This Is What Happens When Your Coping Strategy Is To Emotionally Detach

When your coping strategy is to emotionally detach, you don’t hold on to people as much as you want to. You let them go and watch them leave without saying a word and sometimes you even walk away first. You don’t let people all the way in because you don’t know how to anymore. You don’t remember the last time it ever worked for you. You’re safer keeping people at arm’s length. You’re safer not expecting love or support from anyone because the last time you did, they disappointed you.

When your coping strategy is to emotionally detach, you let your feelings be unhurtable. You stop having too much faith in people. You stop believing that they are who they say they are. You’re always ready to be by yourself again. You’re always okay with being without them. It’s like they fill a temporary void because you’re not expecting them to be anything more than that.

When you’ve learned that to protect yourself you have to detach, you don’t truly open your heart to anyone or trust someone fully to a point where their absence could hurt you. This happens when you have experienced abandonment from the closest people to you. This happens when you trusted someone blindly and they lied to you. This happens when you gave someone all the love you had and they didn’t appreciate it. You didn’t like how it felt, you hated the disappointment, you loathed the pain and you swore to yourself you’ll never allow this to happen again.

So now you don’t get attached even though you want to. You don’t let yourself get carried away. You’re always one step ahead, ready to detach like nothing ever happened. You feel numb because nothing moves you as much as it should and it becomes an endless struggle between wanting to feel that kind of euphoria again and avoiding that kind of heartache again.

When your coping strategy is to emotionally detach, more often than not you’ll protect yourself from people who could have really hurt you but you also miss out on those who could have truly loved you.