Letting Go

Editor’s note: The new wording for Step 5 of GROW’s 12 Step Program is: ‘We also tackled our weaknesses and failures’ (that’s after acknowledging our gifts and our strengths in Step 4). This paper, by Sarto from GROW’s Western Region, illustrates how “letting go” is an important aspect to Step 5.

1. Letting go of old beliefs: ‘Try harder, do better, be perfect’. These messages are tricks which people have played on us – parents, teachers, priests, older people. We can never achieve ‘perfectionism’. Until we ‘let go’ of those messages and tell ourselves that we are good enough, we will never be happy. Who we are is good enough.
2. Letting go of the need to control: Very often we want to control other people, we want to control situations, we want to control our relationships – we want to be in control most of the time. Letting go of our need to control can set us free. It can set our God free to send the best to us.
3. Letting go of anger: Anger is an emotion we are all prone to experience. Our goal would be to let go of anger and resentment. Anger is a powerful and sometimes a frightening emotion. It’s also a beneficial one when it’s not allowed to harden into resentment. It can help us if it points to problems, or signals to us that we need to change certain things. Letting go of resentments from the past is very important to our freedom of living today.
4. Letting go of guilt: Feeling good about ourselves is a choice we have. So is feeling guilty. When guilt is legitimate it acts as a warning, signalling that we are off course. Wallowing in guilt allows others to control us. It makes us feel not good enough. It prevents us from living a healthy life and from caring for ourselves. Even if we’ve done something that violates a value, extended guilt does not solve the problem, it prolongs the problem. So we must strive to let go of guilt.
5. Letting go of sadness: Unresolved sadness from the past can be a great block to our joy. If we denied pain in the past and didn’t deal with it then we suppressed all kinds of feelings. We denied them and so they turned into depressed or sad feelings. We have to deal with these feelings by opening up to someone about them. By crying and releasing the pain we get healing of the guilt we feel.
6. Letting go of the past: If we keep clinging to the past we will never live in the present.
7. Letting go of shame: We may have been victimised by others physically, sexually or exploited by the addictions of others. The guilt of the act of abuse belongs to the perpetrator not the victim.