What it means to let go for adult children

If a twelve-step program were a journey, and it certainly is a vertical journey, then letting go can be considered the threshold to your ascent. Cast in the tarnished mold of a parent, an adult child must understand what shaped him and then “undo” the detriment, distortion, and misdirection it caused, aware, if he has children of his own, how he can reapply that mold to them. even if he has already begun this ascent to totality.

However, letting go is not necessarily an easy task to define, as it is multifaceted and can mean different things to different people.

It can, for example, mean the philosophy of “letting go and letting God.” It can involve releasing a person’s true self, so that they can express themselves more freely and reconnect with their intrinsic worth. Surely it must involve giving up past hurts and injustices until they have been understood and processed.

You may need to realize that because the brain always seeks to end what it itself experienced to others, it has most likely bestowed these violations on you in your lifetime (and consequently will need to make amends in the future). somewhere along your path).

It involves realizing that your brain was forced to rewire itself amid childhood instability and anger in order to survive later in life, resulting in adult child traits such as withdrawal, reaction, and pandering. people. It can mean stopping your unsuccessful attempt to fix and change others, allowing them to be who they are, despite your denial and derailing actions, removing any expectations of yourself that you never realized.

It can be a small release of a negative emotion or resentment, accomplished in a “baby-step” process, or involve deliberate removal from a person that will only cause anger or reactivation.

It can vary with circumstances and take different forms, depending on the plateau reached in the person’s twelve-step ascent.

Finally, it involves the neuropathways connected to neurons, the links of which grow stronger and stronger with each emotional reaction, but always lead to the same dead end with no solution.

While Step Three – “We make the decision to surrender our will and our lives to the care of God, as we understood Him” ​​- certainly speaks to this prerequisite surrender or abandonment, it also implies that it is an instantaneous and time-consuming act. just one time. act. However, for those whose abandonment-fueled survival depended on self-sufficiency, it is no easy task. In fact, it can be a perpetual struggle, even if a person has already started down a path of recovery.

Doing so first and foremost requires realizing that the Higher Power you are surrendering to is not a composite carbon copy of your earthly parent who abandons, blames, abuses, and condemns you, but is infinitely loving and forgiving.

Second, it requires a spiritual, not an intellectual, relationship with that Higher Power.

It also implies the abandonment of progressive thoughts and feelings, equivalent to the treadmill, which always return the person to the same fruitless origins.

“Al-Anon has shown me that the answer is not in letting people go, but in letting go of my worn-out and painful thought patterns,” according to testimony in Al-Anon’s “Hope for Today” text (Al-Anon). Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 2002, p.111). “I can replace them with honesty, openness, and a willingness to change into a more positive person… Applying the twelve steps… to my daily life, as well as sharing and receiving experience, strength, and hope in meetings… helps me to replace worry and control with the serenity that comes from letting go and letting God deal with everything I have no power over.”

That control, however, can be one of the most difficult forces to release. Like a seesaw, alcoholic, abusive, and dysfunctional homes place the child on the lower, losing side, while their parents act out their own unresolved upbringing in a bully-mimicking dynamic, or sit on the higher side and subconsciously feel becomes one. later in life, as this provides the perception of dominance and therefore security over others. Fear, it goes without saying, feeds both ends. However, it can become a person’s method of survival throughout their life.

Another necessary release is that of the person’s domicile of origin. Yet there is a paradox in the act: while he greatly needs to break away and leave this reactivating environment, his destructive upbringing may have stunted his neurological, emotional, and psychological development, leaving him without the tools and resources to do so and locking him in a false sense of security. Immobilized, can neither stay nor leave.

Letting go is not necessarily a unilateral act. If a person releases fear, he may have to replace it with something, like understanding its origins and trusting it. And that substitution may be the key to the process. Giving up requires the helping hand and support of a part of him he may not already know he has: God or a Higher Power who understands him, who is the ultimate replacement for what he may not yet have. However, there is a ratio to this waiver, so it can’t necessarily be accomplished all at once.

The more a person dismantles the wall of defenses that stands in the way of their inner child, which is their authentic self, the more they are able to surrender and reconnect with a Higher Power, because that inner child is the essence of A. he. The more he unearths his fears and traumas, and understands why they were once necessary and inevitable creations, the more he breaks free of his past, regaining confidence. That trust, in turn, fosters a greater surrender and connection to the Higher Power. And in doing so, he dismantles the neuropathways that led to his defenses, allowing him to perceive God as understanding, accepting, forgiving, and loving—properties he soon realizes he himself shares with Him.

“… Letting go is like a tree losing its leaves in autumn,” continues “Hope for Today” (ibid., p. 111). “I must let go of them to grow and produce even more beauty in the following spring and summer. Letting go of what I don’t really need, whether it’s old thoughts, things, or behaviors, makes room for new growth in my life.”

In the end, letting go of the past allows a person to fully experience and develop in the present and function as an extension of their Creator.

Article Sources:

“Hope for Today”. Virginia Beach, Virginia: Home of the Al-Anon Family Group, Inc., 2002.