Balance & Beyond Podcast

What if you could transform your most emotionally charged moments into opportunities for deeper connection and peace?

In our latest episode, we share a personal story demonstrating how mastering detachment can be a game-changer. By recounting a recent experience with my child on the way to school, we'll show you how maintaining emotional control reduces personal stress and strengthens relationships. Learn how to stay grounded and supportive without internalising others' emotions, and discover the profound difference this approach can make in various aspects of your life, from family dynamics to crucial business decisions.

Explore the powerful concept of emotional detachment, where we emphasise the importance of separating your emotions from those of others. We explain that detachment isn't about suppressing your feelings but understanding and controlling your emotional responses. With practical insights and real-world examples, we'll teach you how to foster resilience and emotional regulation in your children through curiosity and compassion. This episode is packed with valuable lessons on creating healthier and more fulfilling relationships, making it a must-listen for anyone looking to bring more peace and calm into their lives.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honour the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

I had an experience this morning on the way to school that may sound familiar. While it used to be a really common occurrence, it struck me like a ton of bricks this morning that how I handled it was completely different from how I would have handled this experience once upon a time. It made me realize that this skill I'm going to share with you today is probably the most important one I've learned over the last few years. Learning this skill, building this muscle, has impacted my relationships in ways I probably still can't even imagine. 

It's brought me so much more peace and calm within myself. Learning this skill has completely revolutionized all my relationships. It's changed how I relate to myself and, most importantly, it's brought me so much more calm and peace than I ever thought possible. What am I talking about? Well, let me share with you this experience that happened this morning—very raw, very real—and I'm sure if you've got kids, you can relate in some way, shape, or form to this. Or maybe, even if you don't have kids, there have been grownups in your life who have done this to you.

Taking a child to school, and this child had a bunch of assessments all due, railing that the teacher changed the deadline and “It's not fair.” “And I've got to stay up till 11 o'clock at night”, and “I'm so overwhelmed.” Literally, on the way to the station, I was alternating between sheer rage and anger, disappointment and overwhelm, and tears, with just so much going on. 

Then, that started to turn to me: “Why are you making me go to school?” “I should be able to stay home.” “I've got so much to do!” “These are really important assessments!” And the old me would have fired right back. I would have gotten angry, I would have gotten annoyed. I would have been frustrated, I would have dropped her at the station, she would have slammed the door, I would have gone off, and I probably would have carried that for the rest of the day, and I guarantee she would have. 

However, the skill that I had learned in that moment is this wonderful skill called detachment, and what this means is, as she was railing about the teacher and going on about how much she had to do, I wasn't heartless in that moment, but I was actually able to sit with her disappointment and sit with her anger and sit with her railing about the injustice of it all. “Hello, fairness muscle!” 

And, what detachment means is, I didn't make any of that mean anything about me. Now, I didn't used to be this way. Let's just be very, very clear. But, detachment is something that keeps me grounded, it keeps me calm, and it actually makes me far better positioned, I guess you would say, or resourced, to deal with whatever is going on in front of me. Whether that's a business decision I need to make, whether that's something I need to do around parenting, or something that I need to do with somebody else in my life. 

So, let me share with you what actually sits behind this skill. And, most importantly, why is it so hard for us to do? It took me a really long time to learn this one, despite trying and trying and trying and trying. And I'd heard it, and it's on a fridge magnet, and like, “Oh my gosh, just let it go!” and “Don't make it mean anything!” And “What are you making this mean?” And all these things. 

But, there's a difference between intellectually knowing something, and really embodying it, and I've been doing this work for a really long time. This is something that I teach to my higher-level clients. In fact, we've done multiple months' worth of work on this, and it's been groundbreaking for all of them, as well.

So detachment is really, at its simplest, the skill of detaching your emotions from someone else. What I mean by this is my daughter can be angry, and I don't have to have a corresponding emotion about that. Her anger doesn't have to trigger my anger, or my guilt, or my shame, or my frustration. That will then trigger her shame and her guilt, and we ping-pong back and forth. So when another human around you pings, you no longer pong, which completely changes the dynamic of all your relationships.

Now, let's be clear. I'm not asking you to be a robot here. You are going to have feelings, and that is okay, but I want you to learn to have feelings that are your own and to minimize the feelings that you have in response to someone else, or to be able to better control the emotions you have about someone else because they are all yours. 

By that, I mean, you might say someone made you angry, and they made you feel guilty, and they made you feel selfish, and they made you feel sad. The truth is, no one can make you feel anything. You've done that all by yourself. You've gotten very creative, and some people have gotten very, very good at beating themselves up and making all these meanings of things. 

So, it's hard, because we're human, we live in tribes, and we don't scone ourselves up on a desert island, drinking margaritas and sitting with a beach volleyball called Wilson. We have to work with other people. We have to interact with other people.

But what I find fascinating is that, as a human, our world is all about us, and by that I mean everything that happens to us, in us, around us, we apply a "what does that mean about me?" lens to everything. So, imagine you are putting these glasses on and say, “Ah, she's angry.” “What does that mean about me?” “Ah, that person cut me off in traffic.” “What does that mean about me?” 

