Detachment with Love: what does it mean?

One of the great gifts of the addiction recovery movement is the concept of detachment with love. Detachment with love was first thought of as a way to deal with an alcoholic family member, but it can be used with anyone.

Al-Anon, a Twelve Step mutual-help group for friends and family members of alcoholics, pioneered the idea of detachment with love. A core principle of Al-Anon is that alcoholics cannot learn from their mistakes if they are overprotected.

The word “overprotected” has many meanings. For example, calling in sick for your husband if he is too drunk to show up for work. Overprotecting also means telling children that daddy didn’t show up for the school play because he had to work late when the truth is that he was at a bar until midnight.

Such actions were once labelled as “”enabling,”” because they enabled alcoholics to continue drinking. Today, the word “”adapting”” is more often used because it is less blameworthy.

Originally, detachment from love was a call for family members to stop adapting. But as Al-Anon grew, people misunderstood detachment with love as a way to scare alcoholics into changing: “”If you don’t go to treatment, I’ll leave you!”” Such threats were a gamble that fear could force an alcoholic into seeking help.

Detachment with love means caring enough about others to allow them to learn from their mistakes. It also means being responsible for our welfare and making decisions without ulterior motives—the desire to control others.

We can’t stop people from doing things if they choose to continue.

Recognising our powerlessness

Ultimately, we are powerless to control others anyway. Most family members of a chemically dependent person have been trying to change that person for a long time, and it hasn’t worked. We are involved with other people, but we don’t control them. We can’t stop people from doing things if they choose to continue.

Understood this way, detachment with love plants the seeds of recovery. When we refuse to take responsibility for other people’s alcohol or drug use, we allow them to face the natural consequences of their behaviour. If a child asks why Daddy missed the school play, we do not have to lie. Instead, we could say, “I’m not sure why he wasn’t here. You’ll have to ask him.””

Maybe the most crucial part of letting go of love is responding with a choice instead of anxiety. We usually tune in to someone else’s feelings when we threaten to leave them. We operate on raw emotion. We say things for shock value. Our words arise from a blind reaction, not a thoughtful choice.

Detachment with love offers another option: responding to others based on thought rather than anxiety. For instance, as parents, we set limits for our children even when this angers them. We choose what we think is best over the long term, looking past children’s immediate emotional reactions.

In this sense, detachment from love can apply when we emotionally attach to someone—family or friend, addict or sober. The key is to stop being responsible for others and be accountable to them – and to ourselves.

Is there an alcoholic or addict in your life? Book an online or in-person appointment with a therapist on www.hopetrustindia.com/dev to help yourself and the person in treatment by encouraging them to take responsibility for and face the consequences of their behaviours.