What does detachment look like to you?

[Scent of Cedar *]

An amazing story. How do we do it, I wonder. I believe we do need to give ourselves credit for surviving the living horror of what is happening to our kids, to our changed relationships with extended family as the hope our own parents believed in when our kids were little changes to puzzlement or condemnation or pain. What it does to us to accept what is happening at all, to accept what it is doing to our relationships, as we struggle with and against one another to try to find a place of balance in the face of a kind of devastation most parents never know.

Our children are older than yours...we have grandchildren. That adds another layer that cuts to the core of who we are, that changes who we thought we would be, what we thought our lives would be like, as we aged.

We live in a strange kind of nether world where nothing is clear, where the sacrifices made effect no change, where the harder we try the further behind we seem to be.

I am not sure which thread it was now, but one of us posted about her child picking up once she detached from her own emotional reactions to what he was doing and so, was able to stop helping/enabling.

My daughter was homeless too, for a time.

Cedar

 

[Echolette]

Detachment looks like I have no relationship with my daughter. When I made the connection that there was a huge amount of energy going towards her and none coming back, that changed a lot for me..........in pulling back all the energy I was exerting for my daughter, I had quite a bit more for my own life. So, one clear component is I have more time, more energy, more money, more head space that is not cluttered with thoughts about her and her needs. Since I have had a history of caring for the members of my family and my difficult child was the last in my enabling career, this has had a large impact on my life.

Dstc is right, it is about letting go. Letting go of not just the sense of parental responsibility, but a friendship with my daughter, any kind of connection at all, my hopes for her, letting go of my fear about what will happen to her, how she will survive now and when I am gone...........letting go of my own self blame and self judgment that I did this or could have stopped it..........it's a whole lot of letting go.
Where I am now is leaning into acceptance, the deep down knowledge that I am completely powerless and this is what it is, there is nothing else I can do. I still have hope that she will pull it together, but none of my life depends on that.

Read more: http://www.conductdisorders.com/com...achment-look-like-to-you.55620/#ixzz2r4CO5std

 

[Echolette]

Detachment looks like I have no relationship with my daughter. When I made the connection that there was a huge amount of energy going towards her and none coming back, that changed a lot for me..........in pulling back all the energy I was exerting for my daughter, I had quite a bit more for my own life. So, one clear component is I have more time, more energy, more money, more head space that is not cluttered with thoughts about her and her needs. Since I have had a history of caring for the members of my family and my difficult child was the last in my enabling career, this has had a large impact on my life.

Dstc is right, it is about letting go. Letting go of not just the sense of parental responsibility, but a friendship with my daughter, any kind of connection at all, my hopes for her, letting go of my fear about what will happen to her, how she will survive now and when I am gone...........letting go of my own self blame and self judgment that I did this or could have stopped it..........it's a whole lot of letting go.
Where I am now is leaning into acceptance, the deep down knowledge that I am completely powerless and this is what it is, there is nothing else I can do. I still have hope that she will pull it together, but none of my life depends on that.

Read more: http://www.conductdisorders.com/com...achment-look-like-to-you.55620/#ixzz2r4CO5std

Yikes, such a long thread! I joined late and want to get back to where it started, if that is OK...
Detachment feels like no relationship. But it leaves space for real life. I just, some how, let go of my difficult child. I feel like I have only 3 children, not 4. I don't mention him to anyone, nor do I feel like I'm harboring a dark secret. I just...let him go. No relationship. There wasn't anyone there to have a relationship with anyway...it was all so slippery, full of lies and manipulation and living for the second...once I let go of trying to fix him, which never worked anyway, and got better at letting go of the guilt and despair, once I really had exhausted all options...I just....let him go. He floated away. I lost my son. And it is going to have to be OK. Like the comment above, I still have hope that he will pull it together, but my life, my family, our wholeness and happiness, doesn't depend on it anymore.