BP 256
Most of us have heard about attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. But have you heard about detachment styles? This term is my own, but I do believe just as children develop attachment styles so they also may forge detachment styles during their journey of developing a self.
You have probably heard about some types of detachment from reality and oneself such as dissociation, derealization, and depersonalization which develop primarily in childhood when boys and girls experience deep trauma. But there is another type of detachment beyond these phenomena. I call it Rejection Detachment (ReD).
ReD occurs when a child has experiences with an adult—most commonly a caretaker such as the father or mother—that lead the child to fear, resent, despise, hate, or even destroy the parent in their mind. Ultimately, they reject and detach from this parent instead of remaining open and vulnerable to him or to her.
It is important to note that sometimes the child’s detachment from the parent is grounded in reality and a wise choice. Other times, ReD occurs because of perceptions pertaining to the parent that are at least partially inaccurate. In these cases, the child may not have needed to despise the parent and detach from him or her, but his perceptions created his reality and so he divorced the parent.
I have worked with many patients over the years who have emotionally divorced or detached from one (occasionally both) parents. “I never want to be like my mother,” a woman announced with resentment. “She is so weak. She let my father walk all over her.” This girl as an adult may also hate her father for being narcissistic or selfish or controlling, but she could “choose” to identify more with her father because she has detached to a greater degree from her weak mother than her self-centered but “strong” father.
It often seems that a child needs to identify with at least one parent as they move toward adulthood—even if both are dysfunctional. They need to internalize someone to hitch their wagon to so they are not all alone in the world.
This psychological detachment from a mother or father occurs in both boys and girls. If a boy despises his mother or a girl deeply resents her father—the opposite sex parent–this situation is less complicated because they can still grow up to identify with their same sex parent and their own gender identity.
But what happens if the boy distances from his father, the same sex parent, for any number of reasons, e.g., the father is abusive or emotionally distant or depressed or cold or an alpha male who pressures hi son to succeed athletically when the boy prefers to study bugs, read books, or draw pictures?
What happens if the girl distances from her mother, the same sex parent, because she experiences/perceives her mother as weak or critical or abusive or jealous or needy or in competition with her?
I believe that if the boy is able to maintain even some connection with the father or the girl with her mother, the child’s development will most likely not impact his or her core identity. However, if a girl or boy completely detaches from the same sex parent (sometimes enabled by the opposite sex parent, tragically) due to years of learning to resent, despise, hate, or even psychologically annihilate him or her, then the child may experience a disruption at a deeper level in their psyche–especially if sexual abuse is involved.
What am I saying? Being angry with a same sex parent is one thing—even hating (since hate is not the opposite of love, right?) the same sex parent, but detaching (and shutting out) is another thing. Sometimes a boy, for example, can go beyond hatred and avoidance of the same sex parent to detaching from masculinity itself because the father is associated with masculinity.
The boy can come to despise the deeper male voice, male mannerisms, male assertiveness, and in the worst scenario, even the male sexual organs. All these characteristics of masculinity can be despised by the boy and need to be “cut off” and replaced with the opposite, namely, femininity. ReD takes on an extreme form in these situations.
I want to be careful here because I know that some men who identify as gay hate with a passion the theory out there that attributes a boy’s “defensive detachment” from his father and from his own masculinity as the cause or, at the very least, a contributor to male homosexuality. I’m not entirely sure why these men hate this theory so much except maybe it undermines the belief that same sex attraction is genetic and even a blessing from God since God “made me this way.”
My main point in this post is to suggest that detachment—like attachment—is a psychological phenomenon that can deeply impact boys and girls. ReD can lead a girl to spend her life trying not to be her mother or to a boy attempting to not be like his father instead of focusing on who they are. They can become so obsessed about “divorcing” from the despised parent that they spend little time knowing who they are on the inside. They may also detach from or cut off any attribute in themselves that reminds them of the rejected parent because they view it as weak, or ugly, or detestable.
Trying not to be like her mom or dad becomes dangerous when a girl totally shuts down her emotions to be the opposite of her depressed and weepy mother or a boy becomes tame and “nice” so as not to be like his heavy-handed, angry father. In these scenarios, the girl may grow up to be detached from her emotions (and even from her femininity) while the boy may grow up to do such a 180 from his father that he feels more at home with girls and feels uncomfortable or alien around other boys.
