Detachment
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Lake Luzerne
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Isn't that really what fairy tales are all about. Taking yourself to a distant and wonderful place in your head? I'm wondering of you are familiar with Guided Imagery? This is also a type of detachement.
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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I can tell you how it worked for me. I dont often share alot of this....
My Mother was the first Alcoholic in my life, since the time I can remember there were issues and fights with Mom and Dad about it. The routine when it got out of control was for my brother to keep them apart, for me to call the police and then go find my sister and make sure she was ok.... then back to helping my brother till the police arrived.... Then the police would always take my Dad away (they never took the Mom back then) My Brother would leave and my Mom would be angry and take that out on me. After that she would find and hold my sister .... explaining her views of it all. I would clean up what ever mess and go to bed... wait till my Mom brought my sister in and then comfort her.
To be really honest I have no clue how many times this happened, There is alot of my childhood that is just blank and has not come back as yet... I do know however that it was more then 1/2 doz times.... because I have specific memories or certain actions that are not attached.
Anyway..... Once I finally found a therapist that would/could help me and after I went through the whole thing again (no easy task) and could see what I could of it as an adult it was explained to me like this. If you think of it as a string between the heart (emotion) and the brain (logical) what I was able to do is clip the string.... My head did not hear what my heart was telling me. It was survival at the very basics..... or for me as a child "detachment". As an adult we know that is not "really" what detachment is, but without a guide to teach me that is what I did to detach as a child. I dont know when it started but I did not learn to "let" myself cry till I was in my 20s. That does not mean I never cried.... I just never allowed myself too. It took alot of pain and work to learn to "attach" that string and then learn how to feel emotions.
Just my experience as a child and what detachment was for me.
My Mother was the first Alcoholic in my life, since the time I can remember there were issues and fights with Mom and Dad about it. The routine when it got out of control was for my brother to keep them apart, for me to call the police and then go find my sister and make sure she was ok.... then back to helping my brother till the police arrived.... Then the police would always take my Dad away (they never took the Mom back then) My Brother would leave and my Mom would be angry and take that out on me. After that she would find and hold my sister .... explaining her views of it all. I would clean up what ever mess and go to bed... wait till my Mom brought my sister in and then comfort her.
To be really honest I have no clue how many times this happened, There is alot of my childhood that is just blank and has not come back as yet... I do know however that it was more then 1/2 doz times.... because I have specific memories or certain actions that are not attached.
Anyway..... Once I finally found a therapist that would/could help me and after I went through the whole thing again (no easy task) and could see what I could of it as an adult it was explained to me like this. If you think of it as a string between the heart (emotion) and the brain (logical) what I was able to do is clip the string.... My head did not hear what my heart was telling me. It was survival at the very basics..... or for me as a child "detachment". As an adult we know that is not "really" what detachment is, but without a guide to teach me that is what I did to detach as a child. I dont know when it started but I did not learn to "let" myself cry till I was in my 20s. That does not mean I never cried.... I just never allowed myself too. It took alot of pain and work to learn to "attach" that string and then learn how to feel emotions.
Just my experience as a child and what detachment was for me.
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Join Date: Mar 2005
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This is why I don't appreciate the negative implication that enablement is a weakeness. Enablement is often the only choice a child has with a parent. A small child has no choice but to enable a drunk parent. It may need to be corrected as an adult, but it was a mode of survival at one time.
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Thanks for sharing, Cynay. I also detached as a child, but not in the healthy way I've learned to detach as an adult. I would say I disconnected as a coping mechanism. Who is there to teach a child detachment if the household is suffering from the disease?
mallow, I see what you're saying about fairy tales, but I used that and more as an escape, not as a learning tool. as long as I could pretend to be the heroine of my own fairy tale I did not have to deal with the reality of my life. I carried that unhealthy coping skill deep into adulthood. I do believe guided imagery is an effective tool for achieving detachment, but it isn't detachment in and of itself.
I think this still speaks to gutwrenched's original post, because I'm not certain children have the emotional maturity to learn healthy detachment. And who do they learn it from? i just don't know.
mallow, I see what you're saying about fairy tales, but I used that and more as an escape, not as a learning tool. as long as I could pretend to be the heroine of my own fairy tale I did not have to deal with the reality of my life. I carried that unhealthy coping skill deep into adulthood. I do believe guided imagery is an effective tool for achieving detachment, but it isn't detachment in and of itself.