And this "What does that mean about me?" means that we then become brilliant storytellers, because most of what happens to us is not fact, it's not charged. Somebody cut you off in traffic. It's neither good nor bad. A child upset in the car with you? That's neither good nor bad. It's a fact. They're upset. It's an observation. It's the story you make of what someone being upset with you means. Or what somebody cutting you off in traffic means. Or somebody not including you on that meeting request.

It's you making up all of these stories and all of this meaning, and this is where the bulk of our suffering, stress, all comes from—it is all self-induced. So for you not to be rocked by others and to learn to detach from them, you really have to do two things that really make up this skill. Let's say two fundamental components. First up, you need to learn how to not make a meaning of somebody else's emotion or experience or interaction. 

So, this is taking off those glasses. And, instead of going, “Oh my gosh, she said that!” “That means I'm a bad parent!” “That means that she doesn't respect me!” “That means that she's entitled!” “That means that that person's an idiot!” Whatever it may be, you've made all this meaning out of it.

More often than not, the meaning you'll make of it is not an empowering one. It's pretty rare that we go, “Oh, she's doing that!” “Gosh, I'm an awesome parent!” “I'm having an awesome day!” “I'm raising great humans!” Sometimes that may be the case, but more often than not, the stories we tell ourselves are designed to make us feel pretty bad. So, first up, you have to learn how to not make a meaning of the emotion, or the experiences of those around you. Take those glasses off. 

Interwoven with number one, and why this can be so hard, is that you need to learn to sit and be with somebody else's emotion around you without fixing it or changing it or controlling it. I'm going to say that again: For you to learn to be detached, you have to be able to sit in your own discomfort of someone around you being angry, or your own discomfort about somebody being upset or overwhelmed or stressed, and not want to dive in and fix it.

Usually, the reason that we go in and fix things, and want to control them, and want to suppress them, is because we can't sit with somebody else's discomfort. If they're feeling upset, we've made a meaning of that upset, and we want to go in and change it. Now, often that can come from a good place. We can turn around and say, “You know what?” “I don't want her to feel sad.” Of course, that comes from a place of being a parent, and “I don't want that person to feel really bad”, and “I don't want this”, and “I don't want that.” 

But, instead, it can be really hard to sit in that. Because, again, you've got to choose a different meaning, you've got to choose curiosity, and you've got to choose compassion, and just be able to sit and hold that, knowing, “Okay, her being angry right now is also triggering me.” “I don't have to do anything about that right now.” “I don't need to react.” “I have the choice to take space, to have agency over my own emotions, to control myself, and to now choose intentionally.” “Even though she's triggering me, even though I want to fight back, right now is not the time.” “I can take that anger.” “I can put it in my back pocket, learn to process it later, and actually be present to what is needed at that time.”

To be clear, I'm not suggesting you become a robot. I'm not suggesting you become numb. I'm not suggesting you become mute and just sit there like, "No, don’t say anything. Jo said to be detached." That is the opposite of detached. That is you trying to numb everything and hold it all in. Anytime you have been triggered, you are acting from a past wound. By that, I mean, if you've made a meaning of your child being angry at you, that must mean "I'm a bad parent."

The moment that triggering happens, you are going back into an old wound, and you are now living in the past—the past time where maybe your parent got angry at you, because you said they were a bad parent, or your deep-seated belief that maybe you're not doing a good enough job, or whatever guilt, or shame, that you're holding. They've just poked that wound and put some salt in, and you've gone back. 

Usually, an over-the-top response to what would be happening now. Ironically, when you can actually not be triggered and learn to manage your own triggers because you're not ponging to the other person's ping, you're able to diffuse that situation much faster than, say, retaliating back in anger or going back at them or guilting them or shaming them, which more often than not was the default response to our parenting and how we were parented.

So to clarify how I would have acted in the past, I would have sat there, and I could have made up any one of these meanings. Depending on the day, depending on what emotional state I was in, I might have said things like, "Oh my gosh, she's mad at me.” “She's projecting all her anger on me.” “How dare she be mad at me after everything I've done for her?" 

Maybe I would have taken the lazy angle, "She just wants to sit at home?” “That's lazy.” “No one in our family is ever lazy." "She's upset.” “I must be a bad parent.” “I'm not spending enough time with her." "She's upset.” “I should have consulted her.” “I should have been there more.” “I should have helped her plan more." "What will anyone think of me if they see me dropping my child at the station with tears going down her face?” “They're going to think I'm a horrible parent."

Can you see, in all of those options, that any one of those, once upon a time, I would have gone to, depending on which way the mood and which way the wind was blowing? All those dialogues were all about me. It was about after everything I've done for her. "No one in this family is lazy. I'm a bad parent. I'm not spending enough time with her. I spend too much time working. What are you going to think of me?" In all of these reactions being about me and nothing to do with the other person?

