How to Detach with Love While Maintaining Our Inner Balance
I’ve had countless clients ask me how they can emotionally detach from their spouse when they’re still being barraged by the Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde behavior of coercive control and manipulation. That’s a tricky question, because when we simply shut off our emotions like a water spicket, we drain ourselves from the good as well as the negative. We become numb to the things outside of ourselves, which in turn causes us to become numb on the inside as well.
And that is a very dangerous place to be.
Shutting off all feeling isn’t the answer—detaching from the emotional backlash is the only healthy option. Yet how can we do that?
Easier Said Than Done
In 1377 Caterina of Siena (known as St. Catherine of Siena in English) experienced a series of magnificent mystical conversations with God which she recorded in Il Libro—“the book”—now known as The Dialogue. When describing to Caterina why His faithful servants suffer, God told her:
Patience is proved in the assaults and weariness I allow my servants, and the fire of charity grows in the soul who has compassion for the soul of her abuser. For she grieves more over the offense done to Me and to the harm done to the other person’s soul than over her own hurt.
(Dialogue 145)
This passage can easily be misunderstood, so let’s break open what God the Father is telling Caterina, lest we fall into confusion and despair.