The art of letting go
October 15, 2019 6:03 PM   Subscribe

How can I get better at letting things go? Misunderstandings, tense incidents, harsh words, things left unsaid. I have a rather compulsive need to talk an issue to death, which is great when you're talking to someone that shares this appreciation of the postmortem, and is a great way to fuel insight and growth. But not everyone does appreciate it, and it's not always an appropriate use of my time - but I can't seem to stop.

What's normal to expect on the continuum of "let everything go all the tine or at least attempt to but you're really suppressing it and going to eventually overflow with resentful vitriol" all the way to "postmortems on anything that didn't go as expected, even if it takes hours"?

I have literally lost sleep over this compulsion, annoyed my friends and family, and in my head I think "if we get to the bottom of this and are all committed to our personal work then this particular issue will never happen again" which... Yeah, I don't think that's how life really works but that's how my idealistic beliefs work. Deep dive, understand ourselves and others fully as we show up regarding the Thing, then it's all been made conscious and there won't be a reason for friction again. I guess that's how my mind works for this? The compulsion is postmortem for preventative purposes, I am sure of that. But I know this has to be so grating for the people close enough to me that I do this.

I want to be able to control it better. I want to be able to pick my battles and set something down mentally even if it didn't work out perfectly. I can't. I have a therapist and we are working on this but I want to hear how you or someone you know has dealt with such an issue before it kills me.
posted by crunchy potato to Human Relations (14 answers total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
I have a therapist and we are working on this but I want to hear how you or someone you know has dealt with such an issue before it kills me.

My therapist introduced me to ACT earlier this year. I'm learning the process to hone in on a few issues, one of which is endlessly ruminative thoughts. It's fairly straightforward, and has been helpful so far. It's a practice, not a permanent solution, but it feels good and active and sensible. Has this come up with your therapist? I'd be happy to recommend the workbook that my therapist had me get.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 6:11 PM on October 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


First of all from a personal experience standpoint it makes me feel very close to you that you are asking this question and needing an answer. It feels like a weight on you that the things that keep us from momentum in our relationships never have an end. You want closure yet you want things to change and without one you feel the other is a moot point.
For me the incessant overanalyzing quirk can really grate my nerves. If it is just the nit-picking irrelevant details or rehashing story lines with expansive memory lapses you never come out of the clear lane. You or "they" will always remember things differently. To let it go you have to be sure you have the fight mellowed. You dont always get the apology you want so you keep the argument on replay just in case another one shows up. Dont think too much about what the other person felt because you dont know how it is truly felt from their perspective. If it's a fault of your own and you truly feel remorseful think nothing of a chance to reverse the action and do better the next time the opportunity comes again. All you want really is peace. It has to be your mission to bring it even if it isnt your power. Stop thinking like that. You are whole and beautiful as the person you are. If you need a fresh start at a lost love then release yourself from blame and give the new friendship the chance you should have before.
posted by The_imp_inimpossible at 6:26 PM on October 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


It's good that you realize that your idealistic beliefs around this habit aren't based in reality. No extended dissection of an issue or event will inoculate your life against similar things happening again. Magical thinking is powerful, but being aware of it can help you minimize how much it intrudes on your life and relationships.

What helps me tremendously is writing it all down in detail. There's some kind of purge that happens when I write things down. I don't do anything with the writings and I don't share them, I just use writing to get it out of my system and to process the issue for myself.
posted by quince at 6:47 PM on October 15, 2019 [7 favorites]


"if we get to the bottom of this and are all committed to our personal work then this particular issue will never happen again" which... Yeah, I don't think that's how life really works but that's how my idealistic beliefs work.

To me this seems like a fairly succinct summary of the problem you’re facing. You know that what you’re doing now doesn’t work and yet you keep doing it anyway.

Completely projecting my own issues onto your situation I’m going to guess that moments of interpersonal tension are crises for you, and painful enough that you’ll choose to do something pointless over doing nothing at all. I suspect that anything you can do to regulate your internal reaction to that moment of stress will help — that is something that therapy can help with, as well as general anti-anxiety practices.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:58 PM on October 15, 2019 [6 favorites]


I think one thing that might be helpful about the post-mortem overanalyzing is to think of other possible deeper functions for you. Sure on the surface it might be preventative, I’ve found this kind of over-analyzing with other people can really be more a way of trying to regulate your own internal anxiety by dispersing it around to other people—and then that is frustrating for them of course. (tell me no lies describes it well—I think you’ll find relief with being better able to sit with your anxieties around interpersonal stressors vs trying to make sure they will ever happen again. Because they 100% will, no matter how well-intentioned people are.)
posted by namemeansgazelle at 7:34 PM on October 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


I have had this compulsion - and that's what it is - as well. I have found that the best defense is to recognize that what I'm assuming is going on is completely false. And this brings me back to the original truth: you are deciding how others will feel when it is neither your job nor your responsibility to do so. It is also not your bailiwick to even begin to guess what they are thinking/feeling/judging. You have to let go and let them come to you to tell you how they are feeling/thinking/judging whatever it is that you did.

