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Quick Framing And Welcome

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spiritual wisdom means practical tools in short life dies episodes. These are tasters, not deep dies, let's taste our curiosity. Deeply rise. Welcome back everyone. I hope you had a wonderful summer and are enjoying the shift into fall. Today

Why “Let It Go” Backfires

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I want to talk about why I am so over the phrase let it go, not just because of the song from Frozen, but because I think many of us are walking around with unrealistic expectations about what letting go is supposed to look like. And more importantly, those expectations can do real damage to someone who is already in pain. Many people think successfully letting something go means that they will stop caring or stop remembering, stop feeling angry, or never be activated by the situation ever again, which honestly makes letting go this impossible all or nothing test. And this just isn't how it works, at least not in the beginning. It's a process, not a light switch. We might better think about the goal being not necessarily to stop feeling something, but to reach the point where that feeling no longer controls us. You know, it no longer controls choices, consumes your energy, or keeps you from living your life. And this is really front of mind to me because I have recently had a whole slew of clients come in who are all grappling with this guilt over the fact that they can't let something go. Not just the situation is creating struggle for them. It's this expectation they have of themselves that they should be over it by now. You know, they they've done all the techniques they can possibly think of. You know, they have, you know, allowed themselves to deeply feel the anger or the upset or the frustration. You know, they have talked to their therapists, they've, their friends, their spouses, me. And yet they still can't seem to let it go. And the worst part, truly, isn't just that they're stuck in the pain of the situation, you know, of whatever it is that's created all this upset in their lives. The worst part to me is that then the layering on of guilt and shame because they can't get over it yet. And I get it. I mean, there is so much out there about how important it is to not let anger eat you alive, to release negativity, to let them when other people don't act the way you wish they would. But you know what? If it were that easy, we would all do it. If it were so easy to just let it go, then there wouldn't be so much out there about it.

Why Some Hurts Stick

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Of course, not everything we're trying to let go of carries the same weight. You know, letting go of someone cutting you off on your way to work is very different from letting go of a partner cheating on you or uh, you know, the childhood trauma or whatnot. You know, the severity of the hurt and the ways it may have affected your life are obviously going to contribute to how difficult it is and how long it takes to move through it. You know, we've all chastised ourselves for not being capable of letting something go. Well, maybe not all of us. My husband is one of those unique individuals who really seems to be capable of just kind of letting it go. But, you know, most of us struggle with this, even when we know we can't change what happened or we're not going to be able to change someone's mind. You know, one of my mentors used to say something along the lines of, if you can change it, change it. And if you can't change it, why worry about it? And man, did that jack me up when he first uh said it. And then, you know, as he repeated repeated it through the years for a while before I really uh, you know, got it. Uh, oh man, it made me get so triggered. Because, like, what do you mean? Don't worry about it if I can't change it. Like, not being able to change it doesn't take away the pain or the suffering or the anger or the injustice of it. And really, I think that's what is at the core of this idea of letting go. You know, you understand that holding on is hurting you. You get that it's like keeping your hand on a hot stove. You know it's doing more harm than good. But it also feels as though your hand has been glued in place. Why? Why is it glued in place? And that's the question you need to start asking yourself. Not how do I let this go, but the why can't I? And believe me, I've been there. I know you've probably asked yourself this question. You've probably asked, why can't I just let this go?

What Am I Believing Right Now

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And that's why I want to come back to one of my favorite questions, which is, what am I believing? What am I believing about this situation? Right now, I personally am in the middle of a conflict where I'm trying to decide whether I should let something go. Do I walk away or do I fight? And it's tough because walking away feels wrong. Has that happened to you where you're in the middle of a conflict with someone and you can't figure out, like, do I keep fighting this fight? Is it worth it? Or do I just walk away? And right now, you know, walking away, when I think about that, well, that feels wrong. It feels on some level like I'm letting someone get away with something. So I asked myself this question, what am I believing? And two things came up immediately. First, I'm believing that my lack of fighting indicates that I'm okay with what they've done. That walking away is me saying, yes, go right ahead with this incredibly hurtful, wrong, unjust thing you're doing. And second, I'm believing that the only way my needs will be met is if I fight, is if I somehow force them to make things right. That fighting is the only way that I will get what I want. So then I asked myself, well, what do I know to be true? So let's deal with the first belief that walking away would mean I'm condoning their actions. Well, what do I know about forgiveness? Forgiveness doesn't mean you're okay with what someone did. It means you're saying, I won't injure myself further by continuing to carry this hate or anger. So me walking away wouldn't mean I'm condoning what happened. It would mean I'm choosing peace over rage. And you know, as I look ahead, do I want to carry this? I don't. I don't know that it's worth it. In some ways, it feels like it is, but in others, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if the emotional turmoil that this would create if I keep moving forward, is it really worth it? And I don't know that it is. And just on a slight tangent, I think it's also worth saying that forgiveness may be part of your path, but reconciliation may not be. You can forgive a rattlesnake for biting you because it's in their nature. That doesn't mean you need to like cuddle it, right? And the second belief that this is the one and only way I'm going to get my needs met, well, that's ludicrous. I mean, as soon as I said that out loud to myself and I recognized that that was part of what was holding me stuck, I laughed because I know it's ridiculous. I know that the divine God, whatever higher power you believe in, provides exactly what we need, exactly when we need it. We don't always see why. We don't always see how everything is going to work out in the moment. But when I look back over my life and all the things that I thought were the worst possible outcome, and how they've turned out to be such important guiding moments, such useful moments for me. Well, then I just can't sit in this place of thinking that even if this doesn't work out in my favor, it isn't eventually going to work out. I trust. I really do. I have faith. I have absolute faith in a higher plan. So the idea that this is the only way, the only one way that everything can possibly work out in my favor is just ridiculous. Okay,

