greet her, she would be very hurt and run back to the room depressed.

Moreover, when she found that the dog was more attached to her mother, she was very angry and wanted to send the dog away. Instead of healing her, the dog worsened her anxiety.

She is equally anxious in relationships. As long as her boyfriend doesn't reply to messages in time, she will bombard her boyfriend serially. Behind the anxiety is the fear of losing. You must repeatedly confirm that you have received and grasped love before you feel safe.

Secondly, they show higher "avoidance" in attachment relationships. People with a high level of avoidance have no intimacy with their pets and will not be sad when their pets leave. One of my visitors had a cat with his girlfriend. When he had the cat, he was not very close to the cat. After they broke up, his girlfriend took the cat away, and he was not sad. Later, he never saw the cat again. He said he didn't care that much, but actually he was deliberately not caring.

Because I am afraid of getting hurt, I avoid it emotionally early on, so I will not bear the pain of loss. Whether it is anxiety or avoidance, it shows that there is a lack of security in the heart and that love is regarded as a dangerous thing. Here, the relationship between people and pets will become a mirror - reflecting what kind of difficulties we may have on the issue of attachment relationships, what kind of obstacles and unresolved complexes we have.

When you don’t have the courage to love someone, you might as well practice how to love a pet first. Perhaps in our intimate relationships with people, we don’t have much courage to love, nor do we have many opportunities to try and make mistakes.

But in the intimate relationship with our pets, we have a lot of time. Pets are far more patient than humans and far smarter than humans think. When you are still unable to love someone without reservation, you can try to love a pet first and establish a secure attachment with the pet. When you want to love someone safely, there will be fewer obstacles. I have summarized two keys for your reference:

To see the unconditional love your pet has for you. When you see how your pet puts you at the center of the world, how it actively pays attention to you and loves you, those things deep in our hearts are The ice built of insecurity and defensiveness will naturally melt. Tell a story of your own here. When I first fell in love, I felt very insecure inside.

My boyfriend has a dog. I don’t like dogs very much, so I am very indifferent every time I see a dog. Later we lived together and dogs became a part of my life.

At first I would complain that the dog was too troublesome, but unexpectedly, I now regard it as my "son". This change is because I confirmed that it loves me very much - it will always jump on me as soon as I come home; as long as I am at home, every time it sleeps, it is not in a deep sleep. As soon as I get up, it will jump on me. He immediately jumped up and followed me; he never resented my indifference to him, and he never gave up on loving and pleasing me. Even if I am an iron man, I would still be moved.

Now, I am no longer the person who was so perverted when it came to love. The trouble of raising a dog has also become a sweet burden. Although I will nag a few words when I work late every day and have to walk the dog, I am willing to do so. Therefore, when we open ourselves up to see the love our pets have for us, we will find that love is not so dangerous, but something we long for and can give.

The saying "spend more time with your pets" may sound strange, but it is useful.

Time spent with pets will never go to waste, because pets are not only a source of healing for us, but also a good learning object. Baudelaire said: "You can read time from a cat's eyes." I want to say: raise a cat and learn to live leisurely with time instead of racing against time.

People who have raised cats may have a deep understanding. Cats are very magical creatures. They have their own rhythm of life and will not accommodate or be disturbed by their owners. When the sky falls, they also want to sleep in and bask in the sun for a while.

As for people, they rush towards their goals every day and chase time. You may gain a lot on the outside, but lose the wisdom to enjoy life. Every time I feel anxious, I will stop and pet the cats, play with them, or just observe their every move, and then my mind will soon calm down. Cats have become my inner power bank.

The more electricity I charge in them, the deeper my love for them and the deeper my love for life.

Therefore, don’t be stingy about “wasting” time by staying with your pets. These times may heal us more than completing each of our goals.