When it comes to practicing detachment in relationships, you may still be struggling because you are approaching it from a surface level perspective. The core element of detachment is objectivity. When you are objective about something, you can step back far enough to see things as they are, not as your fears and wounds want them to be.
This then invites the clarity you need to drive your actions. Listen, this is a very nuanced topic. There are so many valid ways to look at it but my hope today is to offer you a perspective that informs the lifestyle practice rather than being solely situation-based.
Let's start by defining attachment at its most basic level. It simply means fondness, liking or affection for someone or something. If you view it from this very simple uncomplicated perspective, you will recognize that attachment itself is not your enemy.
Your wounds and patterns around it are the issue. And this brings us to attachment theory and attachment styles which basically describe how our earliest emotional bonds with our primary caretakers influence how we form and maintain relationships today. If you had to dance and play tricks for love as a child, this may manifest as losing yourself in relationships.
If there was a lot of insecurity, maybe today you've become someone who is always overly emotionally invested or you seek codependency and you feel worthless without external validation or when you're not validated by someone else in your relationship. Alternatively, you might be someone who refuses to see people for who they are so you spend all your time trying to mold them into the fantasies that you hold. None of these behaviors reflect the simplicity of liking, being fond of and having affection for another entity.
That is why I kept that definition simple. Humans are fundamentally wired for bonding. You are not struggling because you feel an attachment to people, you are struggling because you have made them a fixture, an extension of you.
Your bond isn't driven or inspired by connection but by desperation, lack and necessity. Often when we talk about detachment, we ask how do I stop caring? I just care and love too much and I used to say this too by the way.
I used to say it a lot but I want to challenge that thinking. The reality is that love and care by their nature cannot be excessive. If someone can judge your feelings as too much from a stable healthy perspective, then it is no longer genuine love and care but rather obsession or unhealthy attention seeking or some other form of imbalance.
Listen, in order to heal, you need to change the story you tell about your patterns and wounds. Your care towards someone or something has never and will never be the problem. What you need to address is the internal void that makes it impossible for you to do so without being consumed.
With detachment, the goal is not to care less, you should care you're human. The goal is to separate your core identity and well-being from your attachment to people. As a child, your life and identity quite literally depended on your bond with your caretakers but as an adult, your sense of self-worth, your sense of being must come from within.
Any bond in which you neglect or outsource your primary duty of care to yourself or where you hijack another person's responsibility for their own well-being is problematic. It's not your role in any relationship to foresee, search out, solve or control another person's behavior, emotions or life. You are not a detective.
You are not a detective. That's not your role in any relationship. I see people take pride in being able to find .
. . You are not a detective.
You are not a savior. You're not an oracle. The minute you feel engulfed by another person to the point that you abandon your own story to play side in theirs, you've transitioned from the natural need to build connection to using them as a lifeline.
That's where the work is. The question is not how do I stop caring but how do I find and heal whatever internal lack I am trying to fill with these obsessions, with this illusion of control. For example, instead of simply saying oh I just want to stop feeling anxious when someone doesn't text back immediately, you dig deeper, go a bit deeper and you might realize that the issue there is your fear of abandonment.
Now that's something you can work on. That's something that is clear and actionable. You can find a way to work through it.
Yes, maybe you can get this person today to start texting back in time. What about tomorrow when it's someone else? The anxiety is merely a symptom.
It's just information. Another example, instead of saying I always love more, I just need to meet someone who will match how much I give, who will give everything I give, who will do what I do, you pause and you reframe. You say I recognize that I may lack emotional boundaries so how do I learn to adjust my emotional investment so that I am giving from my overflow and when I do dip into my own cup, I do so in an environment where I am also being poured into.
Instead of asking how do I uncouple my worth from my job or from my relationships, the question becomes how do I build my self-worth? How do I learn self-validation so that I don't desperately seek it outside of myself in things and people outside of myself? Do you see what I'm saying?
Are you getting my drift? A lot of the times the questions we ask are so surface level and that's why you do it one time and it seems like you got it and then next week something happens and you fall apart because you're not going deep. Now let me give you something to do.
