Disengaging

I’m not familiar with that step. I haven’t gotten as far as addiction, I’ve stopped short at substance abuse. I will wait 6 months before getting in another one. It’s not just the addiction, it’s the untreated depression as well. Thank you for replying.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hm... well there is such a thing, as making a judgment about a situation or about an action of a person vs making a judgment about someone's whole person. The latter is what I think doesn't lead anywhere if you want to have a long term close relationship with the other person. Are you talking about the latter?


Also, truly my personal opinion only, but if you (general you) end a relationship with someone, and judge them in the latter way, it can be a problem if it's a strong judgment if you (general you) feel compelled to apply it to other people in the future.

This is why I like this thread on disengagement because for me disengagement includes not dwelling in such judgments. Even if they have truth to them, I just don't need to stay with them all day, just simply assess if I need to accept the situation, change the situation or leave it, and then act based on that.

Maybe what's a problem is "too quick" judgments, too, if these are judgments that are strong and unbalanced, out of touch with reality. While no action is taken to accept, change or leave the situation/problem



(Extreme example) I would still judge the person of a serial killer, I cannot be that far in detachment as to be accepting of people like that and cannot detach the action from the person there. I cannot, because unless such a person is totally fallen apart mentally (which they are not), they made the decision to violate rights and boundaries of other people in the strongest way possible (ie taking their lives just so they can enjoy themselves) - and they repeatedly made it.


But a lot of the time yes, personal judgments about other people are too quickly made and are too unbalanced. Or maybe they are even realistic - and are more like about their action patterns and able to take in positives too about the person - but we get stuck, not disengage and not take action to change/leave the situation.

Those are the cases where I see a problem with judging.

I do not want to talk about my cPTSD here but the person that caused it before "best friend" added to it....that person tried to exercise extreme detachment and non-involvement nearly like the idea of not judging a serial killer even. But of course they exercised it when they felt like it, not consistently, though even then it would've been strange to me - but then maybe I'd just think the person is aiming to become a saint. (Which most of us cannot be!)

And that lack of consistency, I would say, it ends up hurting people more than not even trying to practice the extreme nonjudgmentalness. More than if someone just doesn't "try" to be a "saint".



Where I'm trying to get with this is just that it's totally OK if you can't get rid of all "bad/judgmental thoughts" of yours right away. And that it's totally OK if you can't be a "saint" with it. It's totally OK to be a normal human with "mistakes" like that.


And what really matters anyway is the words and actions (together) that you say/do. We all can have all kinds of thoughts and it's totally fine if we don't believe in them and thus don't act on them (probably this is what the DBT book is saying too) and even if we act on it sometimes, it can be just be being a normal human!

And I know what the fight is like trying to not believe in certain thoughts.





I'm glad it lifted. But I really hope you find a solution soon where you don't have to live like this long term.



Now that's where I agree with the book, not believing in disparaging thoughts about ourselves!



I just think in a situation that keeps you stressed out a lot, it may not be possible to practice all this.

Maybe if you two separate for like a year. That's just an example length of time and I'm not trying to tell you what to do.



And this is truly just my thought and I don't know you two really, so, maybe accept that your husband truly cannot do intimacy like you'd like it - maybe a reason to separate permanently, yeah. Like maybe he's just that person and maybe he's not even "evil" or otherwise something to make a strong judgment of, just simply not able to be intimate with you. Even if he wanted to. And it would not be because of you, it would be just how he is. If that's true then that really sucks and is very sad that he's not able to do it. But it may be the reality. But all that's your decision to make, I am just giving my outsider thoughts and I think I won't repeat them, sorry if there was something here that I already said before.

EDIT: I'll add this separately because I feel it's important enough. So where I said maybe your husband is just like this. I will say I do not know him at all and so there can be many ways I could imagine how he can't be intimate with you. In some cases it would be simply a different style of intimacy that doesn't speak your love language at all (and he's not able to pick up on this, either, etc etc), and in some cases it's more willful, lack of willingness where he could actually do it.... and that sounds more unhealthy to me on his end. And it's not for me to judge which case it is, but my point is that in both cases it may be that you can't change that situation and accepting it to live with it seems too stressful too because we are just humans and can't sacrifice everything of ourselves for others, and then the only option left is leaving the situation (separation - a very strong version of disengagement, so to speak....). But that's again really just my thoughts and you may think very differently, I'm just concerned because of how stressful it seems for you.