Letting Go
What it means here
Most of us become skilled at holding on long before we learn how to let go. We hold responsibilities, expectations, old identities and ways of surviving that once helped us through. Because they were useful, we may continue carrying them long after they have become heavy.
Letting go is the moment protection becomes choice.
It does not mean forgetting what happened, excusing harm, suppressing emotion or forcing yourself to move on before you are ready. It means seeing clearly enough to ask: What has this helped me survive? What has it cost me? What wisdom do I want to keep, and what weight am I finally ready to put down?
Forgiveness may sometimes belong to that process, but it is never a debt an injured person owes. It does not require denial, reconciliation, restored trust or renewed access to your life. Anger can carry essential information about a violated value or boundary. Sometimes letting go means forgiveness. Sometimes it means grief, accountability, distance, protection or a clear refusal.
When forgiveness is freely chosen, research suggests that structured psychological interventions may support forgiveness and related emotional outcomes, but this evidence does not justify pressure to forgive (Wade et al., 2014). A very small functional imaging study also associated imagined forgiveness with networks involved in perspective taking and cognitive emotion regulation. It is an interesting clue, not proof that forgiveness is always healthy or right (Ricciardi et al., 2013).
Letting go is not surrendering the truth. It is choosing how much of your future the past is allowed to organise.
Here, truth, safety and choice come first.
My Values
Wellbeing is not a personality trait. It is a set of capacities we can practise.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being the person everyone can depend upon.
You may still be capable, thoughtful and remarkably good at functioning. You may be the person trusted in a crisis, the leader who carries uncertainty, the professional who keeps showing up, or the caregiver who can sense what everyone else needs. From the outside, your strength is visible. Its cost may not be.
I created Let It Go Psychology for the person beneath the competence.
My starting point is simple: you deserve more than strategies that help you tolerate an unsustainable life. Therapy can be a place to understand what your mind and body have learned, loosen patterns that no longer protect you and practise ways of living that offer more clarity, connection and choice.
Wellbeing, as I understand it, is not permanent happiness, perfect calm or the absence of pain. It is the capacity to meet life with awareness, understand your inner world, remain connected to what matters, receive care as well as give it, and keep choosing your direction when life becomes difficult.
Research in psychology, contemplative science and affective neuroscience increasingly supports the idea that important dimensions of wellbeing are plastic. Awareness, connection, insight and purpose can be cultivated through experience and practice (Dahl et al., 2020). A large randomised clinical trial published in 2025 also found modest but meaningful improvements in distress and wellbeing among healthcare professionals who completed structured digital wellbeing training, although the waitlist design and reliance on self report limit what can be concluded (Hirshberg et al., 2025).
These values do not belong to one therapeutic school. In different language, they run through cognitive behavioural therapies, acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, compassion focused approaches, mindfulness based therapies, attachment and interpersonal work, psychodynamic therapy, systemic practice and humanistic psychology.
They are not commandments for becoming a better person. They are the promises that shape how I practise, how I understand change and how I hope you experience this work.
The values that guide my practice
Awareness
Returning to the life that is happening now
Our lives are shaped, in part, by where our attention repeatedly lands. When attention is captured by threat, self criticism or relentless planning, we can be physically present while living psychologically somewhere else.
A wandering mind is not a broken mind. It may be remembering, rehearsing, imagining, creating or trying to keep us safe.
Awareness is not the demand to be present every second. It is the ability to notice where the mind has gone, recognise what is happening in the body, and decide with kindness whether to stay there or return. Here it is never self surveillance. It is the quiet pause in which an automatic reaction can become a considered choice.
Connection
We heal in relationship, not in isolation
Before we learn who we are alone, we learn who we are with other people. Relationships shape our earliest experiences of safety, emotion, trust, identity and belonging. They can also be where we are misunderstood or hurt.
Good therapy therefore offers more than a collection of techniques. It offers a relationship in which your experience is met with care, honesty, curiosity and respect.
Connection includes the relationship you have with yourself, the people you love, the communities you belong to, and the living world. My Samoyed, Minty, reminds me daily that presence can be warm, playful and beautifully uncomplicated.
Insight
Understanding the pattern changes our relationship with it
Every pattern has a history. Perfectionism may have been an attempt to make life safer. Overfunctioning may have grown from love, fear or early responsibility. Emotional distance may once have made an overwhelming world survivable.
Insight changes the question from what is wrong with me to what happened, what did I learn, and what do I need now.
It does not excuse harm or turn therapy into endless excavation of the past. It gives us enough understanding to honour why a pattern formed, and enough freedom to decide whether it still belongs.
Purpose
A life organised around what matters, with room for possibility
Purpose is a compass, not a performance measure. It does not require one magnificent calling or a life that looks impressive from the outside. It can be quiet and close to home, living in how you want to care, lead, create, parent, contribute or meet an ordinary Tuesday.
Purpose changes the question. Not only how do I stop feeling this, but what deserves my energy, and what kind of life do I want that energy to build.
This is also where wonder and creativity belong. Beauty, story, humour, nature, play and curiosity can interrupt the feeling that life has narrowed to duty and survival.
Compassion
Care that includes you
Compassion is the capacity to tell the truth without becoming cruel. It recognises suffering and responds with wisdom rather than humiliation. It is not pity, indulgence or freedom from accountability.
In therapy, compassion creates the conditions in which people can look honestly at what needs to change without first having to hate themselves into changing it.
Healthy compassion includes the caregiver. Without boundaries, care becomes self abandonment. With wisdom, it becomes the ability to stay responsive to another person without leaving yourself behind.
