Detachment ~ Separating Emotion from Thought

Everyone has memories that are connected with negative emotions in the same way they have memories that are connected with positive emotions. Because the negative emotions are louder, the brain tends to remember them easier. We usually have to consciously make an effort to think about experiences that made us feel joy.

Because thoughts and emotions trigger each other, we tend to just accept it as an unchangeable fact. Some people base their whole identity on the negative experience/thought that triggered the negative emotion. Others find ways of numbing themselves with anesthetics, sometimes leading to addiction in its many forms.

They unknowingly keep the negative experience alive in their subconscious and in their awareness, drawing to them experiences that would support and perpetuate their negative belief. All because they have not taken the few moments it takes to create space to validate the emotion, feel it, and release it.

This doesn’t mean thought about the experience won’t ever happen again. It just means that when the thought does come, the emotion around it no longer affects the person as if it were reliving the event.

A personal example is when as a teenager, I was robbed and held at gunpoint. While it was occurring, I remember thinking about how surreal the experience felt. The fear of the possibility of dying only settled into my awareness after the event had passed. The thieves stole the vehicle, phone, and wallet but left me with my life.

It could be valid to label the experience as potentially traumatizing. I could have easily allowed the memory of the experience to make me fearful to even venture outside. I could have let the memory influence every decision I made for myself from that point onward. I chose a different path.

Instead, I allowed myself to feel all the negative emotions the event brought to the surface, the fear, anger, sadness, and helplessness. In validating the emotions tied to the experience I was able to release them. The event has already occurred, and therefore unchangeable. There is nothing to gain from keeping the negative emotions, pain, alive by mentally reliving it. The decision crystallized for me that:

I am not my past experiences; I am the culmination of the lessons those experiences have taught.

In this case, I learnt to be more aware of my surroundings. However, the biggest and most impactful lesson of all was how to free myself from the emotional pain so that I am not held prisoner by it.

This is what detachment is. It is giving yourself space and grace to feel the negative emotions so that they can be released. Through this practice, you begin to shift your perspective from being a victim in your own life, to taking responsibility for how you are feeling. Negative experiences are as much a gift as positive ones. It is up to you to find and integrate the lesson the negative experience is trying to teach.

Courage is required. Ask yourself which hurts more, reliving something that you know you cannot change? Or making peace with the fact that it happened and gaining the chance to move on?

Once you face yourself, your fears, and beliefs that no longer serve you, you get the chance to experience what emotional freedom is like. You get the chance to reclaim your power.