Not sure what that means

[Thissucks37]

I’ve never understood what that means. How do you “let go”. Part of me thinks it means ignoring or stuffing your feelings and pretending that something or someone “mystical “ will take care of everything. I’ve also never understood “give your trouble to god and he’ll take care of it”. I dunno. 🤷‍♀️

[CarlJames]

My understanding of letting go, is to not follow the anxious thoughts down the rabbit hole. When an anxious thought comes up, do your best to ignore it. In other words, observe it and just let it be. Don't judge it or make it mean anything, and most of all, don't follow the train of anxious thoughts that drag you down the rabbit hole.

As for feelings, I believe we should allow and embrace all of our feelings and emotions, without judgment. We must not pick and choose which feelings we like and only embrace those, pushing away the anger, sadness, anxiety etc., but instead embrace them all.

We have all the wisdom and knowledge we need inside of us. We just need to embrace our inner selves. Thoughts are not part of that. Ignore the thoughts, but feel the feelings.

[Thissucks37 in reply to CarlJames]

Interesting but don’t the thoughts produce the feelings? My feelings overwhelm me.

[CarlJames in reply to Thissucks37]

Not exactly. The way I understand it works is that your reaction to the thoughts (and fighting the feelings) produces the anxiety. So if you can lower the intensity of your reaction by not paying so much attention to the thoughts, and not taking them so seriously, you will in turn reduce your anxious reaction. It also helps not to fight against the feelings.

The feelings of anxiety tend to overwhelm us because we get into a reaction loop. The anxiety feelings trigger anxious thoughts and fears which causes our body to release more adrenaline etc., because it thinks we must be in danger and that it needs to get ready to fight or flee. This extra adrenaline makes us feel more anxious, so we react even more, adding more fear and releasing more adrenaline.

It's necessary to short circuit that loop, and the way to do that (the way I recovered that is) is to learn not to react to the thoughts. And not to fight the feelings, but to learn how to allow them.

[Thissucks37 in reply to CarlJames]

Thanks 🙏

[Hidden]

I think to let go is easy to say but not so easy to actually do. And I have trouble with the "give it to God" saying too.

[Blueruth in reply to Hidden]

Giving it to god really does feel like absolving yourself of responsibility. I feel like it is self care when you decide to let go of that guilt or toxicity or child.

[Blueruth]

It is the opposite of stuffing your feelings. It is about allowing yourself to be okay with moving on to other focus in your life. Meditation teaches you to let go. It doesn’t mean neglecting your responsibility…you still have to do that. But if someone or something in your life is not serving you, you don’t need to keep trying to make it work. Sometimes that is a really hard thing to do because it feels like giving up. It isn’t. It is self care. Balloon🎈 analogy would be that if you try to stuff it in your jacket, it will probably pop on your keys. If you hold on to it, the balloon 🎈 will eventually get sad and whither. So letting go would be to let it go. But once you do you also need to mentally let it go because you have no control over it anymore. 🎈 could get stuck in the tree which would be sad or fly for days. You will probably not know.

[TAZ49]

If I hear one more person tell me to let go and give it to God I might punch them. Where was God when I was being assaulted at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 .....? That is just a cop out for people who have no answers. Congratulations if it works for you.