When It’s Time to Let People Go: How I’ve Lightened My Emotional Load

“Love yourself unbearable to let go of the people, thoughts, and habits that are weighing you down.” ~Karen Salmansohn

More than a year ago I started unpacking and cleaning out my ‘backpack’ of life in a variegated way.

I have unchangingly tried to remain friends with exes, and plane though we didn’t necessarily socialize together, there was still the odd keeping in touch, helping them with a favor, or “Happy Birthday” text.

While most of them are often nice people, the truth is that if I never dated them, I probably wouldn’t be friends with them now. We’re just on variegated paths, have grown in variegated ways, or have vastly variegated priorities (or values). Also, some were unconfined manipulators, and for others I was maybe a time-filler.

Regardless, they were forming part of the emotional baggage I carried in my life walkabout every day. I certainly don’t pine over them or plane think well-nigh them all that much, but I felt a sense of intense guilt at the thought of wearing them off.

Would I be a bad friend? Would I be a bad person for no longer helping with favors, doing an odd work presentation they needed help with, or stuff misogynist for emotional support?

The truth is, their work presentations and financial and emotional well-being were never my responsibility to start with. As a partner, I certainly want to support and build up my partner in love, but taking on these burdens, whether in or out of the relationship, just crush me to feeling guilt and an immense sense of failure.

As much as I tried, I could never fully solve their problems, take yonder their pains, or make them happy.

Ego Introspection—Another Nonflexible Truth

Another nonflexible truth is that I really was just an easy target for them to shift their responsibilities. Whether it was the work presentation or an emotional off-load, I felt that I had to be there. Why?

I’d finger guilty if things didn’t work out considering I’d said “no”—whether due to their conscious or subconscious manipulation or my own attachment. Maybe I felt a sense of stuff the hero. Was I dependent on them for an ego boost?

Stuffing My Walkabout to Zip-Busting Stage

This was taking up space in my life backpack. The thing is, every walkabout can only fit so many things. If your pack is full, but you want to fit that uneaten little thing, you’ll have to remove something else. There’s only so much space.

Why siphon heavy stones in a walkabout and then mutter that you can’t fit a nutritious lunch, your favorite book, or a jacket to alimony you warm?

This is exactly what I was doing. I was filling my walkabout with emotional attachments and valise that were weighing me down. While they didn’t take up much time in my life, they took up a lot of space in my head.

Sometimes I removed the stones of guilt or failure, but often I put them when inside. Sometimes I just removed them from the walkabout but carried them in my hands instead.

Because they occupied my time and emotions, I was unable to be vulnerable with others. Some friends withdrew considering they knew I unchangingly had a subtle zipper lingering in the when of my head. I missed out on many unconfined friendships considering I was not fully open.

Although I was technically self-ruling unbearable to be fully present in other friendships and relationships, there was an underlying manipulation to remain somewhat true-blue to the expectations of my ex. They didn’t want me, but they didn’t want to fully self-ruling me.

Unless I completely removed the stones and left them behind, tossed them away, I would never have space for increasingly wondrous things in that backpack. In fact, the seams would rip and the zipper would break, and it would be harder to hold anything at all.

I have witnessed the same thing with some of my closest friends. They alimony subtle strings tying to ex-partners or friends that no longer serve their growth and healing. By doing this, I have noticed, they unchangingly have their baby-sit up.

They struggle to be fully open, honest, and vulnerable. They have missed out some incredible friendships considering others can sense this. They have hurt some of the most loving and well-meaning people in their lives considering they kept gravitating when to an unhealthy zipper and filling their bag with stones.

Starting to Unpack

Sometimes letting go requires a frank conversation, but often it can be washed-up by simply distancing yourself intentionally. That’s what I did. No increasingly contact. It took me increasingly than a year to work through the guilt of stuff a ‘bad friend’ for wearing people out.

It took hours, days, and weeks of feeling and working through heavy emotions, and then letting them go…over and over. It wasn’t an easy process. It wasn’t a quick process. I loved those I had to let go, but I knew it was no longer serving my growth and healing to be emotionally attached.