I think this still speaks to gutwrenched's original post, because I'm not certain children have the emotional maturity to learn healthy detachment. And who do they learn it from? i just don't know.
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Originally Posted by mallowcup
This is why I don't appreciate the negative implication that enablement is a weakeness. Enablement is often the only choice a child has with a parent. A small child has no choice but to enable a drunk parent. It may need to be corrected as an adult, but it was a mode of survival at one time.
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Join Date: Jul 2004
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What works for me is to separate the word from the application. Detachment, enabling, fantasy, are just generic words that need to be considered in the context where they are applied. They are neither weakness nor virtue, they are just behaviors. It's the application of them that can be labeled as healthy or harmful.
As a child in an alcoholic home I was forced to seprate myself emotionally from the chaos I was trapped in. When an adult does exactly that in a _healthy_ manner it's called detachment. When a child does the exact same thing but in an _unhealthy_ manner it's called "dissociation".
The difference is that an adult has appropriate coping skills with which to _decide_ if detachment is a useful response. A child has not yet developed coping skills, so dissociation is not a choice, it's a panic reaction. When the adult determines that it is no longer necessary to detach they can do so. A child will have difficulty doing so, and in some cases will develop an addiction to that form of escape.
An adult who enables does so by choice, and can choose to cease that behavior. A child has no choice and acts out of fear for their lives. The behavior appears the same, but in the mind of the child what you have is called "stockholm syndrome". The adult who stops enabling may feel guilt, hesitation and remorse. The child enmeshed in stockholm syndrome is unable to stop, and will develop severe anxiety disorders if separated from the abusive parent.
Children are certainly able to learn healthy coping skills. But only if there is somebody there to _teach_ them. Without a healthy parent the child will develop coping _behaviors_, but they will not be healhty skills. They will be panic reactions that will cause the child serious difficulties for many years to come.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
Mike
As a child in an alcoholic home I was forced to seprate myself emotionally from the chaos I was trapped in. When an adult does exactly that in a _healthy_ manner it's called detachment. When a child does the exact same thing but in an _unhealthy_ manner it's called "dissociation".
The difference is that an adult has appropriate coping skills with which to _decide_ if detachment is a useful response. A child has not yet developed coping skills, so dissociation is not a choice, it's a panic reaction. When the adult determines that it is no longer necessary to detach they can do so. A child will have difficulty doing so, and in some cases will develop an addiction to that form of escape.
An adult who enables does so by choice, and can choose to cease that behavior. A child has no choice and acts out of fear for their lives. The behavior appears the same, but in the mind of the child what you have is called "stockholm syndrome". The adult who stops enabling may feel guilt, hesitation and remorse. The child enmeshed in stockholm syndrome is unable to stop, and will develop severe anxiety disorders if separated from the abusive parent.
Children are certainly able to learn healthy coping skills. But only if there is somebody there to _teach_ them. Without a healthy parent the child will develop coping _behaviors_, but they will not be healhty skills. They will be panic reactions that will cause the child serious difficulties for many years to come.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
Mike
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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Ahhh Missy.... not to worry.
No ... your right no child should have to go through that... but they do all the time. I have long since forgiven and fallen back in love with my Mother (passed away 4 years ago) because you know what..... She had it even worse then I did.... they did the best job they could with what they had to work with.
My Mom later in our relaitonship told me that she is proud of me, that Im breaking the cycle..... Im not sure I have broken that cycle because I live with it everyday..... My hope is my daughter will take the recovery further for her and her children.
Life is not always what you want it to be, but you can choose to make it the best that you can and I think everyone really wants that. Besides, if I did not go through that then I would have no ESH to share .... I think God has a plan and maybe .... just maybe I cant help someone else with my ESH.
No ... your right no child should have to go through that... but they do all the time. I have long since forgiven and fallen back in love with my Mother (passed away 4 years ago) because you know what..... She had it even worse then I did.... they did the best job they could with what they had to work with.
My Mom later in our relaitonship told me that she is proud of me, that Im breaking the cycle..... Im not sure I have broken that cycle because I live with it everyday..... My hope is my daughter will take the recovery further for her and her children.
Life is not always what you want it to be, but you can choose to make it the best that you can and I think everyone really wants that. Besides, if I did not go through that then I would have no ESH to share .... I think God has a plan and maybe .... just maybe I cant help someone else with my ESH.
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