Gratitude
Noticing what is good without denying what is hard
Gratitude is a form of attention, not an instruction to feel positive. It does not ask anyone to be thankful for harm, find a silver lining in injustice, or use appreciation to silence grief. It simply allows something nourishing to have its full weight.
That something may be a relationship, a moment of beauty, an unexpected kindness, a dog waiting at the door, a body that carried you through a difficult day, or the quiet fact that you are still here.
Gratitude does not replace pain. It enlarges the story so pain is not the only thing allowed to be true.
Letting Go
Making room for what matters
These values are not separate rooms. Together, they offer a way through.
Awareness notices what we are carrying. Connection reminds us that we do not have to carry it alone. Insight reveals why the pattern formed. Purpose asks where we want to go and keeps enough wonder alive to imagine another route. Compassion makes honest change possible without humiliation. Gratitude allows what is good to remain visible without asking pain to disappear.
This is what letting go means to me.
It is rarely one dramatic release. More often, it is a series of brave and quiet decisions. Releasing the belief that your worth depends on how much you can endure. Returning a responsibility that was never yours alone. Forgiving without reconciling. Remembering without remaining imprisoned. Grieving without pretending the loss did not matter. Setting a boundary that gives your life room to become your own again.
Neuroscience can illuminate parts of this process, but it cannot tell us what a life means or which values a person should choose. My values are informed by research, shaped by clinical wisdom and held with humility.
The person in front of me is never a diagnosis, a data point or a nervous system to optimise. You are a whole person with a history, relationships, responsibilities, strengths, hopes and a life that deserves to feel like your own.
You do not have to wait until you have nothing left to give before you begin putting something down.
Let go of what no longer serves you. Make room for what matters.
Selected research
Abellaneda-Perez, K., Cattaneo, G., Cabello-Toscano, M., Solana-Sanchez, J., Mulet-Pons, L., Vaque-Alcazar, L., Perellon-Alfonso, R., Sole-Padulles, C., Bargallo, N., Tormos, J. M., Pascual-Leone, A., & Bartres-Faz, D. (2023). Purpose in life promotes resilience to age-related brain burden in middle-aged adults. Alzheimer's Research & Therapy, 15, Article 49.
Beaty, R. E., Kenett, Y. N., Christensen, A. P., Rosenberg, M. D., Benedek, M., Chen, Q., Fink, A., Qiu, J., Kwapil, T. R., Kane, M. J., & Silvia, P. J. (2018). Robust prediction of individual creative ability from brain functional connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(5), 1087-1092.
Bulley, A., Henry, J. D., & Suddendorf, T. (2018). The functions of prospection: Variations in health and disease. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 2328.
Dahl, C. J., Wilson-Mendenhall, C. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2020). The plasticity of well-being: A training-based framework for the cultivation of human flourishing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(51), 32197-32206.
Duckworth, A. L., Kirby, T. A., Gollwitzer, A., & Oettingen, G. (2013). From fantasy to action: Mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII) improves academic performance in children. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(6), 745-753.
Fox, G. R., Kaplan, J., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. (2015). Neural correlates of gratitude. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 1491.
Gross, M., Raynes, S., Schooler, J. W., Guo, E., & Dobkins, K. (2025). When is a wandering mind unhappy? The role of thought valence. Emotion, 25(3), 671-682.
Hirshberg, M. J., Davidson, R. J., Velarde Arrisueno, L. B., Olvera Puentes, J. M., Medina Bardalez, X., Gonzalez, B. S., Goldberg, S. B., & Chernicoff, L. I. (2025). Digital well-being training with health care professionals: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Internal Medicine, 185(10), 1248-1256.
Kappes, H. B., & Oettingen, G. (2011). Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(4), 719-729.
Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932.
Marsh, A. A., Stoycos, S. A., Brethel-Haurwitz, K. M., Robinson, P., VanMeter, J. W., & Cardinale, E. M. (2014). Neural and cognitive characteristics of extraordinary altruists. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(42), 15036-15041.
Marti, R., Petignat, M., Marcar, V. L., Hattendorf, J., Wolf, M., Hund-Georgiadis, M., & Hediger, K. (2022). Effects of contact with a dog on prefrontal brain activity: A controlled trial. PLOS ONE, 17(10), e0274833.
McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233-238.
Monroy, M., & Keltner, D. (2023). Awe as a pathway to mental and physical health. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(2), 309-320.
Nagasawa, M., Mitsui, S., En, S., Ohtani, N., Ohta, M., Sakuma, Y., Onaka, T., Mogi, K., & Kikusui, T. (2015). Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human-dog bonds. Science, 348(6232), 333-336.
Neff, K. D. (2023). Self-compassion: Theory, method, research, and intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 74, 193-218.
Rhoads, S. A., O'Connell, K., Berluti, K., Ploe, M. L., Elizabeth, H. S., Amormino, P., Li, J. L., Dutton, M. A., VanMeter, A. S., & Marsh, A. A. (2023). Neural responses underlying extraordinary altruists' generosity for socially distant others. PNAS Nexus, 2(7), pgad199.
Ricciardi, E., Rota, G., Sani, L., Gentili, C., Gaglianese, A., Guazzelli, M., & Pietrini, P. (2013). How the brain heals emotional wounds: The functional neuroanatomy of forgiveness. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, Article 839.
Valk, S. L., Bernhardt, B. C., Trautwein, F. M., Bockler, A., Kanske, P., Guizard, N., Collins, D. L., & Singer, T. (2017). Structural plasticity of the social brain: Differential change after socio-affective and cognitive mental training. Science Advances, 3(10), e1700489.
Wade, N. G., Hoyt, W. T., Kidwell, J. E. M., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2014). Efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions to promote forgiveness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 82(1), 154-170.