Have you ever noticed how quick people are to dismiss your pain?
“Just let it go.”
“Stop letting it get to you.”
“They’re your family. Just forgive them.”
Or the subject of Mel Robbins’ best-selling book,“Let Them.”
Sometimes, “let them” is easy.
- Your husband wants to wear a pair of shorts you hate? Let him. Not worth the fight.
- A friend keeps canceling plans? Let them. Stop chasting, and invest in relationships with people who show up.
- Co-workers are gossiping? Let them. Their opinions don’t define you.
But some things aren’t that simple.
Sometimes, you would give your right arm to be able to “just let it go.” You feel shattered and desperately want the feelings to go away. But sometimes, those feelings have completely hijacked your nervous system, throwing you into fight, flight or freeze. They take away your sense of safety, or even your sense of self.
In moments like this, “let them” doesn’t just fall flat. It makes you feel worse. It makes you feel like you should be able to control your feelings. And when you can’t, you feel guilty. And the sure fire recipe for staying stuck in an unpleasant emotion is the very act of trying to make it stop. By fighting against it, you make sure it stays even more stuck in your nervous system.
So what about the times when “letting them” isn’t possible?
When “Let Them” Isn’t an Option
When my sisters and sister-in-law interfered in my family,spreading unbelievable lies, and putting my daughter in harm’s way,”let them” wasn’t an option for me. For over a year, I lived in the most intense state of hell not knowing if my daughter was safe or even alive while they bonded over their lies and making me their shared enemy.
In the face of that level of betrayal and terror, “let them” or “just forgive them” is not on the table.
Or my previous marriage, where I was married to a man who left my daughter and me repeatedly over six years, sometimes for days or weeks, sometimes for months only to come back each time with promises that it would never happen again. The trauma from this ongoing abandonment and crazy making behavior triggered wounds I didn’t even know I had.
If someone had told me to “just let him,” it would have made me feel even more stuck. Even more insane.
But in both of these situations, I wasn’t the one who was insane. The situations were insane.
And when the betrayal, abandonment, or trauma runs that deep, even the idea that you should be able to move past your emotions using the “let them” approach can make you even more stuck in self-judgment.
In times like this it does not help to struggle with the idea of what you should or should not be feeling. In times like this, you need more space in your nervous system.
The Only Way Through It
Some things you can’t just let go. But you can always grow bigger than them. This is the key to getting to the other side of anything that has you stuck.
When the capacity in your nervous system is the size of a coffee cup, it doesn’t take much to fill it to the top. Every betrayal, every crisis, and even small irritations will overflow the cup, leaving no space for anything else. With that limited amount of capacity, you feel overwhelmed, you self-medicate, you react, you get sick.
But when you expand your capacity from the size of a coffee cup to the size of a swimming pool, there is room for all the pain that filled up that coffee cup to be there, but you also have room for other things. You cannot make your painful experiences disappear. They happened. And trying to make them disappear just makes them stronger.
But when your capacity is the size of a swimming pool, those painful experiences don’t take up all the space. They are there, but there is also room for more:
- Room for clarity.
- Room for peace.
- Room for wisdom.
- Room for joy.
In this expanded space, you have the ability to see things differently. You can breathe. You can experience things other than the pain.
This isn’t about pretending the pain isn’t real. It’s about creating enough space inside you so that the pain isn’t all that you feel.
Expanding Capacity: The First Step
You can’t force yourself to be okay when you’re not. You can’t wave a magic wand and make intolerable pain go away by saying you have let it go or you have forgiven someone. The only thing you can do is expand your own capacity so that you are bigger than it. Once you do that, then you do have access to things like forgiveness, letting things go, shifting your perspective, and personal empowerment.
But you cannot expand your capacity through willpower. You can expand your capacity through resonance.
The fastest, easiest, and most guaranteed way to start expanding your capacity is by surrounding yourself with people and things that operate at a higher frequency than where you are operating.
How Resonance Works
In physics, a tuning fork causes another object with the same frequency to vibrate.
Humans work the same way.
When you surround yourself with people and influences that operate at a higher level, in mindset, emotional resilience, joy, success, and peace, you naturally start to resonate at their level.
Every single thing you allow into your world either expands or shrinks your capacity.
- If you are constantly around people who complain, play the victim, and drain your energy, that becomes your reality.
- If you are constantly around people who believe in possibility, create solutions, and live in joy, that becomes your reality.
Be intentional about who you let in.
Be intentional about what you watch, read, and listen to.
Every decision either expands or contracts your capacity.
And with every small expansion, you get more space. More breath. More clarity. More freedom.
The more you practice this, the more you grow beyond the size of a coffee cup, to the size of a swimming pool, then to the size of the Pacific Ocean, then to the size of the Milky Way. There is no limit to how much you can expand your own capacity.
And one day, the thing that once consumed you no longer does.
Not because you “let them.”
But because you became bigger than it.
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