Kelli hosts Swetha and Spencer as they share their experience, strength, and hope about detachment. Kelli opens with a reading that links detachment to self-acceptance and self-care. The first time that Spencer heard about detachment was when his uncle told him, “I hear that you’re supposed to ‘detach with love’”. Spencer had NO idea what that meant. He did not understand how he could detach and love at the same time. When she came into AlAnon, Swetha wanted certain people to just be gone from her life. She received a sheet about detachment, which started “Detachment is neither kind nor unkind...” and felt relief. Kelli thought that “detachment” sounded like giving up on a person.

Kelli relates to a reading that said, if a friend had the flu, we would forgive their inability to meet a commitment, that we could detach the person from their disease and realize that the behavior was a result of the disease. Another reading explains different forms of detachment: Your alcoholic passes out on the front lawn. Detaching with anger, you turn on the sprinkler, then go to bed. Detaching with indifference, you go to bed. Detaching with love, you put a blanket over them, and then go to bed. The outcome for you is the same; the outcome for the alcoholic is very different. Also, the emotional outcome for you is very different

An important part of detachment for Spencer was to detach the disease from his loved one. With a disease that affects behavior, such as alcoholism, this is often hard. Kelli was familiar with “numb” detachment, growing up. Her response to something she didn’t like was to just shut down and walk away. Later, she swung over to angry, “middle finger” detachment. Now she has some tools she can use, such as calling her sponsor, praying, or just using her “pause button”. Swetha had practice with angry and fearful detachment. She would “suppress, suppress, suppress” then explode. She has come to see that if someone with the flu sneezes, she can move away, or say, “please don’t sneeze on me.” She can do the same with alcoholic behavior.

A friend in the program used a visual analogy. She said “I was entangled in a relationship with an alcoholic”, holding up her hands clasped, with fingers interlaced, “so whatever happened to him, happened to me,” moving her hands -- as one moved, the other moved with it, willy-nilly. “Loving detachment,” she said, “is more like this,” holding up her hands palm to palm. “We are still close, but if he goes somewhere I don’t want to go,” moving one hand away, “I don’t have to go there with him.”

A listener had not understood that she did not have to be affected by someone else’s actions. In Al-Anon, she learned that she has a choice whether to feel others’ feelings or to be involved in others’ problems. Learning that we are not responsible for other people’s feelings was difficult, but so important to our recovery. A tool we can use to detach is to remember not to “pick up the rope.” It takes two people to engage in a tug of war, and if we decline to pick up the rope, the conflict can be defused or avoided.

When we practice detachment, we are able to attend to our own needs and take care of ourselves, which can also make us better partners and more pleasant to live with. Kelli can be so focused on the other person that she forgets what else she needs to do. By detaching, Swetha stops feeling like a victim and feels more connected to her higher power and to serenity. Being able practice loving detachment enabled Spencer to stay in a loving relationship with his loved one as her disease progressed. Even in sobriety, we need to practice detachment, as Kelli relates, that when alcoholic behavior surfaced (without the alcohol), she did not follow her “normal” reaction, which would have been to just walk away. She is grateful that she could stay connected in detachment.