By admin 
Detach with love? You can’t be serious?! After ALL they’ve done to me — no way!
I’ve been in so many situations where my heart goes out to the wives, husbands, children and parents of loved ones with alcohol or other drug use disorders (aka alcoholism or addiction) who are brand new to this journey called “recovery.” Their deep, deep pain, anger, desperation, confusion, isolation, longing for it to be better, sadness — and in some cases, numbed silence — waxes and wanes as terms swirl through conversations.
Terms like codependent, enabler, SLE, IOP, in-patient, intensive out-patient, AlAnon, NarNon, powerless over alcohol, dual diagnosis and co-disorders are batted about as if they are words in conversations we exchange with that nice check-out clerk at the grocery store. Terms that make no sense, nor can they be viewed as applying to them because they were just trying to get their loved one to stop and now they’re just trying to get them clean and sober.
And, then, of course, there are the concepts of “detach” and “detach with love.” What the heck do these mean? “Who’s going to make sure my loved one is safe; doesn’t use; gets a job; succeeds in recovery if I detach?’” they often say.
Trying to Make Sense of Detach. Detach With Love
Detach With Love – But How?
For some, the suggestion they detach with love, is followed by their equally incredulous response, “Are you kidding? After all they’ve done to me? You are off your rocker. That’s asking way too much!”
And when you think about it, it is all too much. It feels like being told you have to learn to read, write, speak and translate German into Italian within the next month (the time-period for the typical 30-day, residential addiction treatment program) or YOU will have failed.
Understanding the meaning of these two concepts may help you get started:
Detach means to…
realize that each of us has a brain that has its own neural network wiring based on our individual experiences, thoughts, influences, genetics and the like. The only brain we can control, and therefore the only behaviors we can change, is/are our own. Therefore, we can detach from another person when we remember their brain, a brain that is not within our power to control, controls their thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
Detach with love means to…
have love in your heart [which, believe it or not, originates in the brain] for another person, who may not be living their life the way you think they should or want them to, while at the same time, detaching.
In the case of detaching with love from someone with the brain disease (aka brain disorder) of severe substance use disorder (aka alcoholism or addiction), it helps to think of it as you having accepted that severe substance use disorder is a brain disease and that the behaviors exhibited while your loved one is active in their disease were/are the result of the interrelated complexities of the chemical, structural and functional brain changes of the substance abuse, risk factors and characteristics of this particular disease. Whew! That’s a mouthful, I know, but that’s how complex the development of a severe substance use disorder is.
As for this disease concept. Disease by its simplest definition is something that changes cells in a negative way. When cells are changed in a body organ, the health and function of that body organ changes. Cancer cells in the lungs, for example, causes lung cancer. The complexities of severe substance use disorders described above cause changes to cells in the brain and its communication systems which is what makes it a brain disease.
We have no problem loving a person with lung cancer, but it’s the symptoms of severe substances use disorder — namely the lying, breaking promises to stop or cut down, verbal or emotional abuse… — that can make it difficult to love the person with alcoholism/addiction. Truly accepting you cannot control that person’s brain (regardless of whether they’re using their substance of addiction but especially if they are) is a huge piece to being able to detach with love. For more on why it’s a brain disease, check out my article, “Key Information About Alcoholism” (equally applies to other drug addictions).
This is my latest book and will answer so many of the questions that readers of this post may have. It’s available at book stores, libraries, and online retailers and comes in paperback and eBook versions. Click here for the Amazon link..
For Now…
Take it slowly. And, by slowly, I mean take it just for today, and in some cases, just for just the next 5 minutes. You do not, nor can you, have all (or even 2) of the answers to what happens next. To give you a hand with this, my latest book may help.
The first half explains alcohol use disorders (drinking problems) – how they’re developed and treated and what long-term recovery requires. In the case of alcohol abuse, for example, it’s possible to learn to “re-drink,” but in the case of alcoholism, it must be total abstinence from alcohol, yet in both cases, there are other brain healing aspects necessary in order to address “why” a person finds themselves drinking to these extents in the first place (e.g., trauma, anxiety, depression, social environment…). [Concepts equally apply to other drug use disorders.]
The second half explains what happens to family members and friends and what they can do to help their loved ones, as well as what they can do to take back control of their physical and emotional health and the quality of their lives. [Concepts equally apply to what happens to family members and friends of loved ones with other drug use disorders.]
And when all else fails in your efforts to detach (which it most likely will at first because this is all so new), focus on your breath and simply breathe. Breathe in; breathe out; breathe in; breathe out. For those brief moments, your mind will detach and give you the moments of much-needed peace you crave and deserve. As you learn to more fully detach, you’ll eventually be able to detach with love.
If you have questions, please feel free to email me at lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com to arrange a free phone or Zoom call to talk through some of them.
____________________
©Lisa Frederiksen, first published 7/24/12 and revised 1/2020 and 8/23/21. Some of the comments are from earlier versions.
Lisa Frederiksen is the author of hundreds of articles and 12 books, including her latest, “10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much,” and “Loved One In Treatment? Now What!” She is a national keynote speaker with over 30 years speaking experience, consultant and founder of BreakingTheCycles.com. Lisa has spent the last 19+ years studying and simplifying breakthrough research on the brain, substance use and other mental health disorders, secondhand drinking, toxic stress, trauma/ACEs and related topics.