Forgiveness Without Reconciliation

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great. So I have this understanding now. But the truth? I'm still grappling with it. I haven't completely let it go. There's still this 5% of me that's really angry. I'm still incredibly frustrated and resentful about the injustice of the situation. Sorry, I'm being vague. It's just the situation is still a work in progress, and I just can't share more than that, though. Someday I'm sure I will. My point in all of that this and asking what I am believing is that it gave me clarity about why I can't just let this go. And that clarity allows me to give some compassion to myself, to feel like, okay, I'm not failing. It's understandable that I'm feeling this way and that I am not at the point where I can let it go completely. But is that clarity enough? Short answer is no, not at all. And it's probably not enough for you either. You know, those of you who are holding on to anger or fear or hurt, you just can't let it go, right? And that's probably why you're listening to this episode. Clarity doesn't always bring closure.

What Anger Is Protecting

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So another good question to ask is what is this anger trying to protect? Because a lot of us, when we can't let something go, it's because we're angry about it, right? So we can ask ourselves, is it protecting my dignity, my sense of justice, my hope that someone will finally acknowledge what they did? Is it trying to prevent me from ever being hurt like this again? Because before I ask that anger to leave, I may need to understand what job it thinks it's doing. And still, after understanding all of that, we still might not be able to let something go. But while we want to give ourselves grace, we also have to be honest with ourselves. We have to ask hard questions of ourselves, like, is my anger proportional to what actually happened? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Have I become so attached to my righteous anger that I'm holding on to it because I've become identified with it? You know, these are all parts of a much larger conversation. I just wanted to acknowledge that element here. You know, the hard truth is that some things just take time, like grief. It takes the time it takes. We don't get to decide how quickly we feel okay after we've lost something or someone. And when we can't let something go, there is often an element of loss involved. Maybe it's the loss of control, the loss of something tangible, the loss of self-respect. Who knows? But there may be something here that you're grieving. And grief doesn't operate according to our preferred timeline. Maybe letting go isn't always the right phrase. Maybe sometimes we aren't being asked to let go of the person, the love, or even the fact that something mattered deeply. Maybe we're being asked to learn how to hold it differently, how to carry it without allowing it to consume us. And that almost always happens gradually. It's on a spectrum of time, of understanding. I often

Human Pain And Divine Perspective

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think about this in terms of the spectrum between spiritual and human understanding. From a spiritual perspective, we may be able to grasp, fully have clarity about how a situation is for us, what it's teaching us, how it's helping us grow, how we're evolving through it. I mean, take my childhood with my mom. Long before she passed, I understood why she was the way she was. I understood the childhood experiences that shaped her into the person and the type of mother she became. But that understanding, that higher perspective, it didn't help me forgive her before she died. It didn't stop me from carrying hurt and hatred and guilt and shame about our dynamic for years and years. Why? Because as much as I am a divine being, as much as you are a child of the divine, you're also human. I'm human. We are both divine and human. And sometimes it takes a little while for the human side to catch up with the spiritual, for the two ends of that spectrum to integrate, stabilize, and create harmony. I talked about this much more thoroughly in episode 67. But the central idea, the pertinent thought is that, you know, we live life looking at every experience we have through two perspectives at once, the human and the divine. You know, the divine part of us may be capable of seeing that life is not random, that an experience may be teaching us something profound, useful, you know, revealing something, helping us grow. But our human selves still experience betrayal as betrayal, loss as loss, pain as pain. Holding the divine perspective does not require us to deny the human one. In fact, doing that, denying our human pain is spiritual bypassing. Accountability is still important. Boundaries are still important. Feeling our anger, our grief, our fear, our resentment is still important. We cannot transform something we refuse to experience. You have to feel it to heal it. It's one of those annoying cliche phrases that you hear all the time, but that's only because it's true. Pretending you don't feel something when you do, you're not doing yourself any favors. You know, sometimes we can see through our divine perspective, our divine lens, like putting glasses on that show you only the divine qualities of a situation, and we can understand the larger lesson. Other times we are firmly wearing our human glasses, and all we can see is the hurt. And most often we oscillate between the two. It doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It means integration is a process. And I'm sharing all of this because I think we all need the reminder sometimes that struggling to let something go isn't a character flaw. It doesn't mean you're failing your spiritual curriculum. It doesn't mean you're never going to move past a situation. It just means not yet. It means you have the opportunity to ask yourself, what does my heart need in this situation? Do I need to work on self-compassion? Do I need to revisit teachings on forgiveness? Is it time to pull out Byron Cady's questions and run myself through them? Do I need some nervous system regulation? Do I need to get in to see my craniosacral therapist or set a boundary or have a conversation, take action? Or do I just need more time? When we can't let something go, it's feedback. It's our system, our soul telling us that there is something unfinished here. The real challenge is figuring out what we need to do to close the chapter, to finally take our hand off the stove.

