The Stages of Letting Go, and Why it’s so Hard
The reasons we hold onto the past is individual to each of us. We create memories with loved ones that we want to cherish, we want to cling onto that feeling of a carefree childhood, perhaps you will remember that moment when you finally achieved that goal you’d been working towards. These are all good things to remember, and you shouldn’t let go of these, but not everything we go through and remember is positive.
Holding onto negative experiences and emotions doesn’t help to be a better person. It doesn’t prepare you for life. Instead, it holds you back. We all want to feel positive about ourselves, and feel like we are living our best life, and one of the main aspects that hinders this is not letting go. People who struggle to let go of negativity are subconsciously defining who they are from their past, not the person they want to become. If you want to live your best life, letting go of specific events is something that has to be done, because if you’re living in the past, then you are unable to grow and be the person you wish to be in the future.
The reasons behind people’s reluctance to let go varies from person to person. However, the difficulty behind it can often be the individuals fear of change. In life, we get comfortable in our environments. We surround ourselves with people we love and trust, do things that give us pleasure and joy and ultimately, are able to enjoy what we have, but nothing stays the same forever. Change is a natural part of life, both externally with events you can’t change, and internally for the events that you can. As mentioned, people who struggle to let go often define themselves by their past, and letting go of this past, makes them worry about losing part of their identity.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was a Swiss-American psychiatrist who pioneered near-death studies and the ‘Kubler-Ross Model’, which focused on the five stages of grief. She also researched the act of letting go, and just like grief, came up with the five stages that one goes through when trying to release past negative emotions.
Timpo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Here are the stages:
DENIAL – Denial is a very common emotion to go through. We avoid accepting certain situations as reality, because it is easier to deny them of that reality. As humans, we often seek the easier choice, and will turn away from difficulty as we might not know how to deal with it. If you were to receive some bad news, you might end up hoping that it isn’t true, even telling yourself that it cant be true. Denying acceptance. This stage is usually short lived, as denial is one of the overwhelming emotions that we can experience when we’re shocked. After this comes sadness, but it can also lead to:
ANGER – When bad things happen, again, because it’s easy, we can automatically assume that we’re the only person affected, and become angered as a result. We question ourselves. ‘Am I to blame?’, ‘Why did this happen to me?’. What this creates and eventually promotes, is a mindset of self-doubt. Again, anger is usually fairly short lived, however, those questions can always be present, and can turn into multiple what ifs. When this happens, according to Kubler-Ross, you have entered the third stage.
BARGAINING – In the bargaining stage, we cling on to hope that it’s not true. As mentioned, we can start to ask ourselves questions like, ‘What if I had done this?’, ‘What if I forgive them?’. It’s at this stage that we tend to notice that change is upon us, yet because we fear it, and what it might bring, we go against truth, in the hope for comfort, but at the expense of pain. People can be in this stage for a long time, and it’s often where people get hurt again. For example, if your good friend steals from you, or your partner runs off with someone else, you might forgive them. But if they do it again, the pain you experience can be doubled. When this happens, and you finally do something about it, you can enter stage four.
DEPRESSION – This is the penultimate stage of letting go, and it’s the toughest too. The depression stage is where you realise what has happened, understand the consequences and the possible futures, but they haven’t fully accepted it. The reason why is because they cling on to hope, and that accepting it is like you’re closing the chapter of a book that was so good for so many reasons, but you may never experience them again. However, once you’ve accepted it, you can start to move forward once more.
ACCEPTANCE – Here, you’ve accepted what has happened. You have realised that there is nothing you can do to change it, and instead move on, not to be held back by certain events. It can still be difficult to think about, but the thing to remember is that you understand it, and you don’t let the events of the past, affect the events of your future.