Why Letting Go Feels Unsafe
People describe this to me in almost physical terms.
I asked a woman once what would happen if she stopped checking her husband’s location, and she put her hand flat on her chest before she said anything. Then she said, “It feels like stepping off a curb in the dark.”
Her marriage was fine. He’d never given her a reason. Her body did not care about any of that, because her body was not responding to him. It was responding to a father who left one morning without saying anything. This happened when she was seven, and the part of her that learned something that day has never been consulted about her current life.
The grip is not about the thing you’re gripping
That’s the first thing to understand, and it explains why arguing with yourself never works. You’re not really gripping the schedule, the location, the dishwasher, the itinerary, the college fund, the group text. In reality, you’re gripping the feeling that came the last time the ground moved without warning.
Which is why somebody can tell you, correctly and kindly, that everything is fine, and it does nothing. You already knew everything was fine. Your nervous system is not accepting testimony from the department of good ideas.
What your body thinks letting go means
If you slow it down enough to hear it, the belief underneath usually goes something like this. If I’m not watching, it happens. That’s it. That’s the whole engine. Some version of a bad thing that once arrived unannounced, and a system that concluded the only defense is to never stop looking.
There’s a second belief that rides along with it in a lot of people. If it happens and I wasn’t watching, it’s my fault. That one adds a moral weight to the vigilance, which makes it nearly impossible to put down, because now stopping isn’t just dangerous, it’s negligent.
I’ve worked with mothers who could not sleep because of this one. Not anxious in general. Specifically unable to accept that their attention isn’t what’s holding the world up.
Why the fear spikes when you start healing
Here’s something that surprises people, and I’d rather you hear it from me now than panic about it later. When you start loosening the grip, the anxiety usually goes up before it goes down.
That’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. Your alarm system has been suppressing a feeling by way of constant action, and when the action stops, the feeling arrives. It was always there. The controlling was the lid.
A lot of people try to let go once, feel the spike, conclude that letting go is dangerous, and grip twice as hard. That’s the loop that keeps people stuck for decades. It looks like evidence and it’s just withdrawal.
Working with it instead of against it
Logic has a role here, but it’s a small one. What actually moves this is experience, in doses your system can tolerate.
Go small enough that it’s almost silly. Don’t start with the location app. Start with leaving the bed unmade, or letting somebody else pick the restaurant, or not re-checking an email you already sent. Your body needs completed evidence, and evidence only comes from finishing something without the catastrophe.
Stay with the spike instead of fixing it. When the discomfort comes, name it out loud and put a clock on it. Say this is the alarm, not the fire, and give it ten minutes. The spike is shorter than you think when you don’t feed it.
Get the body involved before you try to reason with it. Long exhale, feet on the floor, cold water on your wrists. Regulation first, then conversation. Reversing that order is why so many good insights never stick.
Name whose fear it is. This one’s powerful. When the panic comes, try asking how old it feels. A lot of people get a number, and the number is rarely their current age.
Do the original work eventually. The small practices help. But if there’s a specific crappy life experience sitting at the bottom of this, the grip will keep regenerating until we get in there, pull that memory to the front, and file it where it belongs. That’s the actual repair, and it takes a person to do it with, not a blog post.
What I’d say to the woman with her hand on her chest
I’d tell her that what she was feeling was real, and also that it was about 1987.
Both of those being true is what makes this workable. Your body isn’t lying to you. It’s reporting accurately on an old event and mislabeling it as current, and that is a fixable problem.
You’re not crazy. Your alarm is just wired to a door that’s been closed for thirty years.
Baby steps. Progress over perfection. We’ll go at the pace your system can stand.
This is education, not therapy. If you’re in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If you’re in Kentucky and your body sounds the alarm every time you try to let go, that’s very workable. Circle of Hope Counseling Services.
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