Five Tools To Move Forward

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So here are five suggestions to help you begin. First, try the expressive writing protocol I discuss in episode five. It is science-backed. It only takes about 15 to 20 minutes, four times. Basically, writing freely about what happened may help you uncover unconscious beliefs and recognize what's keeping the experience emotionally unfinished. Second, like I mentioned, try Byron Cady's The work, which I discuss in episode 104. This process gives you specific questions to ask about the thoughts and beliefs causing you pain. It may help you identify another perspective, you know, question what you believe to be true and recognize what the situation is trying to teach you. Now, the caveat I'll give with this one is that, you know, we can't see what we can't see. And sometimes when we ask ourselves these questions, we might just come up with a whole lot of, I don't know. And that's why having a counselor, a therapist, a bartender, you know, somebody who tends to be able to give you a different perspective might be super useful. Also, just reading her book, because she gives a lot of examples. So you might see yourself in one of those examples. Um, you know what? I'm also going to mention uh your soul's plan. Uh that's another book that's really good. Now it comes at it more from the um kind of uh what is your soul here to learn perspective, as opposed to the practical approach Brian Katie has, but it's a great book and it also might give you kind of ideas about why you might be experiencing something. Okay. Uh third, regulate your nervous system. I talk about this in detail in episode 81. I can't stress it enough. We humans do not function well when we are dysregulated. We don't make good decisions, we don't see clearly, we become reactive, repetitive, consumed by the threat. We go into our confirmation bias. You know, before you try to do the deeper work or make a major decision about how to move forward, help your system stabilize. You know, try meditation, breath work, grounding, certain movements, craniosacral therapy, you know, whatever reliably helps your body feel safer and more subtled. Fourth, ask whether something still needs to be done. You know, sometimes we aren't able to let something go because we're trying to find peace with something that is still actively harming us, or because a necessary step remains untaken. Like, is there a boundary you need to set? A truth you need to speak, a conversation you need to have? Do you need to ask for accountability? Make amends, seek information, you know, remove yourself from a situation. I talk about this a lot. So there's a number of episodes you can reference, but you might want to start with 102 and 103 about boundaries. You know, letting go does not always mean walking away. We talked about that last week, actually. Uh, it doesn't mean staying silent, and it doesn't mean allowing someone to continue hurting you. Sometimes the path to peace requires action first. And lastly, fifth, give yourself time and support. Some experiences cannot be processed in a journal entry, a meditation, or a single moment of insight. Sometimes our spiritual understanding arrives long before our bodies and our emotions are ready to catch up. This is not failure. Talk with a trusted friend, a therapist, a mentor, a practitioner. Let someone help you hold what feels too heavy to carry alone. And give yourself permission to not be finished yet.

Grace Support And Next Steps

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I want to leave you with just some encouragement and reassurance. Your inability to let something go does not tell you whether you are passing or failing your spiritual curriculum. It indicates that you are at a crossroads where curiosity is going to be your best friend. Maybe the whole point of the situation is to give you an opportunity to learn how to offer yourself deep compassion. That in and of itself is an important skill. Maybe it's time for you to stand up for yourself. Maybe there's a grief you haven't fully allowed yourself to feel. Or maybe it really is about learning deep acceptance. I don't know. But I do know that beating yourself up because you're struggling with someone or something isn't useful. So stop the self-flagellation. Stop demanding that you should be over it by now. But do get honest with yourself. Are you staying stuck simply because this is what you've gotten used to? Because it's the only way you know how to be anymore. If you've been carrying something for five, 10, 30 years, telling the same story and feeling the same pain, maybe it's time to ask yourself harder, different questions. If you don't know what questions to ask, find someone who does. Be willing to listen to the answers. And then do what needs to be done to begin moving forward. You owe that to yourself and to the people who love you. Don't stop simply because you don't yet know how to release the pain. You may not be able to change what happened, but you are not meant to spend the entirety of your life suffering because of it. But be smart about it. Like she was. You know, get support. If what you've been doing hasn't helped, try something new. And please give yourself grace as you navigate something genuinely hard. Patreon members, I have notes from today's episode waiting for you, along with cheat sheets for Byron Katie's The Work, the Expressive Writing Protocol, and the nervous system regulation stuff. If you have not checked out the membership yet, follow the link in the show notes and you can try it for a week for free. Until next time, remember, know who you are, love who you've been, and be willing to do the work to become who you are meant to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal, and seek the support you need to thrive.