Detaching With Love
Notes on finding internal peace in troubled times
Above: serenity at last.
(Just kidding. My anxiety says: smog or fog? I lived in coal fume-saturated Beijing from 2009–2012, which doubtlessly took several years off my lifespan, and Smog or Fog is a favourite game I learned to play).
Detachment with love is a core Al-Anon concept. The essence of it is this: you detach your thoughts and emotions from a person or situation in order to free yourself from the control it has over you. This enables you to look after your own needs instead of obsessing over those of others (you can’t do that until you’ve created mental and emotional space between your needs and someone else’s).
When it comes to dealing with someone else’s addiction or any sort of stressor that wreaks havoc on our lives, it’s easy to get drawn into a co-dependent relationship of sorts. As the takeover of Hong Kong unfolded from 2019–2020, I found myself obsessively refreshing The Guardian website for news. I spent hours on Reddit consuming information and videos. I hated the things I was seeing and reading about. I struggled to sleep. I found it difficult to focus on work. My heart ached as I read about the experiences of the young leaders of the movement. As a former political scientist who had worked in Hong Kong’s universities, who understood both the politics and stakes of the situation, and who resented the fear that the Chinese Communist Party instills, the takeover felt very personal to me. I was so very angry at the many layers of injustice enacted before my eyes.
In this sense, my emotions were being controlled by events far beyond my control. In fact, anything that occurs outside of ourselves is effectively beyond our control. The only realm we’re able to exert control over exists internally, inside ourselves. And while we may not ever exert total control over our thoughts and emotions, we can certainly shape them. We can become more attuned to how we feel and learn new ways to respond to stress or triggers.
Here’s what I’ve learned about detaching with love.
A co-dependent relationship is essentially one in which events or people or situations are controlling our emotional state. It feels like our moods, our thoughts, or our overall mental health is being yanked around by someone else’s behaviour, moods, or words.
In Al-Anon, of course, the typical detachment scenario is one in which someone else’s addiction is causing you massive stress and anxiety. But this is hardly the only scenario in which we are controlled by external forces. In my example above, news about Hong Kong was controlling my mental and emotional wellbeing. I’d wake up angry in the morning over videos I’d seen the night before, videos of protests and egregious police behaviour on university campuses I’d worked at. Overall, I was unhappy. Terrible things were happening in a place I’d just left, and I felt powerless.
Al-Anon tells us that we are indeed powerless and we must accept the things we cannot change in order to focus on the things we can – the things inside ourselves.
When we get too caught up in other people or situations, we often ignore our own needs. Our thoughts are consumed by what could be happening or what we want to happen, keeping us awake at night. In our obsession, we may have given up doing activities we once enjoyed. We may be ignoring issues we desperately need to take care of, such as our finances or career. We are emotionally overinvolved and overinvested.
This is when we know we need to detach. After all, our own wellbeing is at stake.
When it comes to addiction, detachment means giving an addict the dignity of making their own decisions and living their own lives without our intervention, opinions, and other efforts to produce sobriety. It means allowing others to learn from their mistakes instead of trying to cover them up. It means reclaiming our thoughts and directing them towards ourselves. It means learning where to set boundaries between ourselves and the addict so we can live our own lives in a healthier way.
For me, detachment meant consciously not reading the news or browsing the Hong Kong subreddit anymore. It meant accepting that I had no real way to contribute positively to the situation – not here, not now, not in a real sense. If some way revealed itself, I wouldn’t turn away the opportunity. But there was nothing tangible I could do.
The love part refers to how we choose to detach. Rather than reacting with anxiety to a situation or person, we can choose how we respond. When we’re shouting at an alcoholic that we’ll leave them if they don’t quit drinking, we are typically doing so from a place of raw emotions. Our words are a reaction to a situation we despise, not a considered choice. Instead, we can choose to think differently about the situation. How will we care for ourselves even if the alcoholic does not quit drinking? How will we meet our own needs? What are our needs?
Detaching with love, then, is about showing love to ourselves. In a more subtle way, it becomes about showing love to an addict, too: we are giving them the respect of living their own lives, feeling the natural consequences of their own behaviour, and solving their own problems.
I think this same logic can apply to situations as well. In response to injustices or other events that make our blood boil, we can choose to detach . . . but this doesn’t mean we stop caring about society, the world, or the people around us. It doesn’t mean we stop caring about others. We can let some people feel the natural consequences of their actions, if their actions contributed to creating the injustice. We can reach out to others we feel are harmed by it. Or if that isn’t an option, we can simply reach out to those around us and let them know, in one way or another, that we care. Above all, we can prioritize caring for our own wellbeing so we can have a positive effect on other people and our surrounding environment.
For me, detaching with love from situations and people in order to focus on my own needs has looked like this:
paying attention to what I’m feeling in my body. Sometimes I notice my body reacting to something I’m listening to or reading or thinking about (usually obsessively). I might feel tension in my shoulders, limbs, or jaw. For me, this is a clear sign of stress. So, I stop whatever it is that I’m doing. I close my browser or my laptop. I walk away and brew a cup of tea instead.
making a point to prioritize what I enjoy. I love walks, morning light, cafe drinks, and nature. I try to enjoy one or two of the items on that list every single day.
avoiding overwhelm by taking tasks one day at a time. When my environment is filled with tension for whatever reason, I find myself becoming easily overwhelmed by large(r) tasks. In response, I’ve been taking large tasks and breaking them down into many steps. When I feel overwhelmed, I tell myself to simply take one of those steps today. I can take another one tomorrow, and so on. Overall, making progress on my larger goals helps me feel less disempowered by my environment.
taking time each day to list out what I need to accomplish and then doing no more. A stressful environment can give rise to a feeling that I must accomplish more now in order to feel better about the environment. This is a reaction rather than a considered response. I’ve learned to consciously limit what I do – to stop working even when I could do more and instead take that time to reflect or engage in an act of self-care. I often read Al-Anon literature, which helps recommit my mind to detachment.
focusing on only the things I can control and leaving the rest to my higher power. This is a mental discipline I’ve gotten better at over time. If there is nothing I can do about a situation, I’ve slowly learned to not worry about it. It helps to block out or mute sources of stress, whether text messages, emails, phone calls, social media, or the news. I also limit the time I spend around people who create stress.
Altogether, these efforts have helped me eliminate the obsessive thinking that once consumed my mind. They’ve freed me from feeling controlled by the moods and behaviour of others or situations that would otherwise cause a great deal of emotional distress. I feel lighter and freer. I’m able to think more clearly about my options and take steps to address neglected areas of my life. I’m able to trust that I will be okay, that my life will improve, no matter what happens around me.
When it comes to situations, the ability to detach with love as I’ve described it here is a privilege to some extent. I was able to detach from the situation in Hong Kong simply because I was not a Hong Konger whose government was being taken over by Beijing. I was not directly affected by these events, at least not right then or now.
But just because something is a privilege does not mean we shouldn’t exercise it. No one is harmed when we become a healthier, happier version of ourselves. And detachment with love is a practice that can be applied by someone who has very few privileges. It is, above all, a means of positive self-preservation. To use the language of Al-Anon, detachment with love puts us on the path to internal serenity.
For more posts on recovery, see:
