Thoughts on Letting Go

Thoughts on Letting Go — letting go is all about learning what you can control, and what you can’t. And not whining about it.

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Here’s a quote from Susan Camp­bell, a Cal­i­for­nia ther­a­pist and train­er. Back in the 80s Susan worked with Ben & Jock; she had a hand in the cre­ation of their Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Model.

“Bas­ing our self-esteem on the abil­i­ty to con­trol peo­ple and events actu­al­ly keeps us feel­ing out of control.”

It’s about control.

And cou­pled with that are oth­er buzz­words: “pow­er­less­ness,” “can’t con­trol anoth­er,” “not to fix,” “out­comes,” “reg­u­late.”

One of the goals of ther­a­py is help­ing peo­ple to learn the dif­fer­ence between what is pos­si­ble to con­trol and what is not. The best way to do this is to intro­duce them to their own skin, so that they start work­ing only with­in that wrap­per.

Here’s a “truth” for you:

When peo­ple attempt to “con­trol” — attempt to exert influ­ence either on the world around them or on the oth­ers who occu­py the world — they do so to push back their fear of irrel­e­vance, mean­ing­less­ness and death.

This is not to say that we admit to our games. 

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No, we point fin­gers; we blame:

• “But… but… it’s my (mar­riage, busi­ness, rela­tion­ship, job, fam­i­ly) and I “should” be able to con­trol what happens!”
• “But… but… I’m spe­cial! Every­one knows how spe­cial I am, and if they don’t, they should! If they real­ly loved me, they’d want to make me hap­py by doing it my way!”
• “But… but… I’m here for a high­er pur­pose! Why is the world thwart­ing me? I’m only try­ing to make it bet­ter for everyone!”

In oth­er words — we lie, we deny, we cheat, we play manip­u­la­tion games, we pout, we whine — and boy do we com­plain, all because the world will not coop­er­ate in our attempt to get oth­ers to give our lives meaning.

What we con­ve­nient­ly for­get is that all the oth­er peo­ple in our lives also have lives… and they want us to give pri­or­i­ty and mean­ing to theirs.

Every­one is “Wait­ing for Godot” to come along and make it all bet­ter. Life will be fun and things will get done, when all the exter­nal ducks line up and stay that way. And we wait… and we wait.

And then we die.

The key is learn­ing about exter­nal vs. inter­nal control.

• Exter­nal always requires the coop­er­a­tion of anoth­er thing or person.
• Inter­nal is where I have a mod­icum of con­trol. I can look at my meth­ods of inter­pre­ta­tion and my actions, notice which ones are work­ing for me and which ones aren’t — and I can “work” on the ones that aren’t. Any oth­er route is a sure path to disaster.

To assume that I am here to “make” oth­er adults behave accord­ing to my pre-con­ceived notions of how they should behave is both arro­gant and naïve. (Notice that this is what the man-child Trump is try­ing to do…)

If I assume that oth­er adults should put my needs ahead of theirs — either because I am more pow­er­ful or more needy than them (more spe­cial) — then I am both ego­tis­ti­cal and foolish.

Paradoxically, however, unless I retreat to a cave, all my actions and life are lived both “in here” and “out there.”

The ques­tion, then, is not an either/or one, but rather a ques­tion of how. For me, I see the approach that works as:

“A rig­or­ous, self-respon­si­ble, self-dis­ci­pline cou­pled with hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion and a will­ing­ness to let oth­ers be equal­ly self-respon­si­bly self-disciplined.”

In many respect, this simply means getting out of the way.

I am free to express my opin­ions, attempt to influ­ence sit­u­a­tions and oth­ers, and to state con­se­quences for “fail­ure to per­form.” If, for exam­ple, I am some­one’s boss, I have the right to expect a cer­tain lev­el of per­for­mance from an employ­ee and have the right to fire him  / her / them for non-per­for­mance.

But here’s the key: I am silly if I connect my feelings of self-worth to another’s compliance.

To go back to my inter­nal vs. exter­nal com­ment: what we’re talk­ing about is the acknowl­edge­ment that my inter­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the world are just that — mine.

