Letting Go

by Carolyn Barker


Many of us have heard about the letting go process in relation to our thinking, and some people have commented on the difficulties they experience in this practice. The area of concern is in grasping just what 'letting go' means.

To help facilitate a better understanding of our thinking, it may be useful to use an illustration. Imagine that you are the owner and passenger in a horse drawn carriage. Each and everyday the coachmen has gone on his way. You haven't given him any direction or any indication of where you want to go to. He just drives around following his own particular route. One day you tell the coachmen to pull over and stop as you now want to drive. He seems very taken back. He is so used to being in control, he has forgotten you are the owner and he doesn't want to pull over. So he keeps going. You ask him again and, if necessary, again and again, until eventually he does pull over and stops.

Our thinking is the coach driver, and we're the passenger and also the owner. Letting go is similar to telling the driver to pull over. The driver feels he is in control so he doesn't want to. So we have to keep telling him to pull over, again and again. Eventually the coach driver will not only pull over, he will stop and you will have control of the carriage. We need to let go, or 'pull over' our thought patterns again and again, but eventually they will 'pull over' and stop and you will have control of your thinking.

When we practice being aware, mindful of our thinking, we realise how much time we spend allowing our thinking to direct the way. Our thinking has us totally involved in what we did yesterday, last week or last year. We bring memories and their associated emotional responses from the past into the present, and project them into the future. Even when we know we're doing this, the thoughts keep re-emerging. This is particularly apparent when the memories have a high emotional component. Intellectually we know we cannot change the past by merely thinking about it, but still our minds continue to become bogged down by the practice of analysing and dissecting the memories and projecting them into the future.

Being aware of how we are thinking, also assists us to become aware of how we are responding physically to that thinking. We begin to see how the anxiety and panic is created through our thought processes. We know the panic is a reaction to stress. We may know that is it is not going to harm us. It hasn't yet and it isn't going to. We need to stop projecting our fear into future attacks. We need to learn why there is no reason to be afraid of it.

We need to let go of our memories of how bad things have been. We need to let go of the 'what ifs'. We need to let go of the panic by letting it happen and not hold the panic to us by our thinking. We need to let go of the anxiety by letting it happen and not hold the anxiety to us by our thinking. We need to let go, we need to 'pull over' our thinking. What are we going to achieve by this ?  The panic and anxiety will stop and we will have control.

It needs to be noted that it is not only our thoughts about anxiety and panic that help to perpetuate them. It can also be other thoughts which can provoke anxiety and panic. Hence the need to be aware. To be mindful. 

Our thoughts are just going around and around. Sometimes, while thinking through a situation we come to the point where we feel satisfied. It is usually accompanied by a thought, 'OK, now I understand' or 'OK I've got that out of my system' and we think we can put it away for good. But other times, the persistence of some thoughts can lead to considerable frustration and even anger, which in turn only increases them even more. 

Both our thinking and behaviour are a response to that need to feel in control and safe. When we are thinking through a problem in our minds, we rarely feel safe to give it up until we sense that the conclusion reached produces that feeling of order , acceptability and safeness.

The need for order is most noticeable in that period just prior to sleep. If we watch our minds at work, we notice our thinking dwelling on an event or situation which, for some reason, was not resolved during the day. So, even though it's only in our minds, we feel that, provided we can sort through these problems and bring some kind of acceptable order, we can let it go and pass onto the next subject. When our mind feels everything is in order, we experience a sense of well being and satisfaction.

The same thing happens when we watch a movie. The storyline evolves with drama, action and emotion which reaches a climax and concludes by tying all the ends together to round it off with a happy and satisfying conclusion. However, if it's one of those movies that leads the audience to make up their own conclusion as to the outcome we feel frustrated, cheated and perhaps even angry. The difference between them is that one has satisfied our need for order and the other did not. 

In the same way our mind is tied up in that search for order and safety and our thinking does not want to let go until this point it reached. 

A lot of anxiety manifests because we are trying to bring order to the past where our thinking is incapable of changing events. More anxiety arises from wanting order in the future and we use the 'what if' thoughts to help us achieve that sense of safeness and order. This is why it can be so difficult to just let go and not become involved in it. 

Letting go seems so foreign to us. It goes against everything our conditioning tells us to do. Something inside us nags away, insisting that if we let go, then the worst will happen. But the worst hasn't happened yet and it won't happen now. Experience will teach us. Letting go gives us the control we need. Telling the coachmen to pull over, puts us in the driver's seat.

Reprinted with the permission of the Panic Anxiety Disorder Association Inc, Newsletter, February 2001