On Foundations: Detachment

Ladies!!!

I’ve missed you!!! It’s been a loooooong month with a heck of a lot happening and I haven’t taken the time to sit down and write an article in a while. Its kinda funny because even if nobody read these articles, I would probably write them - they might be more for me than anyone. They are SO good for my soul - just to sit down and have an outlet and get some thoughts out (and of course, hopefully help you as you continue to heal!).

It’s a wintery Saturday morning and everyone is still nestled in their beds (but me). The perfect time to write.

Tracy and I are going to push to wrap up the Foundations Series that we started several months ago. As promised, we will link all the articles back to the original post here.

For today, I want to speak to detachment as I DO see that this is foundational in the recovery process. I have written about detachment many a times here and so please check out this link which will show you all seven articles from the past + a couple of videos.

Some of those articles are linked below - so what I would do is read this blog post first and follow the links and then you can go back to the seven and keep reading if you would like.

Trauma

In this article, I talk about the impact of trauma and why it makes it challenging to detach.

Keep in mind that when we are traumatized - our Autonomic Nervous System goes haywire and we shift from our thinking brain (prefrontal cortex) being on-line to our emotional brain (amygdala) being on-line. There is an inverse relationship between these two parts of our brains so as the amygdala starts to ramp up - guess what, our prefrontal cortex starts to ramp down.

With that said, we go into "fight / flight / freeze / appease mode“ which is NOT detachment.

Here is a picture to illustrate what I am speaking to:

As you see from above, detachment is somewhere in the middle. We aren’t hyper focused on him and we also aren’t dissociated from ourselves or fleeing (see the middle image). We are connected to ourselves, grounded, feet firmly planted.

Bottom Line: We must understand and respect what is happening in our brains and bodies in order to GET to detachment. Practicing grounding exercises and other strategies to decrease those trauma symptoms is KEY.

With that said - Here are four things you can do to help you move toward detachment:

Practice Calming Your Brain

You can click on this video, which is apart of the Detachment Series I did toward the end of 2020 and the first four or so minutes of the video, I talk about some strategies to help calm our brains.

There are SO many strategies we can use - here are some other options:

• rocking in a rocking chair has proven to be effective to calm our brains

• practicing gratitude has also proven by research to be highly effective

• walking in nature

• laughter (and I always say - how WOULD we get through this if we didn’t have laughter, Jesus and the ability to use some bad words here and there!)

Know Your Why

Because detachment is so incredibly difficult, it’s important that we identify what our why is. This will keep us motivated when we feel like we can’t do it anymore (and especially when our amygdala is telling us we can’t do it anymore).

I see three main reasons that we need to detach - and they need to be apart of your why - to get safe, to gain protection and to also find clarity.

If we can keep those three things out in front of us as motivators - it will help us when we feel like we can’t detach anymore and we just want to jump into his hula-hoop and fix it or tell him what to do.

Accountability

Detachment is as hard as going on a diet. As some of you know that are in my Empowered Boundaries MasterClass this round, I had a bit of a Cheetos obsession that needed to come to a halt. I was using and abusing Cheetos to comfort myself (I also have a history of doing this with chocolate chip cookies) and I couldn’t stop eating them without accountability and support.

The same applies to detachment. You can’t do this alone. It’s imperative to develop your team around you so that you can detach and they can hold you accountable when everything in you wants to fight, flight, flee or appease.

What Is Your End Game - Name It

And finally, when you are detaching - NAME what it is you are needing to see. Maybe you are detaching to see if he will decide to step up and get some professional help and you aren’t going to be the one to drag him into it. Maybe you are detaching because you have told him you need a Full Disclosure and he is dragging his feet. Maybe it's because you need to feel safe.

Regardless, name what you are needing to see so that you can stay the course, as best as you can.

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My wintery Saturday morning came to an end, and it’s now Monday afternoon as I finish wrapping this up. I would so love to hear your detachment wins and your detachment losses. Share them in the comments below and as I am able, I will most definitely respond to you. We learn SO much from each other and I know firsthand that ladies get so much out of what you share here.

I'm also posting one of the videos from above on Instragram - so we can chat there as well.

Thanks, as always, for being here.

xo - Shelley