Letting Go

Sometimes when we try to move forward, we find that it somehow feels impossible. At times it is because we are unfamiliar with the direction in which we want to go and other times it is because we know that if we move forward, we in fact may be leaving something behind.

The hardest part to understand is, exactly what is it that we are letting go. If we are ending a relationship, it seems obvious we are letting someone go that we once loved. If we are graduating from school, leaving a new job, we may be losing some people that we like and have known for years but won’t see again because we have no other relationship with them out side of work or school.
Many times though it is not so clear. We could be staying at a job that we have hated for years, or a relationship that we have been miserable in for a long time, and somehow we still can’t seem to let go.

I truly believe we often don’t let go because we have no idea where we are going. We don’t know what the future holds, if we will succeed in this new change, if we won’t end up being alone. So the moving toward our future is often much too scary a venture. Staying with what is familiar seems to be the safer idea.

Staying with the familiar though comes with a price and sometimes that price is paid for in heartache and misery.

When we are afraid of what lies ahead we play these mental gymnastics, weighing the pros and cons coming to the conclusion that in fact it really is the best idea to stay right were we are for now. Even though everything about it feels wrong, we convince ourselves why it is right.

If fearing the unknown is what prevents you from moving forward, letting go of something or someone that you no longer want to be with, then making the future known is the best way to begin moving.

There are many ways in which we can make the unknown known. We first need to determine where it is that we want to go. Many of us can’t do that and underestimate the importance of this step. Would you set out on a trip with out any destination or even vague idea of where you are going, then, start out without a map to get there.
Most of us would say no. It doesn’t even really makes sense to do that, unless your goal is to wander the states aimlessly and live each day for what it is, even then, that technically is a goal and therefore you in fact do know what you are headed towards.


Sitting with our own thoughts long enough to ask ourselves what it is that we want in place of what ever it is that we want to let go of, is very important.

If you are leaving your job for example, it would be very important to determine what you want to do next for work, what jobs are available, imagine yourself actually doing that kind of work, taking the dry run drive to see what the place is like or how long it takes to get there.
The unknown can always become known if we do a little bit of research about where it is that we want to go. You will start to find that once this new place is familiar to you, you will more naturally move toward this new place.

Sometimes letting go is not about the fear of the unknown but might be more about what letting go means. Letting goes means forever, letting go means being alone, which of course means forever. Letting go means this deep painful loss, letting go means rejection.

Sometimes when we have something, whether it is a person or a possession, we feel comforted. If we are in a relationship and we are not happy, we say, well something is better then nothing because we have been socialized to not be comfortable with being alone.
While humans are social creatures and do depend on each other for survival, our society teaches enmeshment to be the natural state of relating. We don’t encourage one another to develop into their own person and then relate to them from our own fully individuated place within ourselves. We teach our children to need us, to be dependent on us and we grow up as adults needing and depending on each other in a much less healthy way then necessary.
In this upbringing, the lessons we learn are that we can’t do it on our own, that we need others, not to survive, but to be happy. The two have become so intertwined in our meaning though that we think that if we are not happy with being alone then we will not survive.
The concept of being alone is one of the most powerful, painful, emotion filled topics that is talked about in my sessions. People would rather die, be abused, give up their life dreams then be alone.

This is also true if we apply this concept to our jobs, to a habit, or when we can’t seem to clean out our houses of old “stuff”. We believe that if we let this “stuff” go then we are somehow less then or that we have lost something and we feel the pain so deeply because of this, that we choose to stay where we are, because it is easier to stay and be unhappy then it is to leave and be overwhelmed with the emotions that come with being alone, without our external validations.
This validation can be whatever we deem to be the most important thing in our life that we connect ourselves. For some it is children, so when they are old enough to leave home or start heading out more independently, we don’t let them go. For others it is work, we fear not having the validation that we once believe we received from this job that we stay hoping it will get better, because the future being unknown may not bring the validation necessary to stay afloat emotionally. Maybe it is a relationship that we have been in far too long, that we continue to hang onto because we can’t stand the thought of being alone. A something is better then nothing kind of thinking.

If this sounds to be more of the style in which you live your life, then building a sense of your own competencies from the inside out is what your focus needs to be. Many of us are so caught up in finding validation from outside sources that we have no idea of our own strengths, weaknesses or competencies. Many of us are complete strangers to ourselves and then wonder why it is so uncomfortable being alone.
Think about it, of course you would be uncomfortable spending the night with someone you didn’t know or worse someone you didn’t like, so it stands to reason that you would avoid it at all costs.

We need to learn how to become comfortable in our own skins. “I always say, where ever I go, there I am”. I am a constant in my own life, so it goes without saying that it would probably be a pretty good thing for me to get to like me and know who I am, what I like, what I don’t like and where I want to go.

While this sound maybe simple, maybe ridiculous and way off base, I can promise you, if you continue to look for happiness from sources outside of yourself, you will always feel like something is missing. No matter how great a job, how awesome your children or the lover you have, there will be this void and that void is the relationship that you don’t have with yourself.

Also, only when you know yourself well, can you share yourself with another.

I encourage anyone who wants more for themselves out of life to begin the practice of recognizing ones own competencies and rewriting old negative scripts that tell them they are anything less then loveable and worthy and for those who fear making change to begin the process of making the unknown known.