Interview: Attachment and Detachment

I was recently invited to give an interview to a major newspaper about detachment. The article should come out soon and I’ll post the link here. But you can already read firsthand about attachment, detachment and inner growth.

– What is detachment?

Detachment is the ability to not become attached to something or someone, understanding the nature of possessions and relationships. It is the difference between having possession of something and being possessed by something (characteristic of attachment).

Owning something is not a bad thing, of course. We all have needs for food and shelter, we have to take care of our health and education and, as we are social and gregarious beings, we need a series of objects used in the society in which we live. For example, with the development of technology, we use cell phones to communicate. This use becomes an almost indispensable necessity. Therefore, we must understand the need for objects and social belonging at the same time that we can have the ability to detach ourselves, to detach ourselves.

– What are the characteristics of attached people? And the dropouts?

Generally speaking, we can say that detached people are calm, they are always at peace. They know their true nature and they know that the fact and possibility of losing some possession or distancing themselves from someone will not change their true nature.

Attached people can present several symptoms such as anxiety, phobia, depression, that is, they are either afraid of losing or they lost and did not know how to deal well with the loss.

Another way to understand attachment (and detachment because it’s the opposite) is to think about forms of dependence. Dependence on a substance such as nicotine, alcohol or other drugs brings people only negative results and consequences. In the same way that a person manages to get rid of a certain addiction, he can learn to let go in other areas, such as in love relationships, where co-dependency becomes disastrous.

People who have found themselves, people who are religious or have a high degree of awareness of themselves, of who they are, are detached, charitable, peaceful and therefore loving people.

– Giving up goods, material and sentimental, does it help in inner growth? Because?

In studies of the psychology of religion, we see that the religious man must be selfless or, in other words, detached. A well-known passage from the Bible is the one in which Jesus tells the rich man who asked him how to win the Kingdom of Heaven: “You still lack one thing: sell what you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” – Luke (18, 22).

Other religions, in varying ways, also understand the importance of detachment for inner growth, for finding spirituality, for finding oneself. Giving up material goods seems to be a way to permanently focus the mind on spirituality, without greed, avarice, ambition or attachment getting in the way of spiritual understanding.

On the other hand, for many people, abandoning everything becomes unfeasible or undesirable. So abandoning material possessions is a form of spiritual development, but not the only one, as many people in history have not abandoned their belongings and are still important examples.

– Is detachment good for health? Because?

Excessive attachment can bring physical or emotional illness. If we think, for example, of jealousy as a form of attachment, we will see that insecurity, anxiety and correlated fear can be pathological, causing long-term mental illness.

So, if we consider that attachment generates suffering and this suffering generates, in turn, physical and mental illnesses, we can conclude that detachment, by creating a better quality of life, also helps to preserve health.

– How to practice it?

We can practice detachment by getting rid of objects that are no longer useful, that no longer have a function in our lives. The excessive accumulation of belongings constitutes the attachment to these belongings. By donating or throwing away a part of what we have that we are no longer going to use, we are practicing detachment.

With regard to attachment to people, we should note that when we say: “this is my girlfriend” or “this is my boyfriend”, we are saying something common. However, the other person is not my possession. The other person is someone who lives with me, who shares moments and situations, but does not belong to me, that is, he has wills and desires that are his and, ultimately, freedom to act in the way he considers best.

In this way, we can begin to practice detachment, starting to better understand the nature of human relationships, which is conviviality and not possession or possessiveness.

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