Detaching Frees All Involved

“There’s an important difference between giving up and letting go.”
—Jessica Hatchigan

Detaching from someone or something that is causing us stress and trauma is one of the more difficult things in life to accomplish. It takes a stick-to-it attitude and lots of back and forth progress.

There are crazy people in this world, people who have no clue how to have relationships and interact in healthy ways. There are those who are addicted and their addiction affects us. Try as we might, we cannot and will not change these people. They won’t be different with us than with others, they’ll be just as crazy with us and they will make us feel crazy in the process.

Detaching from these types of people takes time. It takes a conscious effort to not play into their mind games and drama. What we have to do is stand strong even when we feel weak. They may pull us in slowly, maybe they get our big toe, but we don’t give them our whole foot.

We pull away gradually. We stick to the things we know to do. We think of other things and find ways to distract ourselves from obsessing about them and how to solve their problems which become our problems. When we set others free, we find freedom for ourselves. When we stop trying to fix them we are detaching.

It’s a long process, often, and one in which we may feel pushed and pulled with no end in sight. But once we are there, once we’ve let go emotionally we will know it. We will have contact and we won’t feel anything anymore. No anxiety. No emotional reaction. That’s when we know we’ve detached. What we must then do is stick to it and not put that toe back in the water with that person again.

Detaching is worth the struggle.