“Often children who survive extremely adverse childhoods
have learned a particular survival strategy. I call it ‘strategic
detachment.’ This is not the withdrawal from reality that leads to
psychological disturbance, but an intuitively calibrated disengagement
from noxious aspects of their family life or other aspects of their
world. They some how know, This is not all there is. They hold the
belief that a better alternative exists somewhere and that someday they
will find their way to it. They persevere in that idea. They somehow
know Mother is not all women, Father is not all men, this family does
not exhaust the possibilities of human relationships-there is life
beyond this neighborhood. This does not spare them suffering in the
present, but it allows them not to be destroyed by it. Their strategic
detachment does not guarantee that they will never know feelings of
powerlessness, but it helps them not to be stuck there.”

— Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self Esteem