What is the hardest part about letting go?

Journal Prompt #41: What's the hardest part about letting go?

What does letting go mean? Letting go is accepting that you have no control over the situation, person, etc. and allowing the feelings associated with it to no longer impact you.

You can still feel the feelings, as you should, but it is about not letting them control your perception of the situation once they flow through you.

The hardest part for me, about letting go is the fact that I will no longer be in control. Once being diagnosed with OCD, it made a lot of sense as to why I felt the need to be in control. It is theorized that OCD stem from having big life changes, trauma, or abuse. Mine most likely came from a little bit of all of them. Starting with abuse and trauma and accelerated once big life changes kept happening. There will be a point in time when I talk about my trauma and the abuse that I overcame, not on the blog for now thought.

Letting go of control has been one of the most challenging and growth moments for me in these past couple of years. I think the best part about learning to let go was the freedom that came with it. I released attachments to feelings, memories, things and found freedom in being in the present.

I am working on being on my phone a lot less, repurposing things in my house, donating them or finding a good home for them. We, as a society, take so much pride in owning things, collecting, etc., and I started a little collection recently that makes me happy. Trust me, I get the dopamine from it. I would rather really love the things that I have over liking the abundance of things in my home. I take a lot more pride in the things that I own, the plants in my home and the food I eat due to this fact.

Back to the topic at hand, the hardest part of letting go is again, releasing control. I used to want to be in control of my entire life, the things I said and did, the things other people said and did, down to the second. It was exhausting and frustrating when things did not go as planned. I had panic attacks, I lashed out on my own body and I also would have to curl up into a ball and rock myself into a calm state again. It was embarrassing and I felt immature whenever it happened. I did not realize at the time these were large signs of a mental illness and that it was treatable. Once understanding this a bit more and experiencing the relief of symptoms I became hyper fixated on healing.

This looked like me setting hard and aggressive boundaries quickly and sticking to them, changing my diet, my exercise and anything else that I wanted to be "fixed". It was something that I could feel that once I was able to align with- that I would be able to help my symptoms.

It took a lot of therapy to learn to let go too. I had to learn why I wanted to be in control. It felt like the only way to be safe and keep my body safe was to be in control. Now, I know that I can say no and be okay with someone else's feelings being hurt in order to ensure that me and my body are safe. Those are the only feelings that I can control.

Once you learn to let go, everything seems to fall into place quite nicely, it is a slow process as it should be. Nothing worth lasting a long time will need to be rushed. I encourage you to let go of what you think is holding you back so that you can move forward with the least resistance.