How to Grow When You Feel You Can’t Let Go
On moving forward with life, even when it feels the hardest.
Whether the growth we’re looking for is development of our character or goal acquisition, the yearning to move forward is natural to latch onto. Advancing our position cognitively/physically/mentally is necessary to function in this constantly changing environment, if we don’t adapt, we literally remain stuck in the past! Unfortunately, we’re also taught that our inability to let go can hinder progress so greatly that eventually we’re left feeling that failure is inevitable. Phrases such as, “move on,” and “get over it” fall into the list of things we should do. We end up believing that without following this misguided pseudo-advice we’ll become defeated.
A paradigm shift
The power here lies in shifting the ability of “moving on” to the ability of acknowledging our past with gratitude for how it’s served us. In doing so, our past remains a part of us, just one that doesn’t hurt when the memory arrives.
Trauma-based care teaches us that everyone holds baggage that cannot simply be left in a closet to age. What we forget is that baggage doesn’t equate with negative. Our past forms who we are, for better or worse. We are products of circumstance, environment, and nurture. Events, and the feelings associated with them, can follow us through life. If a woman was left at the altar, we wouldn’t expect her to not carry fear of abandonment. When a man totals his car during an ice storm, it’s logical for him to have anxiety when wintery weather rolls around. Those events were traumatic and, as such, now carry an impact through their lives.
Trauma isn’t positive or negative; good or bad. It’s our personal perceptions that dictates how we view it. Therefore, it is thoughtless to judge another’s experience based on the way you have (or think you would) experience the same event or emotion.
For example, just because your ex was able to find a happy life with a new partner after a breakup doesn’t mean you can’t be deeply struggling to stay afloat (regardless of how long you’ve been separated). Thinking about how you should be able to forget and move on, simply because your previous partner has already moved on is only conducive to staying in the loop of toxic positivity.
This attempt to constantly batter negative thinking into ‘positive vibes only’ is in itself toxic. “Letting it go” can be equivalent to shoving emotions down deeper into remission, where they just fester.
Instead, we can let it flow. This way, we’ll still carry baggage that has shaped us, but now the size and weight of it can shift. You move from resisting discomfort, to accepting it.
Accepting this mindset does not mean convincing yourself that everything is fine or saying that pessimistic thinking is great. It’s giving your thoughts permission to exist regardless of moral value attached.
Feeling your feelings isn’t easy, letting them go to the wayside is sometimes the option that feels easiest. This is especially true regarding emotional or physical pain. That being said, grief doesn’t have a timeline. Healing will never be linear.
As much as we wish it would, nurturing ourselves and promoting self-love will not erase our past. What that effort can do is change our relationship to our past, to our trauma, and to our pain.
Our past promotes our growth. Our job is to stop fighting it, so we can truly move forward.
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