Why You Can't Let Go (And How Buddhism Can Help)

Why Letting Go Feels Impossible

You know you should move on. You've told yourself a hundred times. But somehow, your mind keeps circling back to that conversation, that failure, that person who hurt you.

It's exhausting. You're stuck in a loop, and no amount of "just let it go" advice seems to work.

Here's the thing: it's not a willpower problem. There's a hidden assumption in your mind that's keeping you trapped. And until you see it, letting go will always feel impossible.

The Hidden Assumption Keeping You Stuck

When we hold onto something, pain, regret, resentment, we're treating it as if it's solid. Permanent. Unchangeable.

"This is who I am now." "This is what happened, and it can't be undone." "This situation will never get better."

These thoughts feel true. But Buddhism offers a different perspective: nothing is as fixed as it seems.

Think about a flower. It looks solid, real, permanent. But look closer; that flower exists because of sunlight, rain, soil, time, and a gardener's care. Remove any of these, and the flower wouldn't exist. The "flower" is not a fixed thing. It's a temporary coming-together of conditions.

The same is true for your pain. That situation that keeps haunting you? It's made of conditions too, circumstances, timing, other people's actions, your own interpretations. These conditions are constantly shifting. The situation you're holding onto is not the eternal, unchangeable reality you think it is.

This isn't wishful thinking. It's a clear-eyed observation of how things actually work.

Your Anxiety Is Made of Moving Parts

Let's get practical.

That thing making you anxious right now, your job, a relationship, your future, isn't a single, solid block of stress. It's made of many moving parts.

Your boss's mood. Market conditions. Your past choices. Last night's conversation. The weather, even. All of these factors combine to create "the situation." And any one of them could change.

This doesn't mean you should ignore real problems. But it does mean that the catastrophic, permanent, unchangeable disaster in your head? It rarely matches reality. Reality is more fluid than our anxious minds want to admit.

Understanding this can loosen the grip of anxiety. Not because you're pretending everything is fine, but because you're seeing things more accurately. Nothing is as solid as it feels when you're panicking at 3 AM.

You Are Not Your Worst Moments

Many people carry invisible labels.

"I'm a failure." "I always mess things up." "I'm just not good enough."

These labels feel like facts. But they're not. They're stories you've told yourself so many times that they hardened into beliefs.

Buddhism suggests something radical: there is no fixed "you."

Your thoughts, emotions, memories, they're constantly shifting. The person reading this sentence is not exactly the same person who started the article. You are a process, not a statue.

This means your past doesn't have to define your future. The "failure" from five years ago was a different configuration of conditions. You've changed since then. You're still changing now.

The labels can be peeled off. They were never permanent in the first place.

A Simple Practice to Start Letting Go

Theory is great. But how do you actually let go?

Here's one approach that's been used for thousands of years, and is now backed by modern psychology under the name "mindfulness."

Next time a difficult emotion arises, anger, anxiety, regret, don't immediately get swept away by it.

Pause. Take a breath. Then observe the emotion like you'd watch a cloud passing through the sky.

"Oh, there's anxiety moving through me right now."

Don't fight it. Don't feed it. Just notice.

Something strange happens when you do this: the emotion often loses its power. It passes through, like a cloud. And you realize: you are not the cloud. You are the sky, spacious, unchanged, able to hold anything without being consumed by it.

This takes practice. But each time you do it, you're training yourself to hold things more lightly.

What Happens After You Let Go

Some people worry: if I let go, will I become cold? Detached? Uncaring?

The opposite is usually true.

When you stop being tangled in your own pain, you become more available to others. You can actually listen. You can feel compassion without drowning in it.

People who've learned to let go aren't numb, they're free. Free to respond to life as it is, rather than reacting from old wounds.

And that freedom often brings something unexpected: a deeper kindness. Toward yourself, and toward everyone else who's also struggling to let go of something.

This is what Buddhism has pointed to for 2,500 years. Not a bleak emptiness where nothing matters, but a spaciousness where everything can finally move, breathe, and change.

Including you.