On Letting Go – What You Resist Persists
How many times we have heard the saying “let it go, it’s in the past”.
Letting it go seems to be a widespread cultural adage but what do people really mean when they say “just let it go?” And why do some of us struggle with “letting it go?”
It usually means doing one of two things – healing or suppression.
Suppression is the comfortable option – bury what is unsightly, sweep the muck under the rug. It’s also the option we’ve been taught in varying degrees from our caregivers, teachers and communities. But something does not just disappear because you throw it in a closet.
When we suppress, we lock away vital psychic energy, as it requires force or energy to keep something submerged below the visible surface, below the level of speech and expression. We can suppress by denying, ignoring, minimizing, justifying, intellectualizing or distracting from parts of ourselves we don’t like or feel uncomfortable with. To suppress is to remain divided within oneself. To heal is to become whole. By coming to understand and integrate these parts of the Self that have been pushed underground by circumstances in which their expression felt unsafe or garnered some degree of rejection. Yet it is our responsibility as adults to witness and hold ourselves in these tender, confusing, critical, scary, enraging places within ourselves and begin to hold them with compassion and transform the old stories and limiting conditions that have kept us locked in place.
It takes both energy to suppress and energy to heal, however, engaging in the latter has an accumulative affect, releasing more and more psychic energy that can be used in a generative way. Suppression is familiar and more comfortable because it is in the realm of the known. Healing always happens pushing at the edges of the known and is necessarily uncomfortable at times because it hurts to press into places that are painful or sensitive and in need healing. But when we choose to go there we can begin to soften around the pain and regenerate the ground of our being for new life to grow. Good psychotherapy at its deeper levels is not about sustainability but about regeneration and we can bring this attitude to all of life.
As I ponder deeper the phrase “let go” an image of a person on a bungee jump appears. In that context I imagine hearing the words “just let it go” as an encouragement to let go of the fear that’s stopping us to experience a moment full of rushing vitality and utter presence. We could experiment with applying that to our emotional lives, even if only for a moment at first. For some of us, especially at the beginning the journey to deeper self-expression and healing it can feel as scary as jumping into an abyss and in that sense every small step of courage and vulnerability whether a dip or a jump is cause for a little self-celebration.