This is a really hard thing to do because it requires that you drop the compulsive need to get to the bottom of everything and hash it out until there is nothing left. But, this is the way that it needs to be done because it is not your job to decide how others are going to respond or react. They are responsible for telling you if you have crossed a boundary or done something offensive.

This was the part that I kept getting hung up on - that I was not a consummate and good friend if I did not spend a great deal of time planning out my friends' reactions to my actions like a game of 3-D chess. The simple truth is that it was not my job. It was never my job. Of course, translating that into letting go has been a lot harder. But, I recognize it now and that has been a major step.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 7:40 PM on October 15, 2019 [15 favorites]


I agree with quince: write it down. Journal it. Writing is awesomely cathartic and when I write, something shifts in my consciousness. There's something magical about the act of writing, maybe having to do with the fact that you're having a conversation with yourself, I dunno. YMMV of course but I highly recommend it. Bonus is that now you have a written record to go back to and see your own thinking at the time.
posted by foxjacket at 9:53 PM on October 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


I related strongly to this not as something I do, but as something I endure.

I am very quick to move on from these situations, while my husband can spend days/weeks trying to figure out why something like this happened. I have a basic belief that the world is so complex that there is no way to anticipate every reaction from every person, and so when I find myself in one of these situations, I do spend a few minutes to see if I have violated some obvious and knowable, but unknown to me, universal standard. But, if it seems this was an idiosyncratic response, I give it almost no more mental energy.

My husband, on the other hand, feels like he should be able to figure out, in every situation, why it happened, and what he could have done differently to avoid it. Of course, he almost never does actually figure that out. He has gotten much better in the decade we have been together, spending less and less time trying to solve these puzzles of human interaction. He credits a phrase that I often say after such situations if it seems neither of us has acted in an egregious manner and the other person's action still seems inexplicable: "Other people's behavior is not about you." While this may or may not be literally true, it does seem to help with the process of moving on.

I am grateful that the statement helps him, but even if it didn't it is very useful for me once I feel we have gotten all we can from a brief postmortem of a situation he encountered. Perhaps, share it with the people in your life who do not wish to engage in the level of postmortem you typically engage in as way for them to let you know they no longer wish to discuss the incident.
posted by hworth at 10:27 PM on October 15, 2019 [13 favorites]


I am perhaps too good at letting things go (hello childhood survival mechanisms) but when it's too much even for me, I let myself say the crux of what I want to say out loud, privately. Writing is okay but I've found that sometimes it lets me fixate on the situation's details too much, when what I really want to do is let it go. Somehow physically saying the words helps with that. And sometimes the thing I need to say out loud is just an acknowledgement of the compulsion itself: "I am feeling a lot of anxiety/sadness/embarrassment/etc. about X having happened and really wish I could keep it from happening again." It takes a while, but consciously articulating and then gently returning as needed to a statement of fact like that often does take the emotional edge off of the internal clamoring to do something. I don't actually need to do anything. Feelings are valid and I don't need to fix them, though they'll lie and tell me I do.

My goal with this is to let some time pass so it becomes clear that the situation isn't as pressing as my brain made it out to be (assuming that seems likely to be the case; I am working on letting myself be angry in the moment or at least shortly after about things that deserve it), and that I can figure out whether I need other people to do anything on my own. Walking or doing something else repetitive is helpful to me in that process, so I can work through the issue mentally or quietly to myself but also have something else to think about when I need it.
posted by teremala at 12:55 AM on October 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


There's a difference between clearly expressing your feelings and needing everyone else to agree with them. That's the middle ground between "repress everything" and "relitigate everything" - you can say what you feel without turning it into a ten-hour struggle session.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:45 AM on October 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


Two go-to simple things that have helped me:
1. Go on a long walk and dialogue it out in your head. Like an hour walking alone with no distractions. Have a conversation with another person and what you'd say and think in the safe confines of your own mind.
2. Write out an email to someone with full detail, edit, edit... then leave for an hour and come back and 9 times out of 10 I'll delete before sending.
posted by hillabeans at 1:05 PM on October 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sounds like you have two separate things: you want to spend a lot of time thinking these things over, and you try to talk them over with other people.

