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admin
06-07-2006, 12:38 AM
Steps in developing detachment

Step 1: It is important to first identify those people, places, and things in your life from which you would be best to develop emotional detachment in order to retain your personal, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. To do this you need to review the following types of toxic relationships and identify in your journal if any of the people, places, or things in your life fit any of the following twenty categories.

Types of Toxic Relationships

( 1) You find it hard to let go of because it is addictive.

( 2) The other is emotionally unavailable to you.

( 3) Coercive, threatening, intimidating to you.

( 4) Punitive or abusive to you.

( 5) Non-productive and non-reinforcing for you.

( 6) Smothering you.

( 7) Other is overly dependent on you.

( 8) You are overly dependent on the other.

( 9) Other has the power to impact your feelings about yourself.

(10) Relationship in which you are a chronic fixer, rescuer, or enabler.

(11) Relationship in which your obligation and loyalty won't allow you to let go.

(12) Other appears helpless, lost, and out of control.

(13) Other is self-destructive or suicidal.

(14) Other has an addictive disease.

(15) Relationship in which you are being manipulated and conned.

(16) When guilt is a major motivating factor preventing your letting go and detaching.

(17) Relationship in which you have a fantasy or dream that the other will come around and change to be what you want.

(18) Relationship in which you and the other are competitive for control.

(19) Relationship in which there is no forgiveness or forgetting and all past hurts are still brought up to hurt one another.

(20) Relationship in which your needs and wants are ignored.

Step 2: Once you have identified the persons, places, and things you have a toxic relationship with, then you need to take each one individually and work through the following steps.

Step 3: Identify the irrational beliefs in the toxic relationship which prevent you from becoming detached. Address these beliefs and replace them with healthy, more rational ones.

Step 4: Identify all of the reasons why you are being hurt and your physical, emotional, and spiritual health is being threatened by the relationship.

Step 5: Accept and admit to yourself that the other person, place, or thing is "sick", dysfunctional, or irrational and that no matter what you say, do, or demand you will not be able to control or change this reality. Accept that there is only one thing you can change in life and that is you. All others are the unchangeables in your life. Change your expectations that things will be better than what they really are. Hand these people, places, or things over to your Higher Power and let go of the need to change them.

Step 6: Work out reasons why there is no need to feel guilt over letting go and being emotionally detached from this relationship and free yourself from guilt as you let go of the emotional "hooks'' in the relationship.

Step 7: Affirm yourself as being a person who "deserves'' healthy, wholesome, health engendering relationships in your life. You are a GOOD PERSON and deserve healthy relationships, at home, work, and in the community.

Step 8: Gain support for yourself as you begin to let go of your emotional enmeshment with these relationships.

Step 9: Continue to call upon your Higher Power for the strength to continue to let go and detach.

Step 10: Continue to give no person, place, or thing the power to affect or impact your feelings about yourself.

Step 11: Continue to detach and let go and work at self-recovery and self-healing as this poem implies.

``Letting Go''

To ``let go'' does not mean to stop caring.

It means I can't do it for someone else.

To ``let go'' is not to cut myself off.

It's the realization I can't control another.

To ``let go'' is not to enable,

but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To ``let go'' is to admit powerlessness

which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To ``let go'' is not to try to change or blame another.

It's to make the most of myself.

To ``let go'' is not to care for, but to care about.

To ``let go'' is not to fix, but to be supportive.

To ``let go'' is not to judge,

but to allow another to be a human being.

To ``let go'' is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,

but to allow others to affect their own destinies.

To ``let go'' is not to be protective.

It's to permit another to face reality.

To ``let go'' is not to deny, but to accept.

To ``let go'' is not to nag, scold, or argue,

but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.

To ``let go'' is not to criticize and regulate anybody,

but to try to become what I dream I can be.

To ``let go'' is not to adjust everything to my desires

but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.

To ``let go'' is to not regret the past,

but to grow and live for the future.

To ``let go'' is to fear less and LOVE MYSELF MORE.

Step 12: If you still have problems detaching, then return to Step 1 and begin all over again.
Found while surfing

I_have_hope
10-01-2008, 09:59 AM
Thanks, I needed this....

seek
12-06-2008, 11:36 AM
this is a very good outline about detachment. in meetings and literature, i would always hear "detach," but never HOW to do it . . . this helps a little bit by offering some specifics. i think detaching is easier for some people than others.

i always thought that it is more difficult when the addict/alcoholic is not an adult . . .