A New View of Letting Go

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

When we speak of "letting go" we are, on the one hand, saying something about the release of control but, on the other hand, we're suggesting that we don't release control just for the sake of releasing control.  We "let go" so that we can see the world clearly.  It is only through proper orientation to that which is "ours to do" that we can live in the reality of what is and resist the temptation to ground ourselves in fantasy.  

Fantasy is what happens when we're utterly disoriented over what is "ours to do."  

Scott’s updated take as of 2021:

I wish I would speak more positively about you (us). I like the idea that we “let go” for a purpose, and not just to say that we let go. The phrase “letting go” is a nice little shorthand that describes the process of realizing how one thing in our lives is maybe getting in the way of our ability to maximize thriving. 

But, as of today, I see no reason to frame this in terms of “Fantasy v. Reality.”  It’s hard to let go of things. Often enough we have a long history with the things that we’re clinging so tightly to and this means it’s easy to be afraid of letting go. So I’ll close today by asking you a few questions instead of making more comments:

Are you holding on to some things that you wish you could let go of?

If you could let go of them, how would you do it?

When you let go of them, what else would you like to be doing with your time?

Defining Control

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

How do we define control?

Control can, of course, mean many different things.  When I refer to things we can  legitimately control I'm using "control" to mean something akin to the exercise of responsibility.  The things that we (appropriately) control in life are things we have both the permission and the capacity to influence (there are surely other factors, but for our purposes I think these two frame the conversation in such a way as to allow us to go fairly deep fairly quickly).  

We become (overly) controlling through distorting one of those two factors:  we either falsely believe we are justified in controlling something that isn't ours to influence or we falsely believe we have the capacity to influence when, in fact, we do not.  A substance use disorder represents a distortion of both factors at once.  When we say, for instance, that we COULD stop but simply do not want to then we are believing two lies:  1. That the s.u.d. itself does not exercise control over us (and, thus, has given us permission to be in charge) and 2. That we have the capacity to influence our s.u.d.  

The same factors apply elsewhere in life.  The limits of control are permission and influence and they vary greatly depending on circumstances.  These two factors combined let us know whether or not something rightly falls within the realm of what is "ours to do."  

My response to me:

I think I agree with this definition- but not so much the example. Substance use does not have unending control over a person- people can change. It requires a focused, dedicated effort and likely to the help and support of a community (be it 12 Step, a counselor, family, friends, whoever). 

And so the issue of what we have the “capacity” to influence is an interesting one (at least to me). We may not always have the capacity to make changes to certain things over night- but we can often start moving in the direction of change. For instance, a person might attend an AA meeting for several months before they have some sobriety time. There was real change on display long before the sobriety happened. This person wanted to make a change, sought help, altered their schedule and routine, etc. etc. in order to change how they relate to alcohol. 

Or- to refer back to yesterday. If something really tragic happens to us, we may not be able to change our difficult feelings immediately- but perhaps we have some acceptance exercises that we rely on that shift us from something like complete resentment to something resembling peace. We did not have the capacity to “change” the thing that happened, but we did have the capacity to change how we related to the thing that happened.

So we may have the capacity to do a lot more than we think (or a lot more than I once thought).