What does it mean to emotionally detach yourself? What are the benefits to doing this, how can doing this help to build relationships based on respect, and how can doing this increase your personal support system?

MM546- Emotionally Detach Yourself

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me!

It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat.

Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me.

Today’s focus is: Emotionally Detach Yourself

Where did we start believing that if we don’t care with every fiber of our being, or become consumed with the lives of our loved ones, that we don’t care?

How many times have we allowed what our spouse or children are going through to consume us? I can think of many times I’ve done this. One example would be speaking to my husband during the work day and hearing about how he got ripped to shreds during a big meeting because he didn’t have something prepared. This will weigh on me all day, and at dinner I’ll empathize with him and how embarrassing this experience must have been - only for him to tell me that his boss realized that he’d never passed along the material and let everyone else know it.

Similarly, say I was concerned about a situation where my daughter called for a freak out session about a fight she got into with her college roommate. She’d get me all spun up, and I’d be concerned about her and the situation. But later, when I’d ask how things were going, she’d say that the issue had been resolved for hours or sometimes even days.

In both of these situations, I’m sitting over here with a knot in my stomach over things I have absolutely no control over. I’m distracted and less productive in my own life because I’m worried about my family - when their situations have been resolved and I don’t even know it.

Does this happen to you? I know I’m not the only one!

This is why I want to talk to you about the importance of detaching emotionally from friends and family. I want you to think of emotionally detaching as just taking a small step back from the details of their everyday lives. Think of this more as creating just a little bit of emotional distance, where you are just not quite so invested in the outcomes of their situations.

Why do this? Because it’s not your job to solve their problems. Why else? Because you need to be focused on what you’re here to accomplish.

I’ve learned a lot about emotional detachment, and I practiced it a lot until it became my natural behavior. I’ve learned that if it’s not in my control, I can give it less weight in my heart and my head. I have whole-heartedly accepted the idea that 99% of what we worry about never occurs, and that whatever my family experiences in their journey that is out of my control is meant for them and has nothing to do with me.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t care, I care a ton. And it does not mean that I love them less or am here for them less. I always want to hear about their jobs, their friends, their lives. These are my favorite people! I just don’t wear their challenges. I don’t own them. I don’t feel like I need to fix them. I focus more on asking questions that help them make their own decisions than giving advice.

So Motivate Me! Friends, the reality is that our focus should be on our own paths, and we should allow our loved one’s focus to be on their own paths.  Our lives will naturally and lovingly intertwine.