I'm Letting Go

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The oven dings. The cookies that you have not-so-patiently been waiting to bake are finally finished.  You put on your oven mitt and reach in to grab that tray of fresh-baked goodness.  Then your hand is burning.  Your body reacts before you fully comprehend what is happening. The next thing you know cookies are everywhere and you are staring at the whole in your mitt. 

Your body instantly recognized that something was harming you and acted to minimize the pain. 

So...why don't our minds do that? 

Letting go can be the hardest thing that we as humans are faced with.  Whether this is from a failed relationship, a toxic friendship, or even the job that you hated.  The struggle to let go is even something that we encounter on a day-to-day basis. How often is our entire day dependent upon things that happened in the morning? 

While mental pain and physical pain are processed in the same part of the brain and physical pain can be a symptom of physical pain, recovery is handled differently. Our body has natural processes to recover from a papercut and we have doctors that can assist with larger injuries.  Mental health is not as clear cut.  Mental pain can also be harder to detect. 

Dr. Joseph Tronacle, Dr. Ilene Strauss Cohen, and many other doctors and mental health professionals have accredited this to the 'Lizard Brain'.  This is a more common name for the Limbic System, which is responsible for "fight, flight, feeding, fear, freezing up, and fornication."

The Lizard Brain is also habit-forming and is responsible for trying to keep us in our comfort zone. This makes letting go of things much more difficult as it requires moving the process to a less automatic part of our mental process.

How do we do this? Paula Oldham wrote a fantastic article on the reasons we struggle with letting go and provides a 12 step process on how we can accomplish this here.

Like any process, the one laid out by Oldham may not be the best process for you.  If that is the case, the best course of action is to begin recognizing what mental pain feels like to you.  What is your body's initial reaction?  How can you stop this from continuing to happen? 

Most importantly, remember that it is always vital that you take care of yourself.