Letting go: The Power of Saying Things Out Loud

By: Dr. Denise Renye

There is something powerful about saying things out loud – even if the “saying” comes in the form of writing. Not only pen to paper, but through the keyboard or even texting. It’s liberating to finally acknowledge how you’re feeling or what you’re thinking through expressing it. Saying can also come in the form of breath. Sighing, yawning, etc.

If you keep things inside, hold them in your brain and therefore, inevitably your body, it can create depression or heaviness and anxiety or dissociation. Holding on to thoughts, feelings, ideas, and even body sensations can weigh us down and/or create depression as well as anxiety. However, letting go can be scary. It may feel akin to a separation or even a death to let go of something you held on to for so long. Death doesn’t have to be only in a physical, literal sense like I wrote about previously. We experience death whenever there’s an end to something, a closing, and yes, when we let go, even if it’s “only” letting go of words. When you say something that feels scary – such as making a boundary – it can feel like someone or something is dying. And there is a death of sorts that occurs. It’s more akin to an ego death than a real death, even though it feels like the latter may have occurred. 

An example of where I see this regularly is with people who are starting recovery from an addiction. Through recovery, a person can be transformed. The old version of themselves, the one that used XYZ substance or behaved in a certain way, is dying (sometimes a long and drawn-out transition, sometimes a quick one) and a new person has been/is being born.

Whether someone enters recovery via the 12 steps, therapy, a recovery group, or a well-trained and certified coach, they learn how to delve into their shadow material (the material of the psyche that is unexamined and hidden) and, if successful, integrate it into their whole person, their whole self. Integrating the shadow can be viewed and experienced phenomenologically as a form of letting go. This goes on through words, both spoken and written. It can also happen through free-form body movement, as I wrote about in this article detailing how to access the unconscious through body movement.

In my doctoral research, I studied a phenomenon called Spontaneous Embodied Spiritual Experiences (SESE). This form of whole-body movement can help with letting go in a multitude of ways: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.  

Letting go can feel scary, but it’s also freeing. Just think about Elsa from the Disney movie Frozen and why her song “Let it Go” was so popular. People want to let things go. Letting go can be liberating. In the spirit of liberation, I invite you to consider the following questions as a writing exercise:

·      What do I want to let go of?

·      What would it feel like from the inside if I let go of it?

·      Who would I even be if I let this go?

·      What is in between me and the willingness to let go of this thing/belief/idea, etc.?

After speaking or writing the answers to these questions, notice your breath, notice how you feel in your body. Notice any areas of the body that might be louder than others, that might ask you for your attention more so than others.

Are any seedlings of spontaneous movements arising? Do your hands or fingers or wrists desire movement? Do your shoulders desire rolling? Do your arms desire extending overhead and stretching towards the sky? Is there an impetus to move your body bubbling up from within? Listen with your inner ear…what is your body saying? Take a look with your inner eye…what do you see of your internal landscape?

You may want to throw on some music and ask the body if it wants to move or even do something akin to dancing for a while. You may be surprised by what you discover. If you choose music, let it be gentle at first so you don’t lose connection with the body sensations within that will undoubtedly guide you. Then crank it up if that’s what the body desires, or what the mind requires in order to remember its position as passenger and not driver.

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