Photo credit: Erica Marshall

Have you ever been in a great mood and then gone out with a friend who was down in the dumps, and by the end of the evening, felt pretty miserable yourself? It’s a fairly typical response – we have empathy and want to help the other person feel better, but the more we try to cheer them up, the more they seem determined to stay cranky, until eventually, we succumb to our own grumpiness about their resistance.

The problem is that we’re tying our emotional response to the other person’s. How they feel determines how we feel. Many of us are taught to think of others first, to take care of friends and family before ourselves or be thought selfish. If someone else is unhappy, it’s our job to help them out of it. This forms a tremendous obstacle to personal change – if we are focused on others, we are not paying attention to our own problems, issues, and areas in need of growth.

A Radical Idea

Detachment is the radical concept that each of us is separate from each other emotionally. Your bad mood does not have to be mine. I do not have to take care of you to feel good about me. I am not responsible for fixing your problems. My job is to take care of my needs and let you (as a responsible adult) take care of yours.

Detaching from others does not mean we don’t care about them. It’s not indifference or avoidance. It simply means accepting that we each follow our own life path. We can keep each other company, but there is no way one person can carry another the entire length of the journey.

Examples of Detaching from Others

• Listening without getting “sucked in” to others’ problems
• Helping others brainstorm solutions for themselves and allowing them to decide which to try
• Believe that others already know better than we do what they really need
• Trusting that others must learn their lessons in life without benefit of our constant guidance
• Staying centered in our own self-worth so we aren’t distracted by others’ drama as a substitute for our meaning or identity
• Understanding that “helping” others might actually hurt them if it means taking on responsibilities they are fully capable of
• Allowing others to follow a path that might seem negative rather than trying to save them
• Sharing our opinions and recommendations with others without expecting them to change
• Allowing others to experience the consequences of their actions without our intervention
• Sharing our feelings without believing that someone else has to “fix” them

Detaching from Ourselves

We can even practice detachment from ourselves. Many of us have the habit of beating ourselves up for mistakes or missteps. We get caught up in a negative cycle of “should have”s and “why didn’t I”s. Once in the negative space, we can’t free ourselves, because we can’t change the past. We want to be perfect, and so we get stuck in a hopeless spiral down.

With detachment, we can step away from ourselves and our past behavior, even if it was minutes ago. We look back, reflect on what happened, and allow that it did happen. We accept that we can’t change it. Yet we don’t have to beat ourselves up. We can have compassion for the self that took the actions, decide to learn from our mistakes, and brainstorm better behaviors to try in future.

Detachment and Change

When we are free of the distraction of focusing on other people, attaching ourselves to their wants, needs, and opinions, we are suddenly much more able to look at ourselves. If our emotions are no longer tied to what someone else does, where are they coming from? What is going on inside that we can address and use to change us for the better?

Detaching from others is in some ways like putting blinders on a horse – it focuses us on our own vision, blocking out the distractions of those racing around us. And yet detachment does not limit us, or cut us off from other people. Rather, it frees us from the false bondage of believing our well-being and ability to grow depends on others.

How good are you at detaching from others while still maintaining a caring attitude?

Stay tuned for more on the 10 traits of personal change:

1. Self-awareness
2. Desire to feel better
3. Belief that it is possible to feel better
4. Rigorous self-honesty
5. Humility
6. Open-mindedness
7. Detachment from others
8. Willingness
9. Persistence
10. Personal responsibility

Next: Willingness

Tweet