While you are working on the first of those with your therapist, you can get control over the second by just not talking to people about that. If it's causing problems with other people in your life that you want to have these discussions, you can journal about them instead of having conversations about them.

I want to hear how you or someone you know has dealt with such an issue before it kills me

You might want to consider if inpatient treatment for this issue is the right choice for now. If you are desperately feeling like this issue is killing you right now, even if you don't have an appointment with your therapist you can call your therapist and let them know you are worried this is going to kill you and you need to go to inpatient treatment right away to have help with this problem. If you can't reach your therapist google for a mental health hotline for your area. You could also call 911 or another emergency services line.
posted by yohko at 2:17 PM on October 16, 2019


I want to be able to control it better. I want to be able to pick my battles and set something down mentally even if it didn't work out perfectly. I can't. I have a therapist and we are working on this but I want to hear how you or someone you know has dealt with such an issue before it kills me.

I've been thinking about your question. Maybe the problem is that you're trying to get yourself to stop thinking about something, which is always a difficult task. I wonder if part of the solution to this could be found in mindfulness. I'm surely no expert, but the idea is that when you find yourself ruminating on a situation, you simply observe the thought. "Oh, I'm thinking about that terrible situation and feeling a lot of stress about it." You don't judge yourself but simply observe, like you could also observe yourself breathing or sitting in an uncomfortable position. "I am feeling a lot of emotional distress about this" and so on. The more we become consciously aware of the these things, the more we allow them to be, the less we struggle against them. This is sounding more woo than I mean it to be. It can be quite useful.

There's an evidence-based program called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction that you might find helpful.

I have a few other suggestions: one, either don't talk about it at all, or, two, set a time limit on yourself. Let me give you some examples:

Last winter I was in the middle of a painful break up and a falling out with a friend, and I was talking about this endlessly with another friend, much to my own irritation, and I'm sure his, but he wasn't saying so. We went out one evening and I said, "I will talk about the [situation with those two people] until I am done with this beer. After that, no more for the rest of the night." And, it worked! I might have mentioned them once or twice, but it helped me control my own behavior.

Recently I found myself really stressed about a work situation and talked to my partner about it. I was feeling okay and said I'd only talk about it for a minute... but talking about it made me more stressed. And it was hard for me to stop talking about it. So in that situation, it would have been better for me to either not talk about it at all or set a literal time limit, like with a timer.

If you are capable of talking about it and then moving on, I'd suggest enlisting your friends to help keep the time. Tell them you are working on this issue. But, if you find that talking about it increases your stress and emotional upset, and it's hard to stop, then that's not the strategy for you. Tell them and yourself, out loud, that you won't be talking about the issue with them that night, and ask them to help you be accountable.

Also, yes, journaling, endlessly journaling about this stuff is helpful. In part it can be helpful to see that one month ago you wrote the exact same thing -- you haven't really moved on or made new insights. With your friends you don't know this because there's not a record. But with journaling you can chart progress, in a way.

Sometimes ruminating keeps us in the mud, and sometimes talking about things keeps us ruminating. So maybe tell yourself you are trying a new approach just a sort of test to see if it helps, and the test is not talking about it.

The compulsion is postmortem for preventative purposes, I am sure of that.
This sounds to me like it could be related to anxiety. Are you familiar with cognitive distortions? Are you and your therapist talking about this? I wonder if this could be a kind of overgeneralization. You have this idea if you could just figure it out, you could prevent it next time. So you're presuming that lessons from one situation will apply in others.
posted by bluedaisy at 6:10 PM on October 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


Maybe this is too basic, but have you considered adding hard exercise to your toolkit for letting things go? I don’t really like running in general, but if I’m ruminating on this kind of thing, sometimes I find that it’s possible to run for long enough that my brain eventually gives up on the obsessive thinking. It only works for me if I’m exerting myself at a level beyond what I would normally tolerate, though, so proceed with care.
posted by somedaycatlady at 7:20 PM on October 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


« Older What’s the kindest thing to do?   |   Tonight's NCIS - what is going on? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.