Detachment is a topic I frequently write about. It is one of my 10 Relationship-Changing Principles. Learning how to detach is absolutely necessary if you want to be able to live your life even though you have difficult dysfunctional people in it.

Ross Rosenberg of Self Love Recovery teaches the technique “observe, not absorb.” This describes precisely what you do. First, you observe what the person is doing. Then you recognize that you don’t have to take it on as your problem. You can separate or detach from it.

Labeling allows you to get more understanding of what you are dealing with. It might be passive-aggressive, narcissistic, addicted, manipulative, abusive, spiritualizing, victimizing, mentally ill, immature, irresponsible, or moody. You can predict what is likely to occur by what the person has done in the past and by what is typical of people with that label. This will help you not be shocked by the behavior when it occurs. It will allow you to see it as part of a bigger problem, part of who the person is, and what the person typically does.

“Don’t absorb” means that you don’t take the other person’s actions personally. You don’t take them to heart. You separate yourself from them by recognizing that the other person has a labeled problem. The choices a person makes are about that person not about you. You don’t cause it. You can’t control it and you can’t fix it. Even though you are involved in a relationship with the person, you aren’t the person. You are a separate individual.

You can continue to maintain your separateness by recognizing that you have a right and responsibility to maintain your own thoughts, feelings, opinions, and choices. You can disagree with the person. You can feel good even though the other person feels bad. You can hold a different opinion without thinking that you are wrong. As intertwined as your lives are, you will forever be individuals and separate people and you get to choose how to respond to what that person does.

“Observing, not absorbing” doesn’t mean you don’t care. You can still care while exercising your right to live independently. You can still care and face the truth about the other person’s behavior. It isn’t a betrayal or abandonment to see the truth about another person. And there is no reason to feel guilty about taking care of yourself when the other person is doing, saying, or feeling things that affect you.

“Observing, not absorbing” means that you remain independent of other people so that you can see the truth about them. You can’t live your life taking on the problems, actions, thoughts, and feelings of other people because you only have one life to live—yours.
 

Relationship Devotional Prayer

 
God,

Help me to observe, not absorb other people’s actions, words, opinions, moods, choices, behavior, beliefs, and perceptions that affect me negatively so I can live the life you have given me without reacting in ways that aren’t helpful.
 

Relationship Devotional Challenge

 
Think about a current difficult relationship.

• What are you observing?
• What label can you give it?
• What are you absorbing?
• What can you do differently so that you will not absorb the other person’s stuff?

Scripture Meditation

 
John 2:24-25

But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man (NIV).

Matthew 10:11-14

“Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave. As you enter the home, give it your greeting. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you.
If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town” (NIV).