5 days to disengaged: a step-by-step guide to stepping back
A clickbaity but much catchier title than “How to embark on the potentially years-long process of slowly changing your entire stepparenting philosophy.”
If you’re feeling frustrated or burned out as a stepparent, I usually recommend reading the Disengaging Essay. Which is a great place to start, but is really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to disengaging.
It’s one thing learning about a concept in the abstract, but entirely another when it comes to applying that knowledge — especially something as counterintuitive as disengaging from your stepkids.
So I thought it might be helpful to take the principles of disengaging and break them down into a quick-start kind of guide. Not knowing how to begin can be a serious barrier blocking our ability to enact change. I know it was for me.
Truly disengaging is gonna take way longer than 5 days but hey — we’ve gotta start somewhere. And as I like to say often: baby steps count. At the very least, breaking down the process of beginning to disengage into 5-days feels like a manageable commitment when combined with a clear outline:
Day 1: Get clear on the essentials of disengaging and pick 1 thing to disengage from.
Day 2: Vent. Get that anger & resentment outta your system and onto some paper. Ugly cry as needed.
Day 3: Revisit your vent in a calmer fashion, this time with an eye toward recognizing what you can’t control.
Day 4: Discuss your disengaging decision with your partner and/or stepkids. Or not! Your choice.
Day 5: Stop doing the thing you picked on Day 1.
And then just for fun, we’ll also talk about Day 6 and beyond — what to expect next.
Ready? Let’s go! 🙌🏼
Day 1: Learn the disengaging essentials
We’re going to start by picking one thing that makes you bonkers about parenting your stepkid. The example I like to use is packing my stepkid’s school lunch. She’d leave most of it uneaten, then complain to her mom that I didn’t pack enough food in her lunch. 🤦🏻♀️ It’s ridiculous how much drama this one issue caused within our household as well as between houses.
Other common stepparenting pain points might be your stepkid refusing to join you for family dinners, not greeting you when they walk in the door, or not picking up after themselves. It really doesn’t matter what your One Thing is — just pick it, and keep that in mind as your disengaging focus over the next few days.
There are 3 important aspects of disengaging to understand before we begin:
Disengaging is a good thing. Stepping back isn’t the same as ignoring your stepkid or checking out of your family.
Stepparenting might not be what you thought. If a hands-on parenting role isn’t working for you or your stepfam, it’s time to redefine the role in a way that fits better.
Disengage is more about you than it is about them. The goal of disengaging isn’t simply to be less involved — it’s making a mindset shift to change your own perspective.
If this doesn’t feel like quite enough to go on — or if you’re anything like me and feel like you want alllll the information first — here’s some deeper-dive resources on disengaging for you to check out:
![Not Your Circus, Not Your Monkeys [ebook]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2a13284d-0408-467f-be14-389a5d049121_900x630.png)
These are all included for paid subscribers, but if you’re a free subscriber you can unlock any one of these with a free trial. Either the ebook or the workshop will give you a solid overview of disengaging (I also share about my lunch-making saga in way more detail 🍿) while the stepparenting role workshop touches on the reasons behind why we end up over-engaging.
Day 2: Let’s vent!
Grab some paper and a pen (or a keyboard or whatever) and start writing out a list of literally everything that pisses you off about the One Thing you picked yesterday. And I mean everything. Don’t censor yourself; no one’s gonna see this but you.
A lot of our frustration can come from thinking we shouldn’t feel or think any of this stuff in the first place — like we’re not allowed to be upset, or that being upset somehow makes us shitty stepparents. I promise you, everything you’re feeling and thinking is completely normal and okay. So please don’t judge yourself for your current state of mind! Uncork that bottle and let it all out, because stuffing your feelings is no bueno for your mental health.
Vent to yourself till you notice a shift in your mental stormclouds — maybe you’re running out of stuff to say or maybe you feel exhausted and wanna go to bed early (please do that!) or maybe you feel mildly better. That’s when you’ll know you’re done. Put your vent away in a safe place till tomorrow.
Day 3: Recognize what you can’t control
Now that you’ve had a little time to let yesterday’s vent settle and you’re not feeling so raw, I want you to look at it again. And this time, look at each item you wrote and cross off everything that’s:
Someone else’s action
Someone else’s emotion
Someone else’s expectation
These are all things you can’t control. You might think you can… but you can’t.
Taking my own example of those uneaten school lunches: I thought I could pack a lunch that my SD would actually eat, because seriously how hard could that be?? AND YET, I never did manage to crack the secret code of A) how to get that kid to eat what I packed and/or B) not lie about me to her mother.
So why was I still packing those lunches? Because I was trying to ensure a particular outcome. On some level, I believed that if I just packed the perfect lunch, then there wouldn’t be so much friction between me and my stepkid, or between Dan and his ex arguing over those lunches.
