Sunday, October 23, 2011

Practicing Healthy Detachment in Relationships- Part 2- When We Don't Detach

For many of us, feeling responsible for other people can be overwhelming. We may become consumed by the responsibility and neglect our own needs and wants.  True concern for someone else can intensify to such a degree that it ends up draining our energy and creating feelings of resentment. This keeps us connected to the person in a negative way.  Healthy detachment allows us to remain supportive without taking on responsibility for another person’s feelings and actions. 

When we don’t practice healthy detachment, we may experience the following:
Angry outbursts- When the person we care about does not accept our advice or repeats dysfunctional behaviors in relationships, we may experience such a high level of frustration that we eventually ‘blow up’ at the other person, make derogatory comments, yell, accuse, or, even, threaten.  The message is- you are acting in a way that I dislike so much it is making me lose control of myself. 
Silent treatment-  We may experience anxiety or some form of discomfort when angry feelings are triggered.  In response, we may keep quiet in a relationship in order to avoid saying or doing something in anger.  Keeping quiet  can also be a way to ‘punish’ the other person. The message is – if you don’t behave the way I want you to, I will abandon you. When we practice the silent treatment we are making ourselves emotionally unavailable and the other person may eventually stop communicating altogether. Without communication, it is likely nothing will change in our relationship.
Repetitive dialogue- There is a very helpful saying in the Al-Anon Family Groups- say something once, you are offering information. Say something more than once, you are trying to control. We may repeat the same suggestions or verbalize how the person makes us feel over and over, hoping that it will somehow get into his/her brain and make them be the way we want them to be. However, repetition can have the opposite effect when our voices become ‘noise’ and the other person eventually stops hearing what we are actually saying. 
This can post can help us to think about how we may be preventing positive change from happening.  Feel free to share your thoughts and reactions by posting a comment below.
The next chapter will offer tools to help us practice healthy detachment.

No comments:

Post a Comment