成人分离焦虑症:说声再见不容易

Last week, when his wife left home for a two-week cruise with her best friend, Robert Sollars stocked up on hamburger meat and peanut butter, then settled into a weekend of football on cable TV. And he cried.
上个月，罗伯特•索拉斯（Robert Sollars）的妻子和她最好的朋友出去参加为期两周的游艇游。索拉斯于是买了一堆汉堡肉和花生酱，整个周末都泡在电视前面看橄榄球赛。而且他还哭了。

Mr. Sollars, 51 years old, who owns a workplace-security consulting firm in Mesa, Ariz., hates being away from his wife even when she is just going to work, as an intensive-care nurse on the night shift at a local hospital. When she is away for a longer stretch, Mr. Sollars feels nauseated and finds it hard to concentrate.
51岁的索拉斯在亚利桑那州梅萨（Mesa）拥有一家工作场所安全咨询公司，他妻子是当地一家医院的重症监护护士。索拉斯痛恨离开妻子──即使她只是去医院上夜班。当她长时间离开时，索拉斯会感觉恶心，而且很难集中注意力。

As his wife packed for vacation, he hovered anxiously. She eventually snapped, and they argued for hours, he says. That night, after she'd gone to the airport, Mr. Sollars couldn't sleep. Among his thoughts: She will have a car accident. She will get sick or hurt. She will find someone else. 'I firmly believe that my worry is based in fantasy land,' Mr. Sollars says. 'But I am still deathly afraid of losing the woman I love.'
当他妻子打包准备去度假时，他坐立不安。他说，她最终生气了，两人吵了几小时。那晚，当她去机场后，索拉斯无法入睡。他心里想着：她会遇到车祸。她会生病或受伤。她会有外遇。索拉斯说，“我坚信，我的担心完全是无中生有。但我仍然非常担心失去我爱的女人。”

To most people, 'separation anxiety' is what young children feel while crying on the first day of preschool. But adults also can experience it when they are separated from the people who matter most to them. They may be unable to contain their worry and end up pushing away the very person they need so desperately.
对多数人来说，“分离焦虑”是小孩子在第一天上幼儿园哭哭啼啼时的感受。但成年人与他们最在乎的人分离时，也可能体会到这种焦虑。他们可能无法抑制自己的担忧，最终导致他们如此亟需的那个人远离他们。

You'd think pining for someone would be rare at a time when everyone is hyperconnected. But all this effortless connectivity has spoiled us. We expect to be able to reach everyone immediately, and when we can't, we're losing the ability to cope.
阿尔瓦雷斯（右）与她的两个女儿在得克萨斯州奥斯汀的寄宿学校。你会认为，在如今这个每个人都彼此“超连通”的时代，应该没什么人会如此黏着某个人了。但这种毫不费力的连通性已经把我们惯坏了。我们希望能立即联系上每个人，当我们不能做到这一点时，就会不知所措。

Researchers at Haverford College, in Pennsylvania, found people who missed their partners when apart from them were more committed to the relationship, worked harder to take care of it and avoided damaging behavior such as cheating. 'Missing prompts you to maintain your social connection,' says Benjamin Le, associate professor of psychology at Haverford and lead author of the study, published last year in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
宾夕法尼亚州哈弗福德学院（Haverford College）的研究人员发现，与伴侣分离时想念伴侣的人对双方的关系更投入，更努力地呵护这种关系并避免出现欺骗等破坏行为。该研究的论文去年发表于《社会与个人关系》（Journal of Social and Personal Relationships）杂志。论文主要作者、哈弗福德学院的心理学副教授本杰明•勒（Benjamin Le）说，“想念促使你去努力维护你的社会关系。”

The way we cope with separation is determined by something psychologists call our attachment system. Scientists believe the attachment system is an evolutionary process that humans developed to survive. Early hunter-gatherers learned to work together, and children perished without the care and protection of an adult. Although it's partly genetic, much of our lifelong 'attachment style' is determined by how as young children we learned to relate to our parents.
我们应对分离的方式是由心理学家所称的“依恋系统”决定的。科学家们认为，依恋系统是人类为了生存而进化出来的。早期的采猎者学会合作，而儿童在没有成年人的照顾和保护时会死去。尽管这部分是遗传，但我们的终身“依恋模式”大多是由我们小时与父母的关系决定的。

There are three attachment-style types: secure, anxious or avoidant, according to Hal Shorey, a psychologist and assistant professor for the Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology at Widener University, in Chester, Pa. Secure people, roughly 55% of the population, typically are warm, loving and comfortable with intimacy. They were raised, most likely, by a consistently caring and responsive mother or parental figure. The other 45% has a sometimes problematic attachment style, meaning they are anxious, avoidant or a combination, Dr. Shorey says.
宾夕法尼亚州切斯特（Chester）威得恩大学（Widener University）临床心理研究生院（Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology）的心理学家、助理教授哈尔•肖里（Hal Shorey）称，有三种依恋模式：安全型、焦虑型和逃避型。约55%的人属于安全型，他们通常待人亲切，有爱心，适应亲密接触。他们很可能是由对他们始终关爱备至的母亲或类似于父母的角色抚养长大的。肖里博士说，其他45%的人的依恋模式有时会有问题，这意味着他们属于焦虑型、逃避型或两种类型的结合。

Anxious people who worry about whether their partner loves them often had parents who were inconsistently nurturing. Avoidant people, whom psychologists also call 'dismissive,' try to minimize closeness and often had parents who didn't tolerate neediness or insecurities.
焦虑型的人担心他们的伴侣是否爱他们，这种人的父母通常对他们疏于照顾。逃避型的人──心理学家也称他们为“拒绝型”──则尽量减少跟他人的亲密接触，他们的父母通常无法忍受需要感和不安全感。

When we are scanning for signs of danger in a relationship such as abandonment our brain often can't distinguish between a real or imagined risk, Dr. Shorey says. The brain structure that picks up on threats, the amygdala, triggers the release of adrenaline faster than the thinking part of the brain, the cortex, can analyze the threat.
肖里博士说，当我们搜寻一段关系中的危险信号──例如遗弃──时，我们的大脑经常无法区分真正的风险和想象的风险。杏仁核（捕捉威胁的大脑结构）能比大脑皮层（大脑中分析威胁的思考部分）更快地触发肾上腺素的释放。