Now, I didn’t consciously know that’s what I was trying to do… but in hindsight, absolutely that’s where my head was at.
The point of this exercise is for you to glean some similar insights about where your head might be with your One Thing. If you look at your vent from yesterday, how many items are crossed out? And what’s not crossed out? Because whatever’s left is all that you can control, namely:
Your own actions
Your own emotions
Your own expectations
And that’s it.
Our belief that we can change any of that other crap is all an illusion. Which means we don’t need to bend ourselves into pretzels trying to change any of it.
Kind of freeing, isn’t it?
Day 4: Explain disengaging to your stepfam [OPTIONAL]
Depending on your current stepfamily dynamics, you might want to sit down and have an open conversation with your partner and/or stepkids about your decision to step back a bit. This is something I didn’t do but wish I had.
Discussing with Dan and SD together about why I was frustrated with packing SD’s lunches would’ve been good for all of us. In general, I’m a fan of keeping communication open and honest, and that includes (age-appropriate) communication with kids.
Being upfront about your decision to step back removes the potential for either your partner or your stepkid to misinterpret your good intentions. Explaining what you’re doing and why ensures that everyone’s on the same page, even if they don’t necessarily agree with your decision.
A sample script for my lunch-packing example might look like:
”SD, I wanted to let you know that I’ve decided not to pack your lunches anymore. I’m bummed that even when I ask what foods you like and make sure to pack those, you don’t really eat them. And I don’t like that you’re not honest with your mom about me not packing enough food, because then your mom and dad fight over it and I know none of us like that. So I’m going to take myself out of the middle and let your mom and dad work out your lunches. I just wanted to let you know so there isn’t any confusion. Do you have any questions for me about this?”
As for how to tell your partner you’re disengaging, here’s a whole blog post to help with that: ➡️ 3 WAYS TO TELL YOUR PARTNER YOU’RE DISENGAGING 👀
All of this said — if you don’t feel like having a family meeting about your decision to disengage would be appropriate (or if you just plain don’t want to discuss it), that is totally your choice. You don’t need to make an announcement before you disengage. Nor do you need permission.
Day 5: Stop doing the One Thing
We’ve reached Day 5 after doing a bunch of ground work so it’s finally time to stop doing the One Thing you identified all the way back on Day 1. Great! But what does that even look like?
There are two types of disengaging, logistical and emotional:
Logistical disengaging is when you stop doing the thing or things that feel like major exasperation triggers.
Emotional disengaging is the much longer and slower process of shifting your mindset. Which definitely takes longer than 5 days, but the first step is to begin disengaging logistically.
I’m not going super in depth about these right now because I cover the differences in more length in both my ebook on disengaging and our disengaging workshop. You really need to do both types of disengaging, but again baby steps count and you’ve gotta start somewhere.
So brace yourself, take a deep breath, and… stop packing that lunch. Or whatever your One Thing is.
It’s that easy, yet unexpectedly intimidating.
Next, give yourself a pat on the back. You did it!! You’ve taken the first step toward a more centered, grounded stepparenting existence. AMAZING!! 🤩 🎉 🙌🏼
Day 6: Now what??
Disengaging feels weird at first. Like… okay, soooo I’m gonna pack my lunch and my kid’s lunch and Dan’s lunch… but then just not pack my stepkid’s? That seems so wrong somehow.
Yes it does, but push past that. Remind yourself that packing the lunch was a source of stress for everyone, and disengaging is the mental equivalent of breaking in new shoes: uncomfortable at first, but you’ll get there.
You might also experience some pushback from your partner or the kids initially. Remind them in the same way you reminded yourself that doing the One Thing just caused problems for everyone. Maybe ask them for suggestions on what they recommend as an alternative, continuing to let your stepfam know that you’d love to work together and contribute more.
I also encourage you to roll with the momentum of your first success and pick your next Thing to Disengage From. Along the way, you’ll continue deepening your understanding of emotional disengaging. I explain more about how this looked for me and share a bunch of related resources in this Q&A episode (skip to 29:47):
Recently I learned about Mel Robbins’ “let them” theory, which sure sounds a whole lot like disengaging by another name, so that might be helpful too:
In short, once you’ve disengaged from your first One Thing, just lather-rinse-repeat on down your list of grievances till you start feeling like you can breathe again.
When you feel recharged a bit, go ahead and reassess. Maybe there’s some stepparenting stuff you’d like to start doing again. That’s totally fine! Like most of life, disengaging takes place on a spectrum — step back as much or as little as you need in the moment, knowing that your comfort level is very likely to change as your perspective changes.
Most importantly, please continue to prioritize your own well-being above and beyond your role as a stepparent or a partner. The position you fill in your family is important, but it’s not more important than your sanity.