ReD does not always lead to same sex attraction (SSA), of course. It can lead to other things already mentioned such as alienation from one’s emotions or from one’s own strength and assertiveness. Girls can become less feminine and more masculine (without identifying as a lesbian) to distance from their weak mothers and to identify more (by default?) with their fathers even if they are abusive and controlling. Boys can become nicer and softer (without identifying as gay) in an attempt to distance themselves from their bullying, narcissistic, or alpha fathers. (Not all boys who are teacher’s pets are examples of ReD–maybe only 75%). Passivity can be a result, or relinquishing leadership in their homes and churches.
Maybe it is only in the worst-case scenario that ReD leads to a total detachment from the same sex parent and the development of SSA. Also, it may be true that other factors must co-occur for SSA to develop in the child’s psyche.
Just to be clear, the main point of this post is not to proffer some authoritative and final explanation of what causes SSA, but to look more globally at how a child’s detachment from a parent—whether the same or the opposite gender—can impact the psychological and social development of a girl or boy in a myriad of ways.
One other point concerning ReD is that when a girl—let’s call her Sarah–who despises her father grows up and becomes a mother, or a boy (Sam) who has detached from his mother grows up to become a father, they must be careful how they perceive and treat their spouses.
A woman like Sarah who has a distaste for and thus a corresponding ReD with men (it may be deeply unconscious) because of her authoritarian father may transfer those feelings onto her husband and emotionally distance from him or disrespect him. A man like Sam who distrusts or hates women because of his emotionally castrating mother may transfer those feelings toward his wife and emotionally keep her at a distance and withhold his love from her.
How will Sarah’s children or Sam’s children then be impacted as they watch their parent negatively relate to their same sex parent? How could this observed behavior even influence how the children view their own femininity or masculinity or their overall self image? Some type of impact will certainly occur.
Never underestimate the tragic power of ReD.
One other question to consider is how will the mother who despises her mother treat her daughter or the man who despises his father treat his son? Nothing can be perfectly predicted. However, one can assume some type of future impact if the ReD is not addressed.
So how could we label some of the detachment styles? Concerning the ReD of the same sex parent, one could identify styles such as transgender level detachment (TLD), gay level detachment (GLD), emotional level detachment (ELD), physical level detachment (PLD).
TLD would involve the total rejection of one’s own personhood including gender and might be the most extreme detachment style. This detachment style will be accompanied by the most anger if you challenge this person’s manner of coping (the more they hate themselves the more they will hate you if you are telling them they shouldn’t detach from the body/gender/self that they hate).
GLD would overlap a bit with TLD in that it also involves some level of rejection of one’s gender but does not entail the rejection of one’s own body. ELD would be the detachment level characterized by never sharing one’s true self and emotions with the detached parent. PLD (avoiding physical contact) would predictably entail having no face to face contact with the rejected parent. Could PLD overlap some with the recent phenomenon in psychology known as “going no contact”?
Complicating the understanding of ReD is that Scripture tells us that we are all born with an ReD dynamic already in place against God. We have a natural predilection to reject God and detach from Him, to rebel against Him. To not reject God is the exception. To reject, despise, divorce from and detach from God is the norm.
Ephesians 2:1-3 says, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
No wonder we are so quick to reject and detach from parents and others and even our own selves and our own bodies since we come into the world hard-wired to distance, detach, divorce, and disobey. (Let me be quick to point out that there are occasions when it is clearly wise to detach from someone who is dangerous and abusive).
So, you may already know your attachment style, but do you know your detachment style? Let me go out on a limb and say that everyone has a detachment style. Maybe it is a different one than the four I listed above but all of us probably have some ReD because of our fallen human nature that is so quick to cut off even God Himself. Clean the inside of the cup and find the ways you detach from God, others, and maybe even your own self. You don’t want to die alone.
What application can you take away from this post? Look at the verses in Ephesians 2 that come after the first three displayed above:
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Our Creator did not reject us. He did not detach from us. No, our heavenly Father sent His Son for us. He pursued us with mercy, great love, life, immeasurable riches of grace, and kindness. In light of God’s desire to bring us home to Himself, let us draw near to the Savior who came that we might be delivered from the kingdom of darkness and detachment and transferred into the Kingdom of attachment and presence.
His name is Immanuel, God with us. So, forsake all your detachment styles and move toward the One who gave His life for you. Be one with Him. Abide with Him.
He is the Author of Attachment.
“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” ~ John 17:22ff
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. . . As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love” ~ John 15:4,5,9.