How to let go

 You've probably heard this before many times, but just let it go! Except, how do you actually do that? How do you just let things go? Especially things that really really hurt you! 

You can't force yourself to let go, that would be like telling a child to just grow up, they can't force themselves to grow any faster, but simultaneously there are times when you need to know when the child is just acting less grown with a firm but fair attitude. It's a difficult balance, and the same is with yourself. You have to be able to know when you are genuinely still processing something and when you are just moping for the sake of it. Usually if you are just moping for the sake of it there is some other underlying reason connected to something completely different compared to when you really are just still processing an experience. 

Like a child if they are acting up for the sake of it they are actually trying to give you a message about something else but they don't know how to communicate it with you and so they communicate by throwing silly tantrums and pretending they can't do something that they really can compared to when they genuinely don't know how to do something that is being asked of them. 

My youngest for example always acts very babyish when we have to get ready for school, they pretend that they can't walk or stand and they whine about it. I know of course that they can get themselves ready and walk properly, what they are trying to tell me is that they don't like it and they don't understand why they must do this every morning instead of what they want to do. They don't know how to communicate in a way that will get them the result they want and so they revert back to the only thing they know that might have any success, except that also does not work. It won't be too long before they try faking sickness to skive off school. 

There may be some times when you feel like you can't let go of something someone did to you even if logically you know it is quite trivial, but because you haven't learnt to communicate with younger versions of yourself that are still hurting from the past their hurt mixes with the trivial hurt and you find yourself holding a grudge. 

Other times you haven't been able to process the experience that hurt you yet and that is why you are unable to let go. 

So how do you let go ? You process what it is that you are holding on to, this isn't something that you force yourself to do, you don't force processing and you don't force letting go. 

So how do you process what the experience was? This depends on what it is you need to process and the age you were when it happened. If you are struggling to let go of something that happened when you were a child it is that version of you that doesn't know how to process what happened, you can help that child version of you by revisiting the experience from your perception now. If it is something that happened more recently you need to figure out whether it is you that can't process or a younger part of you not processing. 

How do you communicate with younger versions of yourself? This is different for everyone, much like everyone's learning process is different. Some people learn auditorily (hearing) and so hearing a conversation with yourself, speaking out loud or listening to recordings might be the best way to do it. Other people are more visual and so imaging a scene or even writing it out and reading it back might be the best way. Some people are kinaesthetic with is touch learning and so being able to imagine the feelings would help you process. Most people are a mixture of learning styles and so processing would be a mixture. I am part kinaesthetic and part visual. I find writing things out and imaging the words I'm writing or going into a relaxed state and imaging a scene with as much senses helps me process the best. I do learn a little with sound but not very much so that is not something I use very much.

So now you have figured out what your learning style is which will be the same as your processing style, they are one and the same. Now what do you do? Well to process something from the past what it means is to learn from it, you aren't able to let something go because you didn't know what you were supposed to be learning from it. So something that happened in childhood whether deeply traumatic or just simply too advanced for your age would be to go back to that experience as yourself now and the younger version of you back then and show yourself what you needed to understand. (You are safe *now, you are loved *now*,  you are worthy *now*, it was *not* your fault, or it was just a mistake and that is *okay*). 

Letting things go can be very emotional, if you feel that you are not very stable it could be harmful to try this with out processional support. Please make sure that you have the right type of support before you ever attempt to do anything like this by yourself. I myself do not always try these processes alone, I often have professionals help guide me especially with traumatic experiences that are very emotional.

-Tiny Diny