The “non-functional” frame is all about treating others as “things” to be fixed. This frame of reference can be restated,

“I know bet­ter than that object over there how it should func­tion in the world.”

Now, if I am talk­ing about a refrig­er­a­tor, in gen­er­al I do know bet­ter than the refrig­er­a­tor what it ought to be doing. I once remem­ber hav­ing a refrig­er­a­tor in an apart­ment that got stuck on defrost. When I opened the door, every­thing had melt­ed and liq­uids were well over 100 degrees F. Pop bot­tles had “popped.” There was ooz­ing stuff everywhere.

Need­less to say, I did­n’t go, “Well, I thought a refrig­er­a­tor was sup­posed to keep things cool, but hey, obvi­ous­ly this one has oth­er plans and knows what it is doing.”

On the oth­er hand, I know a lot of peo­ple who would turn to their part­ner and scream, “What did you do to break the refrig­er­a­tor?” But I digress, again.

A more viable frame of reference is to remember that people are not objects.

The sim­ple solu­tion is to let go of the need to fix oth­ers to fit your erro­neous rep­re­sen­ta­tions of how they should be. Let it go. Work on you.

This is especially true for parents of adult children. 

• The worst mis­take any par­ent can make is to end­less­ly step in to fix, to cor­rect, to rescue. 
• Your “kids” are not around to be who you want the to be.
• It’s not in their best inter­est to be end­less­ly rescued.

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People aren’t refrigerators, and they aren’t roles.
They’re autonomous human beings.

Keep to your own pack­age, your own skin. God knows there’s enough to do in there for a lifetime.

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Here’s a lit­tle exer­cise for you… it works great for when you’re burn­ing with emo­tion and want to fix somebody.

1. Name your emo­tion by feel­ing it.
   Most of us “have” emo­tions, as opposed to explor­ing them. You feel what you feel, and with­out explo­ration, you look for who or what to blame. If you judge the feel­ing to be neg­a­tive, you try to repress it, or you “lose con­trol” and dump it.
   Instead, name the emo­tion: “This is anger.” “This is sadness.”
2. Own the emo­tion.
   As above, we have a fun­ny way of putting our emo­tions off on oth­ers: “(S)he made me angry, made me sad, made me hap­py.”
   The kick­er is no one is inside of you, mak­ing you feel stuff. That you, all the time, invent­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tions of peo­ple, dress­ing them up and putting words and deeds on them.
   They are doing what they do (out here) and you’re spin­ning it to fit your pre­con­ceived notions (in there.)
   Instead, say, “I am anger­ing myself,” or “I am mak­ing myself sad” or even “I am turn­ing me on.”
3. Dig deep and see what you want.
   Under­neath every feel­ing is a want. A desire. Might be to be seen as all-know­ing. Might be to be obeyed (“If you love me you’ll…”). Might be  to res­cue. Might be to not seem pow­er­less. What­ev­er.
   It’s right there, beneath the sur­face. Just look.
   You’ll want to look away, because you just know it’s some­body else’s fault…
   Instead, artic­u­late the want. “I have a burn­ing decide to be seen as the world’s best res­cuer…” Name it, and claim it.
4. Now, ask your­self: “What can I do to meet my own want?
   Maybe you want to rant, to blame, to res­cue. So, try it on your own.
   Just start talk­ing to your­self, per­haps in a mir­ror. Deliv­er the lec­ture you would have aimed at anoth­er to yourself.
5. Decide if you also want to talk your want through with anoth­er.
   Every­body needs one or two “equals” to work things through with. A will­ing spouse, friend, etc.
   I dis­cour­age par­ents doing this with their adult kids, as the pow­er imbal­ance is always there, acknowl­edged or not.
   And there is always ther­a­py. The pow­er imbal­ance is in the “right” direc­tion; it’s in the therapist’s hands.
6. Final­ly, do some­thing.
   find a way to express to your­self what you have learned. Reward your­self. Say nice things to your­self. Encour­age your­self to repeat this process every time.
   
   

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