Yearly reflections and musings

Looks like I'm flying into 2026 feels wonderful

But do we ever let go?

This year I’ve been toying with the idea that I don’t actually let go of anything.

In mindfulness I’ve reflected a lot this year, focusing on connecting with others and with how I have a relationship with myself amongst other things.

The question that’s kept coming back has been

“ How can I let go of something that has become part of me”?

The past, habits, patterns, feelings, thoughts, meanings for example.

Then I got to thinking how do I change if I don’t let go of the hard, sad or bad stuff?

I concluded I don’t actually let go, because how do we do that?

Letting go sounds simple right … buts it far from simple because some things stick to us like glue.  Once it’s in our minds, it’s in there, some stuff from our traumatic pasts can’t be simply let go of, we simply can’t let go of what our senses have taken in. 

CAN WE?

We can’t simply pluck it out and throw it away and start again, especially if it’s a negative thought and it becomes intrusive.

Have you ever tried to  let go of intrusive thoughts?  In my experience the harder we try the more the thoughts push and push to be heard, to be the loudest.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT!

We’ve heard the statements; I’m a work in progress!  I’m not a fixed Being, or I’m under construction! 

These statement imply we are not fixed but a flowing, shapeshifter but what shifts?

Well we are full of energy all emotions, all thoughts, beliefs and meanings are energy since they are not objects, we can’t pick up or touch them we can only know them in our inner world and let others know by communicating to our inner world to them.

Everything we day or do or don't' say or do tells us about the other and ourselves the knack is to be able to read what is being expressed.

Like I’m doing here, what you are reading is my energy put down on paper.

We’ve also heard I’m a product of my past; I have many chapters; my favourite is I’m a lighthouse in a storm, to others and myself equally.

They are used often and mean I’m changing, flowing and on the odd occasion I’ve become a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes, when I’ve a hard, deep challenge to change something completely and forever.

All of the above are metaphors to express renewal and transformation.

Notice I wrote transformation that implies change.

WHAT I’VE NOTICED ABOUT CHANGE IS:

We can’t simply let something go once something is in our mind it’s in there and many times it often settles into each and every cell of our body and becomes our comfort zone even when that comfort is negative. 

The material, our story becomes familiar and what we know, we repeat our story and it becomes easier to believe what is familiar but this results in making a stronger attachment to the familiar and even harder to let  go not easier.

Life becomes a battle within; our subconscious mind and unconscious mind eventually absorbs the story and plays it on silent over and over again.

Oft times we become this story.  Its what we believe, it what  we know to be true.

But it leaks out in our behaviours, thoughts, feelings and becomes a bunch of racket feelings.  In Transactional Analysis racket feelings are emotional responses developed to cope and mask our true feelings.  Often resulting from our Childhood experiences and trauma but no longer serve us as adults in the here and now.

They are borne from parental and significant others influence and emotional conditioning, we learn our responses and they become ingrained within us, they become part of us. 

With the familiarity the racket feelings substitute our authentic feeling, when we are overwhelmed or stressed these racket feelings do nothing to help us survive or solving the issues at hand in the here and now.  Simply because they are not appropriate to this adult situation, they worked once upon a time as a Child but don’t support us now we are adults.

So when we are asked to let go, what our sub and unconscious mind hears is let go of yourself or parts of yourself”. 

It’s never going to happen because our biology default is survival, which protects our individual Organismic Self by default.  Our Organismic Self endeavours for growth and self-actualisation.

Humanistic Psychology

In Humanistic Psychology our Organismic Self or true Self strives to reach its fullest potential from birth, created in the process of gestation nothing can turn our true and genuine nature off. 

Our genuine nature can’t be affected by societal expectations, our true nature, our real and genuine nature is unfiltered by external validations it is real, true and natural.   

But it needs the right conditions to grow and develop like a flower which needs sunlight, water and safety to grow, our real nature needs the best conditions to grow and develop.

But in essence what happens to humans is, through our life experiences, we get blocked, sabotaged, traumatised, oppressed and repressed so all we can focus upon is surviving or even just existing.  Our Internal Valuing Process that is how we evaluate our experiences, our capacity to develop or hinder our natural growth also builds our self-worth  or lack of.   

Without the right conditions from our environment, our relationships with other and how safe we feel in our inner world.  Carl Roger the founder of Humanistic psychology proposed the right conditions are Empathy, Congruence, Non-judgmentalness and two people in psychological contact. In these ways we co-regulate our nervous systems and can work to uncover or real nature.

This is  seen in counselling relationships and offers us an Internal Locus of Evaluation that is trusting of self, can identify our own value systems and live by them, trusts our personal lived experiences and doesn’t let anyone else tell us how to feel or how it was.  Were able to be in tune with our needs when they arise and can make choices that feel authentic and genuine to ourselves.

That is opposite to what most people have an External Locus of Evaluation which seeks approval and opinions from others, because it doesn’t trust its own self and believes in others more.  Having an external locus of evaluation means we are always looking for outside approval, reassurance and doesn’t trust our own instincts always looking for external evaluation.

 Sound familiar?

If we grew up with criticism, neglected, were traumatised, in external environments that were  chaotic rather than stable, nurturing or safe we are likely to have an external locus of evaluation.

That is until we seek to find the right environment to thrive within.

But still I don’t believe we ‘Let Go’.

Instead of letting go we:

• Accept – how life is and has been, we can’t change what’s happened

• Recognise – patterns, habits, meaning, automaticity of out behaviours, we also recognise its what happened to us in the past. Not what's wrong with us! We also recognise what happens inside us that makes all the difference

• Replace it with something else – e.g. a negative thought into a more affirmative thought. What we do is put something in its place but that doesn’t remove the void it fills it with something more meaningful.  The void is still there it just changed shape.

• Shift - our perspective, through reflections, mindfulness, explorations, talking it through with another person you trust or engage with a counsellor.

• Change - the meaning we hold about something, this disempower the ‘hold’ our past has upon us for example.

• Fill the void – e.g. we can’t simply let go of isolation or emptiness, can we?

• Make it different - e.g. when we want to lose weight, we don’t stop eating we change the food stuff we eat.

• Disempower - the context of the stuff by exploring the beliefs we have about it

• Shifting our belief system  - to become healthier for ourself.

• Learn new skills - e.g. emotional intelligence, self-compassion – acknowledging and processing our feelings rather than oppressing them.

All the above transform and help us to grow around what we already know and believe. 

They don’t support us to let go of anything what they do is support us to transform ourselves to something healthier with a different outlook on our lives.

Supports us to weaken our attachment with what has been keeping us stuck.  Which helps us to be more flexible psychological, expand the flow our body is able to engage in. Strengthens our resiliency and our trust in ourself to face the challenges life throws at us.

We replace the original material and the context it sits within, because if we don’t our mind fills the gaps and its usually fills it with more of what it already knows, because it doesn’t know anything different at this point.  

What we think of as negative because our brain and nervous system is pre-programmed to pick up any threat however small, real or perceived to help us as an Organismic Self to survive, come what may.

We go round and round in never ending circles stuck on the same trajectory until we do something different. Until we start to think differently, do differently and take action differently.

So next time you are using your energy to let go of something – Stop-Pause-Breathe and thing what you could do with this energy to support your development and growth.

If you want to know more, I offer a free 30 mins video call so we can meet before our first session. Contact me at email: pendulumofpeace8@gmail.com text or WhatsApp message to 07867938630 if you do leave a message please state your name and lets connect and realise your fullest potentials.