Detached Attachment

According to Buddhism, all our struggles stem from attachment. People can form multiple types of attachment to multiple things; materialistic things, other people and even to their own beliefs and opinions. Each of these inevitably ends up making us miserable as once the conditions change, the purpose being served by the attachment no longer exists but we do not know how to let go of this bond we have generated. This does not mean to say that the answer is in cold, stone-like detachment wherein you remain indifferent from the world around you. Emotions do not cease to exist even as you learn to let go, you just relate to them differently.

There is an undue emphasis on the need to extend the positive and always be drowned in positive emotions. Half the distress caused in the modern way of life is because of this relentless condition of being “happy” and that too by terms dictated externally. In trying to build that “happily ever after” (not just referring to fairytale romance), we desperately try to relieve ourselves of the suffering of any kind. In doing so, we end up magnifying the minor setbacks and holdups and pile them up in our heads. Thus, instead of doing the job of directing us towards our growth, these themselves become our biggest obstacles. Once we learn to distance ourselves from the attachment to the things that give us that temporary sense of pleasure, we learn to make peace with their ephemeral nature and enjoy them for the duration they stay with us for. Thus the concept of “detached attachment” comes into play wherein you are free to experience your thoughts and emotions without letting go completely, but you start relating to them differently in a way that does not cloud your better judgment. 

An offbeat example of detached attachment was pioneered by Victor Frankl, a psychologist who survived the holocaust and founded logotherapy. It is called Paradoxical Intention. PI is the deliberate practice of a neurotic behavior or thought undertaken in order to remove it. What happens when we’re dealing with an anxiety-provoking task is that we are too invested, or too attached to the outcome. As a result, the anxiety overpowers and further disables the successful completion of the task at hand. By means of the Paradoxical Intention approach, the person is asked to do excessively, that itself which is causing the anxiety. It ends up relieving the excessive pressure built up by the enormous task of avoiding it and thus enables the person to go through with the task. For example, PI has been proven to be extremely useful for people with sleep onset insomnia. If a person suffering from insomnia is asked to relax and sleep, this task generates a lot of anxiety and it, in turn, does not allow them to actually relax as s/he is excessively invested in (or attached to) the outcome of falling asleep. In PI, they are told to instead stay awake for as long as they can, almost as a challenge. In doing so, we remove the burden that comes with the anxiety-provoking emphasis on falling asleep. Thus the desired outcome remains the same: falling asleep, but the pressure and anxiety that surround it are relieved by removing the sense of attachment that comes with it.

Another example of detached attachment in action is the removal of fear attached to failure in order to achieve success. Failure in itself is not as hard-hitting as it becomes contextually and when the fear of others comes into the picture. Failure and success are just two sides of a coin and are usually equally likely outcomes of a situation. It’s the connotation and baggage attached to each of them that makes one desirable and the other undesirable. When we remove the undesirability of failure by becoming detached from the desire of success, we remove the anxiety and fear surrounding it. Without these strong emotions cluttering our thoughts, we are able to streamline them and better equip ourselves for each of the outcomes so that we are not beaten down by setbacks or failures if we were to face any.

Attachment with outcomes is one of the most common forms of attachment as is also, to an extent, an underlying one. In my upcoming articles, I will be addressing other avenues and ways in which the concept of detached attachment can be explored.