This is how the ping-pong game starts. Because I'm now in my own world, making my own glasses, making a meaning of what's going on with her. I'm not responding to what she needs at that moment. I'm responding to that feeling of “I'm now going to get angry about something.” And then she's going to be angry. "But, oh my gosh, Mum, why are you angry at me?" And then she feels shame, and then she says, "You don't know what I'm going through!" And I'm like, "You don't know what I'm going through!" 

And it ends up in this back and forth of either pandering, or crying, or triggering. And then I trigger her, and she triggers me, and it is never, ever, ever a good outcome. I challenge anyone to have a conversation with a significant other, a child, a colleague, or a boss when you're triggered, and have it be a better outcome, than one when you are not. I'm not saying that sometimes we don't get angry, and we don't want to express that anger, but there's a difference here in the meaning we make of it, and in learning to be detached.

So let me share how I acted this morning and how I was driving her home from the station. I was like, "Wow, that was so different." Now she's probably still pissed at me. That's okay. She's entitled to her anger. She wanted to stay home. I probably would have too under the circumstances if I was her age. So what I did was, I validated her anger, and I didn't make her feel wrong for it. 

I was like, "Yeah, that's so wrong that the teacher brought it forward, and maybe you should go and petition and get all the other kids and say it's not fair that they did it," and agree that it's so not fair. And then, you know, I consoled her tears, and I said, "I know you're upset." Of course, she was angry that I didn't let her stay home. I would have been too, like, "I know you're angry. I get it, and if I were you, I'd be angry too." So again, I'm validating her. I'm not making her wrong for being angry.

And it was amazing when I just allowed her emotions to be—it's about a six-minute drive to the train station—she would literally swing from almost escalating anger to tears, and "I'm not going to have enough," and then overwhelm, and then back to anger. So I could literally see, almost like when they're toddlers, and you see this toddler lose it on the floor and then stand up and cry, and then lose it back on the floor again. Cycling through these emotions really, really quickly, because I wasn't stopping her. I wasn't triggering her. I was allowing her to feel it all. 

Now, I didn't want her to feel this way. Let's be clear—it's no fun for anyone to see their loved one upset, angry, feeling like an injustice has happened. That's not the point of this. But because I was still in the present and not triggered, I was able to connect also to the outcome that was most important to me as a parent. One of the big things I believe in, because I see what happens when these things aren't upheld in a lot of my clients, is consequences. 

To me, they are a really important principle of parenting, and it's not fair that an assessment was moved. But, having to now go to school, and potentially having a late night is a really important consequence for her to learn that, “You know what?” “Sometimes deadlines do get moved.” “And you know what?” “Sometimes, all your teachers hit you with stuff all at once.” “And it's not fair, and it does mean that you need to pull a late one.” 

But, I feel like this lesson of having to deal with this, of learning to cope with it, is a life skill. And I'm willing to hang on to my long-term gain, the long-term lesson, the wisdom that she will gain from this experience, and I'm able to let go of any short-term discomfort that she, or I have, as a result of her reacting to the situation that she finds herself in. 

So, when you can detach, when you make a different meaning from things, you can see how it becomes that much easier to focus on. “Okay, what do I want here?” Not just "I'm angry, doors being slammed." I mean, “There's a chance that she's still going to be upset with me when she comes home tonight, because she'll be up late.”

But again, I was able to connect with her in the car and say, "All right, well, now that we sit down and have dinner together, you can have dinner in your room.” And “Let's make sure that you know what you want for dinner.” “Can I help you tonight?" "No, you can't help me.” “You go and do anything." "Okay, well, the offer's there, if you need it." So again, I'm validating, I'm having compassion. I'm able to sit there and really show her that there's a different way to handle this. This is about no more ping-pong, no more escalations, minimizing them, and no more triggers. 

Again, “I'm human.” “You're human.” You're going to have triggers, but this is about reducing the impact of them. It's the collateral damage. It's making sure that any emotions that are brought up in you are short-lived, that you can process them, and step back into your power and say, in this moment, "How do I want to show up?" Not necessarily, "What do I want to do?" but "Who do I want to be at this moment?" I want to be someone who can sit with my child's discomfort. Because I know, having two kids now, that they have big emotions. And one of mine in particular is a really big feeler.

So for me to squash that, for me to disavow her emotions, for me to make her escape them, or for me to enhance them and fuel them, it is not the right thing for me to be doing either. I want to teach her. I want to teach everybody that works with me to regulate themselves. I want to teach you to be able to sit with what's going on for you, and to learn this beautiful skill of detaching from someone else, making a different meaning, being able to choose curiosity, or compassion, or whatever you need in that moment. 

And, I promise you, life is going to get that much more peaceful, that much more enjoyable, and it's why we're all here. I hope you've learned something in today's episode, that you remember what I've shared today to take those "this is about me" glasses off and see if you can simply sit there, be with it, and detach. You've got this.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world. If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, visit us at www.balanceinstitute.com to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance, and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast.