Detachment Aids / Exercises?

[Cenerentola]

So, when I was growing up one of the concepts that came up early in religious formation was "detachment from the things of this world."  I'm Roman Catholic, and that was something that turned up regularly in guides to prayer and in preaching.  Biblically, its basis is in lines like the gospel admonition about people not being able to be Jesus's disciple unless they "hate" their parents.  There's a collect from Advent that well expresses the usual application of the idea: asking God to show us how to "use wisely the things of earth" and "hold firm to the things of heaven."

As a child, I always found these hard sayings because, well, most of my comforts were "earthly" things: food, books, nature, movies, and yes, more food.  I didn't have an eating disorder per se, but food was a rare and regular source of dopamine in a home that wasn't otherwise very reliable.  That made Lent, when the whole family was supposed to give up sweets together, really hard, btw—a fact which didn't make me any more endeared to the idea of detachment or sacrifice.

My other stumbling block where the concept of detachment was concerned was that I had learned a very enmeshed relationship style were you really were supposed to caaaaarrrreee about the other person and feeeeeeeellll their feelings—primarily, to care about and feel the feelings of my uPD parent.  This contributed to making friendships hard (what is a casual friendship if all relationships that are "real" are supposed to have this intensity?  And it made it hard for me to understand why it was a good thing for anyone to become a religious (priest, monk, nun), since that required such tremendous detachment and relative isolation from family, and family was supposed to be everything. ...

... Fast forward thirty years through lots of experience outside home, dating and marriage, some friendships (though I'm still working on the whole being friends thing), AND, probably most importantly, multiple discard cycles from uPD parent, and I'm rethinking the whole detachment thing.  Detachment from someone with a personality disorder is actually very important for mental health and, while I don't think the gospel is putting all family in that boat, it does seem like Jesus's words are drawing a clear line indicating that it's possible to become too attached to ANYONE, which would go especially for people who draw one into healthy and/or wrong behaviors.  Just to point out some things that my own pd has encouraged (against their religious code, though I think they don't realize the conflict) triangulation=gossip, self-abandonment goes against proper love of self, fawning is treating the PD person idolatrously, etc.

So I am intellectually on board with the idea that being detached from uPD parent is good for both my mental and spiritual health.  My problem is with the how.  We're in the hoover phase of things now, and I keep having to remind myself that this is not forever, that pity is not the same as trust and respect, that it doesn't matter what I do in the long run, that there WILL be another discard, that I shouldn't let my boundaries down just because uPD parent is being "nice" right now.

Having said all that (and thank you to anyone who has read this far, it's a mouthful) are there any good books (especially with exercises, perhaps) on detachment?  (They don't have to be Catholic or even Christian, although bonus points if they acknowledge that there's a spiritual component to this!)  I feel like I need to practice this new thing to ingrain it for when the going gets tougher again, once the boundary stomping starts in earnest.  (There've been little tiptoes up to the edge already, though again, overall, it's still hoovering season.)

[Call Me Cordelia]

Hi! I'm Roman Catholic too. I'd like to talk more about this. But two books that come readily to mind are Unbound by Neal Lozano, and The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. Neither are specifically about boundaries with other people or disordered personalities, but I think both are very applicable. In the Great Divorce there's a woman who won't go to heaven because her husband is not there. That chapter was full of "Ahas!" for me.

That said, I think it's natural that survivors like you (and myself!) who didn't have a normal childhood where we felt safe enough to let go of the material things need to be a little bit understanding of ourselves and not push to do more than is truly required of us without really good spiritual direction. For example, it's common for people who grew up very poor to have a really hard time giving up stuff for fear they may need it someday. Is it disordered, yeah, but having self compassion and working through why that's there and being gentle is going to get them farther than trying to bootstrap themselves through purging because they know they "should." We are probably not the people who would benefit from doing Exodus 90, if you're familiar with that program. In order to have healthy detachment, you first need to have healthy attachment. In order to be a priest or religious, you must first be a good lay person. Similar idea.

[Cenerentola]

Call me Cordelia, I love The Great Divorce.  Maybe my having these questions is a sign I need to reread it.  That being said, last time I read it (last year, for a book club; previously I read it in college) I kept seeing things that made me thing about uPD parent and wonder whether they could possibly be saved, by Lewisan standards.  I mean, I guess his answer would be, "Their PD will need to be cured/fixed/removed before they enter heaven, however that cure/fix/removal happens."  But it put me in such a judgmental place; it was as if my brain could only do "They're a fine parent" or "They're going to hell."  --  And I don't like that about my brain, but I also recognize it as the same black-and-white thinking that I saw modeled and taught at home.

There's also many PD-relevant moments in The Screwtape Letters.  I found it amusing (sort of) that my uPD parent conveniently escaped from attending a book club (different one from the one mentioned above) that THEY host when it was time to read Screwtape.  They had/wanted to go attend to a family crisis.  (It was a serious situation, but a couple days would NOT have made a difference: they did not want to be at that discussion, I am convinced.  I think it would have hit too close to home.  I think it is in Screwtape that the writer quotes a saying (Lewis makes it sound as if it were current during his period), "She lives for others.  You can always tell the others from their hunted expression."  He also has a spot-on depiction of a family (mom, dad, two kids) were the dad and kids have various things wrong with them, the mom is a martyr to serving their various deficiencies, and then—when she dies—suddenly they've conquered their seemingly intractable problems within months!  That is very nearly the type of PD my parent would like to be, if enough people permitted them to help ...

I am grateful for your last paragraph.  I tend to angry when I read people praising Exodus 90, or the way the Eastern Catholics fast during Lent, or hear the eternal "What's so hard about giving up sweets?  We're so wimpy in America!"  And I think that speaks a lot to what you're saying about the way my/our childhoods were.  Food was so often weaponized and used as a reward and punishment.  I do fast (2 days) and abstain (no meat on Fridays) as prescribed but anything more than that just feels like I'm being suffocated.

Anyway, I may have to revisit TGD again.  Any other thoughts would be welcome too!

[Cenerentola]

P.S. And I am getting Unbound from the library!  Sorry I forgot to acknowledge that in my main reply.

[Mary]

Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People is a helpful book.