Topic: Article on Loving Detachment (Read 831 times)
greenie Guest
Article on Loving Detachment « Thread Started on Jan 3, 2005, 4:11pm »
I've held on to this article that has helped me so much with the OCD symptoms in my DH. Applying them to the ADD seems to be more of a trick, but maybe not for all. Hope you can glean something helpful for your individual situations.
May we share a New Year's Resolution that the best way to take care of those we love is actually to take better care of ourselves! Colleen
How Detaching Can Be Loving For All By Wayland Myers, Ph.D.
“Detachment is a means whereby we allow others the opportunity to care for themselves better.” This statement helped me make a quantum leap in my understanding of how detaching from others could be loving. Last month, I shared that I heard this from a family program counselor. Hearing her left me amazed and disoriented. For the first time, I began realizing that abstaining from my attempts to protect or manage others could be gift to them. That was nine years ago. Today I have a fuller definition of loving detachment. Currently, I consider myself lovingly detached when I am willing and able to compassionately allow others to be different from me, to be self-directed, and to be responsible for taking care of themselves. Using this definition, I have come to realize that detachment is loving for everyone involved. In this article I will share my beliefs about four ways that detachment is loving for those I care about, and four ways that it is loving for me.
How detachment is loving to others:
1. Those I care for might learn to look within, and trust themselves for self-direction, including when and how to ask for help. If I refrain from trying to manage their problematic situation, the people I care about may learn something about thinking for themselves, problem solving, and when and how to ask for help. They might learn to better listen to their feelings and intuitions, to heed those little voices we all wish we listened to more. They might learn to better recognize when they want help and how to request it in ways that leave them feeling good rather than embarrassed or ashamed. In short, letting them manage their own affairs gives them the opportunity to draw on their own inner resources instead of mine, and from this direct experience of their abilities, no matter how groping or uncertain, they can build competence and may thereby increase their confidence. I believe this is the No. 1 and most natural avenue leading to increased self-esteem.
2. They might learn more about cause and effect. My not intervening allows others to have an uninterrupted experience of the cause and effect relationship between their actions and the natural consequences of those actions. In this way, they have a direct encounter with their personal power to contribute to their own pleasure or pain. Allowing people to have appropriate sized, real problems and real responsibility for working out their solutions, seem to greatly facilitate this learning.
3. They might experience the motivation to continue on or change. Pleasurable and painful experiences often provide us the motivation to repeat what brought satisfaction and change what didn’t. We all use this kind of emotional energy to move us forward in life. These motivating energies arise naturally from within and feel much better to respond to than the attempts by others to motivate us through guilt, fear and other forms of coercion.
4. Self discovery and enjoyment might occur. If I grant others the freedom to think, feel, value, perceive, etc. as they wish, and they relax because they feel respected and safe, they might discover many few things about themselves. They might discover what they really like, feel or think. They might have moments of creative insight that inspire, excite and encourage them. They might invent new more satisfying dreams for their lives than ever would have appeared under the pressure of my controlling presence. Whenever I find myself struggling with the impulse to step in and begin trying to manage another life, or solve his or her problems, I find it helpful to review the four points just presented. They strongly motivate me to remain lovingly detached.
Now, how about the ways loving detachment benefits me?
How detachment is loving for me.
1. I am relieved of the strain of attempting the impossible. By carefully reviewing my experiences of trying to control other people’s physical behavior, sobriety, health, learning, emotions and opinions, I have come to one conclusion. The only thing I might be able to control is a person’s physical behavior and that requires that I possess enough physical strength and am willing to use it. If I accept my powerlessness to control the other things, the inner lives and wills of others, then I relieve myself of the stress and strain of attempting the impossible. This is a primary way for me to create more serenity in my life. In fact, if I practice this process deeply enough, I sometimes reach the point where I form no opinion about what another should do. This is a truly liberating and refreshing moment for us both.
2. What other people think of me can become none of my business. If I am powerless to control the thoughts, perceptions, values or emotions of another, then I can liberate myself by accepting that their opinions of me are none of my business. Accepting this as fact, I not only free myself, but the other person as well, because I cease my attempts to control their inner workings.
3. My attention and energy are freed to focus on improving my own life. I have plenty of problem areas in my own life. Obsessing about another life can help me avoid the pain within mine. But the time and energy I spend obsessing about another life I don’t spend on mine, and if I do this enough, my life stays at its current level of unmanageability or gets worse. Loving detachment gives me the opportunity to invest my energies in my life.
4. I can express my love or caring in ways that bring me joy and satisfaction. When someone I care for is struggling with a problem, or feeling some kind of pain, I usually want to be supportive or helpful. But, I want to offer the kind of help that would bring me joy to offer and them joy to receive. One of the ways that I have developed a picture of what this help could look like is to recall the times when caring friends or others have offered me assistance in ways that I enjoyed. What did they do? While showing no sign that they felt responsible for solving my problems, they offered me four things:
1) Their compassionate, empathic understanding of how I perceived and felt about my situation 2) Their experiences and learning from similar situations for my consideration 3) Their genuine optimism about my abilities to work through my struggles. 4) Their willingness to help, on my terms, in ways that were congruent with their needs.
To be offered understanding, companionship, encouragement and assistance, but not interference, is the most satisfying help I have known. Offering this to others increases both the joys in my life and my self-esteem.
Looking at the eight ways that I see detachment as being loving, I conclude that the most basic reason for practicing it is to provide an opportunity for people’s lives to be improved. The lives of those I love may be improved because I avoid unnecessary distress, retain energy I might have wasted, and offer caring and support in ways that bring me joy. In these ways loving detachment plays a powerful and rewarding role in helping me to both live and let live.
Wayland Myers Ph.D. is a psychologist practicing the North Coastal region of San Diego Couty. He specializes in 12-step based supportive therapy for people in recovery, EMDR for the resolution of past trauma, and training in compassionate communication methods. He can be reached by e-mail at Waylandpm@aol.com.
Re: Article on Loving Detachment « Reply #1 on Jul 15, 2009, 10:21pm »
I think that loving detachment plays a huge role in helping us maintain good boundaries for ourselves when we are involved with boundary busters whether we are lowering our own boundaries or walking all over someone else's.
I realize there is a lot of pain in these relationships and people do need to express their pain. But at some point there is no reason to complain any more. It is time to act and detach for the benefit of the relationship.
I would like to know more about how to use detachment in simple everyday situations. I did this successfully with my children as they were gorwing up and I don't understand why I failed to do it with my ex husband
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