Learning to Let Go

Attachment shapes our life from childhood to adulthood. We form a connection with our parents, our acquaintances, relatives and other people. And these early interaction have an impact on all future relationships.  When these relationships change, or when we experience a loss, we are faced with the difficult process of letting go.

The problem is:  we usually don’t want to let go. We want to continue the attachment that has given us such fulfillment. We often want to continue the attachment even when it is already irrational for us.

Your friend needs to go to another school for the next school year. There is nothing else left to do but to learn how to let go and allow him/her to make the decisions that she needs to make for her life. You already made some mistakes here — and both of you have long separate ways to go.

Letting them go couldn’t keep you from making some mistakes but it will help you understand your own feelings and avoid making other blunders.

There has been many written works about the process of coping up with loss. Some have divided grief into stages. The most common stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Recent work suggests that these are tasks not stages. We all go through them in a different order, and we have to work through them rather than passively experience them. The final stage, acceptance, involves letting go and moving on.

Even though letting go is hard to do, we still gain health benefits from it. People who worry a lot and hold on to problems may be more vulnerable to physical problems than people who are able to let go. By learning to let go of cares, worries, anger, deadline pressure, school work, projects etc., we may be lengthening our lives. We are certainly making them more enjoyable.