I posted what's listed below tonight to an ongoing thread on the addforums.com site. I thought it might be of interest to some others.
This started for me in earnest last year at this time with another post to addforms.com.
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None of my hyperlinks followed to the cut here. If you want better formatting for the intended embedded links you are best to go to the first link above if this is of interest.
Ian
Wikipedia is taking over my life. :D I am so grateful for the resources of the Internet.
I'm having a discussion elsewhere about detachment and ended up finding some more solid information. I was surprised that the term was misleading to some. It's been mistaken for something more closely related to disengaging, which is not the same thing at all.
The link to emotional detaching at Wikipedia was very clear about the terms. I use it almost exclusively in relation to the second sense.
In the second sense, it is a type of mental assertiveness that allows people to maintain their boundaries and psychic integrity when faced with the emotional demands of another person or group of persons.
Second sense: mental assertiveness
Emotional detachment in the second sense above is a positive and deliberate mental attitude which avoids engaging the emotions of others. It is often applied to relatives and associates of people who are in some way emotionally overly demanding. A simple example might be a person who trains themselves to ignore the "pleading" food requests of a dieting spouse. A more widespread example could be the indifference parents develop towards their children's begging.
A more extreme form of this has been called "tough love," meaning letting someone go through a painful life experience without interference for the sake of its greater educational value. This can be an excruciating experience for loved ones, who must avoid the urge to step in and rescue the person from that pain (but thereby interfere with the loved one having a much-needed growing experience).
This detachment does not mean avoiding the feeling of empathy; it is actually more of an awareness of empathetic feelings that allows the person space needed to rationally choose whether or not to engage or be overwhelmed by such feelings.
Referred at this Wikipedia entry is a link for developing detachment that I found really solid too. It's titled Tools for handling control issues.
Content:
* What is detachment?
* What are the negative effects not detaching?
* How is detachment a control issue?
* What irrational thinking leads to an inability to detach?
* How to develop detachment
* Steps in developing detachment
Emotional contagion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Emotional contagion is the tendency to express and feel emotions that are similar to and influenced by those of others. Emotional contagion may be involved in crowd behaviors, like collective fear, rage, or moral panic, but also emotional interactions in smaller groups such as negotiation, teaching and persuasion contexts. It is also the phenomenon when a person (especially a child) appears distressed because another person is distressed, or happy because they are happy.
To date, most clinical research has focused on the effects on non-verbal (and often non-emotional) displays, and relatively less has been studied about the impact of contagion effects on emotional feelings. Emotional contagion and empathy may be related, but the nature of such a connection has not to date been explored either.
The concept of insulating oneself from emotional contagion is called emotional detachment.
I still feel very strongly that this is an important element in my personal development. It spans the universe in it's impact on how I relate to every important element in my life. I could never have too much from this skill set.
So much of this gets to the heart of how we might be manipulated or how we may do the manipulation consciously or not. If I could stand to enquire more deeply, this would feed many avenues of interest for me.
happy kids are what I'm after... me=kid!
Ian
Wikipedia is taking over my life. :D I am so grateful for the resources of the Internet.
I'm having a discussion elsewhere about detachment and ended up finding some more solid information. I was surprised that the term was misleading to some. It's been mistaken for something more closely related to disengaging, which is not the same thing at all.
The link to emotional detaching at Wikipedia was very clear about the terms. I use it almost exclusively in relation to the second sense.
In the second sense, it is a type of mental assertiveness that allows people to maintain their boundaries and psychic integrity when faced with the emotional demands of another person or group of persons.
Second sense: mental assertiveness
Emotional detachment in the second sense above is a positive and deliberate mental attitude which avoids engaging the emotions of others. It is often applied to relatives and associates of people who are in some way emotionally overly demanding. A simple example might be a person who trains themselves to ignore the "pleading" food requests of a dieting spouse. A more widespread example could be the indifference parents develop towards their children's begging.
A more extreme form of this has been called "tough love," meaning letting someone go through a painful life experience without interference for the sake of its greater educational value. This can be an excruciating experience for loved ones, who must avoid the urge to step in and rescue the person from that pain (but thereby interfere with the loved one having a much-needed growing experience).
This detachment does not mean avoiding the feeling of empathy; it is actually more of an awareness of empathetic feelings that allows the person space needed to rationally choose whether or not to engage or be overwhelmed by such feelings.
Referred at this Wikipedia entry is a link for developing detachment that I found really solid too. It's titled Tools for handling control issues.
Content:
* What is detachment?
* What are the negative effects not detaching?
* How is detachment a control issue?
* What irrational thinking leads to an inability to detach?
* How to develop detachment
* Steps in developing detachment
Emotional contagion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Emotional contagion is the tendency to express and feel emotions that are similar to and influenced by those of others. Emotional contagion may be involved in crowd behaviors, like collective fear, rage, or moral panic, but also emotional interactions in smaller groups such as negotiation, teaching and persuasion contexts. It is also the phenomenon when a person (especially a child) appears distressed because another person is distressed, or happy because they are happy.
To date, most clinical research has focused on the effects on non-verbal (and often non-emotional) displays, and relatively less has been studied about the impact of contagion effects on emotional feelings. Emotional contagion and empathy may be related, but the nature of such a connection has not to date been explored either.
The concept of insulating oneself from emotional contagion is called emotional detachment.
I still feel very strongly that this is an important element in my personal development. It spans the universe in it's impact on how I relate to every important element in my life. I could never have too much from this skill set.
So much of this gets to the heart of how we might be manipulated or how we may do the manipulation consciously or not. If I could stand to enquire more deeply, this would feed many avenues of interest for me.
happy kids are what I'm after... me=kid!
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