Grab your writing materials and you say you know we like lists on this channel. We are going to make a list. A list titled core likes and dislikes.
This list isn't about your favorite food or color. It will be your point of reference, the drawing board you return to every time you find yourself in situations that require detachment. I won't tell you what to write but I will share my own list with you.
On my like list, I have only two things. Number one, myself, Pearl and number two, anyone or anything that makes my world and the world at large brighter. That's it.
Notice how I am the only specific thing on my list. That's because till the day I die, I will be my only constant. Goals, people, places, feelings, all these things can change.
They may fade away. So keep that in mind when you're making your list. On my dislike list, I have three things.
Yeah, three. One, I don't like what I hate. Two, I don't like what doesn't like me.
Three, I don't like anything that is trying to kill me. And for me, that means anything or anyone that makes my life less joyful, less colorful, magical and fulfilling. The purpose of this list is to help you achieve the objective perspective needed to ground you so that it doesn't matter who, what, when, how, where.
If it doesn't fall under your like list, then it is something that must be removed or at least examined. My like and dislike list reflects the most important person in my life, myself. This may be a controversial worldview to people who don't like themselves, but it's so much easier to be a better human being, a better parent, partner, friend, community member, et cetera, when you are number one on your call sheet.
You have so much more to offer other people when you recognize your own worth. If I see myself as something of value, how then can I intentionally devalue another, another human spirit? I dare not.
I can't. Not intentionally. No way.
I care about people loudly, deeply, shamelessly. If I like you, you'll be the second person to know. You know why?
Because the number one person I am attached to is myself. Anything that threatens my affection and love for myself falls under the things that I hate and remember. I don't like what I hate.
So I'm never interested in controlling or keeping tabs on anybody because I know that doing so will cost me some magic and joy. It's a price I refuse to pay. The second I find myself doing all the emotional labor in a relationship, I recognize that I have boarded a train to exhaustion and unfulfillment.
My list cannot force me to act, but it makes me aware that if I carry on with that path, I, Pearl, am authorizing my demise. Call me dramatic. Call me dramatic, but is that serious for me?
That immediately pulls me into objectivity. I am not only feeling, but now also observing. I focus on the reality in front of me.
I don't need to try to detach. I just detach. Why?
Because while I deeply desire that person or thing very much, no matter how intoxicating and beautiful they seem to me, nothing is worse than the loss of self. That's what self-value does for you. That's what it does to you.
When you include yourself on the list of people you value, you are attached to, and keep everything else subject to that connection, it's easier to regulate, to detach yourself. If you want to master the art of detachment, let it serve something higher. Apathy, nonchalance, and indifference are very unattractive qualities.
They should not be the goal. Health and balance should be the focus. Not just your health, but that of those around you.
I don't want to be a victim of my relationships, and I don't want to perpetuate cruelty either. Trying to control people, while not always malicious, is manipulation, and that can be an act of brutality. What does your detachment serve?
Your ego, or your well-being and that of others? Go learn what you need to be well, truly well, and then spend your energy sourcing and providing those things to yourself, and watch everything else follow. When you spend time cultivating a life, a body, and a spirit you like, you'll like emphasis on you.
You'll become more protective of it. You'll stop trying to fix people because you know it will lead to your breaking. You'll see the futility in trying to control another.
You'll stop internalizing other people's accusations and projections because your sense of validation isn't rooted in them. You'll care without being consumed and no, you won't need to be fully healed to do this. That doesn't even exist.
What is that? It doesn't exist. We are forever healing and growing.
I hope so. And yes, you'll still experience anxiety, worry, and compulsions, but you will know yourself so well that they no longer control your reality. You'll be able to tell when it's speaking.
You'll recognize them for what they are, fleeting remnants from your wounds. Your answer lies in your foundation. I think at the end of the day, that's the core of everything I say.
It's in your foundation. It's in your relationship with self. Build it.
I've made several videos to help you with this. Do the work. Identify your root causes and watch your symptoms disappear.
As always, it's been an absolute pleasure. My name is Pearl and I'll see you in the next video.