Slowly, I could peel yonder these sticky layers of attachments that I wasn’t plane enlightened of. The feeling of failure, the zipper to someone who I once trusted, and the zipper to my own sense of stuff the hero.

I was concerned that they would now think immensely of me, and plane worse, that they would talk immensely of me to others considering I would no longer pick up their responsibilities.

Letting go, completely, was life changing. I never realized how much emotional and mental space my exes (and plane some unhealthy friends who I moreover decided to loftiness myself from) were taking up in my mind and heart.

I didn’t only have to set physical boundaries, but I moreover had to teach myself emotional boundaries to stop the unhealthy thought patterns. Anger, resentment, guilt… it all had to go.

I had to get rid of their voices in my throne that unchangingly had an opinion on how I was living, who I spent my time with, or plane what I wore. Keeping any strings tying would just reinforce these little, subtle voices again.

I finally realized that it would be untellable to truly heal and grow (spiritually, emotionally, and just as a human being) if I kept occupying this space in my walkabout with these thoughts.

Letting Go Doesn’t Midpoint You Don’t Love Them

The value of space I freed up in my walkabout for GOOD stuff was incredible. The stratum of uneasiness that left my life was transformational. I learned that letting go doesn’t midpoint not loving. In fact, when you truly let go you are freer to finger love from a distance, without any anger, guilt, anxiety, or attachment.

I truly love those I had to let go, not with a romantic type of fickle love, but in a way that I tightly care. Just considering you decide not to engage someone in your life doesn’t midpoint you don’t love them. It simply ways you are single-minded to your own growth and the path you know is right for you.

I was finally worldly-wise to commit my thoughts and emotions to increasingly positive ways of living. I was slowly worldly-wise to be myself without voices in my throne questioning every whoopee I took. I could love others in new, increasingly fully present ways. I became largest at setting healthy boundaries and realizing when they were stuff disrespected.

I moreover have a much variegated sense of love for those I have let go. It may sound contradictory. While previously my love for them largely led me to people-pleasing, guilt when I feared I would disappoint, and wrongness when I felt betrayed, this was no longer the case. Looking when now, I see that fear, guilt, and wrongness are not remotely signs of love at all.

Now, however, if a painful thought comes up, my heart and mind respond with only peace, and I wish them a light walkabout too. I might not stipulate with their values or the choices they make, but my heart feels no painful emotions. I genuinely hope that whatever they are packing in their tons will bring them true freedom—that their souls too may flourish.

The Journey Continues

I am by no ways washed-up with this journey. I still struggle to trust others and hate feeling vulnerable. But at the same time, I am overwhelmed at the doors this process has opened for transformation.

Creating the path of least resistance for growth in my life ways there is space for good stuff in my backpack. Instead of delivering a heavy load, I often find myself sharing the good stuff in my walkabout with others increasingly freely. By that I midpoint with no expectations or zipper to an outcome.

Every day brings a new sorting out of this backpack. It’s humbling. What stays and what new things have I stuffed inside that are taking up unnecessary space?

The longer I hang on to things that don’t goody my growth and healing, the harder they are to get rid of. Some haven’t been virtually for too long. If I wipe out and evaluate often, it becomes easier to recognize what’s subtracting too much weight and taking up precious space for good stuff.

Some things in the walkabout once served me very well but no longer do. It takes valiance to let these go. You’ll be surprised by how some old, moldy items start making plane the good things smell and rot.

This principle applies to scrutinizingly any zone of our lives, not only to exes or friendships. It can be a family member, a job, or an identity you socialize yourself with. In fact, I’ve had to well-spoken my walkabout of many of these things too.

While they don’t unchangingly take up physical space in your life, the mental and emotional phlebotomize can be intense. Let go of what’s weighing you lanugo so you can be fully present, love better, and grow to let your trappy soul flourish in lightness. It’s not quick. It’s not easy. But it will transform your life. It transformed mine.