Letting go

I tend to find that life’s changes come in ebbs and flows. Flurries of change, which then subside and settle into a calm.

After a plateau of life-as-it-is, we can feel a creeping sense of fidgety-ness. A desire for change, a feeling of ‘What next?’

Of course, this is the kind of change we choose.

Change that comes unexpectedly, the great crests and breakers that demand we just cling on for dear life and leave us blinking in their wake, is something different.

The kind of change I’ve been thinking about is the one that begins with the sense of fidgety-ness, even dissatisfaction. Answering the gut question of ‘What next?’ can be scary, leading us to grope into an unknown future.

The ‘What next?’ could signal a reaching for a new, significant relationship (or a change to a relationship we already have); a longing for greater satisfaction in how we spend our days (working or otherwise); or possibly a sense that things are just a little off-balance, that life-as-it-is isn’t leaving enough space for the things that are important to us.

Leaning in to these longings and taking steps towards them can sometimes mean just making some small tweaks to our daily lives. Perhaps becoming more emotionally available to ourselves and others, or being more assertive around setting boundaries between us and our commitments.

Other times, though, the way forward isn’t clear. Or, worse still, we know exactly what needs to be done, but feel too afraid to do it. A big leap is needed, but anxiety makes us believe that the change we long for isn’t possible.

This reminds me of a section I underlined in psychotherapist Julia Samuel’s excellent book, This Too Shall Pass:

“Anxiety is a form of energy that forces us to adjust, informing us we have to shift our role, behaviour or view. We need to shed the old way of being, like reptiles shed their skin, for a new way of being to grow.”

Anxiety takes many forms, but the anxiety that prevents us from making the changes we know we need - or from even daring to ask the question of what we need, the ‘What next?’ - gives us this sense of stuckness. We’re not content with the way things are, but we’re too afraid to move. In transactional analysis terms, we call this an impasse.

Often, the anxiety causing the stuckness is rooted in old patterns of thinking, or beliefs about ourselves or the world that no longer serve us and may not have much of a true bearing on the here-and-now.

Making the changes we want and need may require us to let go of some of those beliefs, to ‘shed the old way of being’, as Samuel describes it.

The next time you are feeling that anxious, fidgety sense of stuckness, I invite you to ask yourself: ‘What do I need to let go of?’

That is a hard question to answer, and can be even harder to answer alone. A counsellor can help you start to unpick the stuckness, to clear some of the fog, and help you to recognise the way forward.

Because the truth is, beneath the fog and beyond the grip of our self-doubt, we already know what needs to be done.