Why Is It So Hard to Let Go of the Past?

Just let it go.

Such a simple little sentence.

Usually offered with the very best of intentions.

And occasionally there's a strong temptation to reply:

Oh, I hadn't thought of that.

Because most of the time, we already know we'd like to let something go.

The conversation that didn't end well.

The relationship that ended differently from the way we'd hoped.

Something we did — or didn't do.

A decision we wish we'd made differently.

Perhaps even an earlier version of our lives that we thought would turn out another way.

We know we can't go back and change any of it.

And yet the mind doesn't always seem to have received the memo.

So why is it so hard to let go of the past?

Perhaps because letting go isn't just a simple decision. 

Why Do We Hold On to the Past?

Our minds are extraordinarily good at learning from experience.

And that trait is beneficial too!

We remember what happened before so that we can navigate what happens next.

If something was painful, embarrassing, disappointing or simply didn't make sense, it isn't particularly surprising that the mind might return to it.

It looks for answers.

• What happened?
• Did I miss something?
• Could I have done something differently?
• How do I stop this happening again?

In short, we want to avoid repeating something that didn't work for us, so that thinking can feel useful.  And of course sometimes it is useful.

• We reflect.
• We learn.
• We adapt.

The difficulty comes when there's nothing new to discover.

Instead of learning from the past, we begin travelling around the same familiar loop.

I've written separately about why we replay conversations in our heads, because that's one particularly common example.

But sometimes what we're holding on to isn't the event itself.

It's the story that grew around it.

When an Experience Becomes a Story

Imagine you apply for a job and don't get it.

That's an experience.

Disappointing perhaps, but still an experience.

Now imagine the mind begins adding to it.

• I wasn't good enough.
• I always mess up interviews.
• People like me don't get jobs like that.
• I'm never going to get where I want to be.

Suddenly we're carrying considerably more than one unsuccessful job application.

We're carrying a story about ourselves.

And stories can be remarkably sticky.

The same can happen after relationships, mistakes, disagreements, disappointments and all sorts of experiences we collect along the way.

Something that happened to us gradually becomes something we believe about us.

That doesn't mean every conclusion we draw from the past is wrong.

But it does make it worth occasionally asking:

Is this still true?

Because sometimes we're living according to a story written by a much earlier version of ourselves.

Why Do We Keep Waiting for Closure?

One of my favourite episodes of The Big Bang theory is the one where Amy teases Sheldon about his visceral need for closure.

It's not uncommon that sense of waiting for the final stage, the full stop, the indication that we are at the end.   Whether we realise it or not, we are quietly waiting for something...

• An explanation.
• An answer.
• An apology.
• Perhaps simply for another person to finally understand our side of the story.

We love a neat ending, they feel so comfortable.

In an ideal world, difficult conversations finish with everyone understanding one another. Relationships end with clarity. Questions are answered. Apologies arrive.

We get that lovely little sense of:

Ahhh. Now I understand.

Life, unfortunately, isn't always that obliging.

Sometimes the answer never comes.

The other person doesn't understand.

The apology doesn't arrive.

And nobody sends us a helpful notification saying:

Oh, by the way, you can stop waiting now. This situation will NEVER be satisfactorily resolved.

So we wait.

And while we're waiting, the mind has plenty of opportunity to keep the experience alive.

Research and clinical guidance around letting go similarly recognise that rumination can keep us focused on past events, while acceptance, mindfulness and bringing attention back to the present can help change our relationship with those experiences.  

Letting Go Doesn't Mean Saying It Was Okay

But putting a full stop after a difficult situation needs to be handled with care.

Because if something genuinely hurt us, letting go can feel a little like marginalising our experience.  We can't just say:

• It doesn't matter.
• I've forgiven them.
• Actually it was okay that that happened.

Letting go doesn't have to carry those meanings.

• We don't have to approve of what happened.
• We don't have to trivialise it.
• We certainly don't have to pretend we're happy about it.
• And letting go doesn't mean forgetting.

It can be as simple as acknowledging our experience as it is.  

• The past happened.
• We may not have chosen it.
• We may not like it.
• But we can't renegotiate it.

What we can begin to explore is how much of it needs to travel with us into the future.

Can You Force Yourself to Let Go?

Probably not.  Honouring our experience is important - whatever that looks like for us. 

When we force our way through letting go, we can sometimes inadvertently create another inner struggle.

This is one of the misconceptions I often come across when teaching mindfulness.

People assume mindfulness means emptying the mind, stopping thoughts or somehow becoming so wonderfully Zen that nothing bothers us anymore.

It doesn't.

We begin with something much less dramatic.

We notice.

We notice that the mind has gone back.

We notice the familiar story beginning.

We notice when reflection has stopped providing anything useful and we're travelling around the same loop.

And that awareness matters.

Because we can't interrupt a pattern we haven't noticed.

Awareness Comes Before Letting Go

Perhaps, then, letting go doesn't begin with getting rid of anything.

Perhaps it begins with becoming curious about what we're still carrying.

• Is there something useful to learn?
• Is there an action that still needs to be taken?
• Is there a conversation that genuinely needs to happen?
• Or are we waiting for the past to provide something it may never give us?

That can give us a sense of gently processing an experience in place of repeatedly reliving it.

And that recognition matters because it creates a little space.

And in that space, we have choice.

Not necessarily the choice to instantly drop something we've carried for years.

But perhaps the choice not to pick it up quite so often.

What Are You Ready to Put Down?

Nature makes letting go look ridiculously easy.

Autumn arrives and the trees don't appear to spend October desperately clinging to every leaf.

There isn't a small oak tree somewhere saying:

I'm just not ready.

We humans are more complicated.

And of course that's okay.

Letting go doesn't have to be one enormous moment where we finally declare ourselves OVER IT.

It might happen gradually.

A thought we don't follow quite so far — a story we begin to question. 

An answer we stop waiting for.

So rather than telling yourself to just let go, perhaps there's a gentler way in... 

Ask yourself:

What am I still carrying that I might be ready to put down?

You don't need to have the answer.

Just notice what comes up.

Continue exploring

Inside the Just Breathe App, each month brings a new theme to explore — a gentle journey through ideas such as slowing down, awareness, self-compassion, letting go and connection. 

Rather than building an ever-growing backlog of content you feel you should get through, each month's journey is available for that month before making way for something new.

Alongside the monthly theme, you'll find guided mindfulness practices, sleep support, morning motivation and mini-courses to help you bring mindfulness into everyday life.

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About the author

Julie Perrigo MSc is a Stress and Emotional Awareness Specialist, mindfulness teacher and creator of the Stress Interruption Method.

She holds an MSc in Mindfulness from the University of Aberdeen, where her postgraduate research explored the use of a structured digital mindfulness programme to support stress and emotional wellbeing. Julie combines her research and teaching experience with more than 25 years working in corporate environments.

She is also the author of The Emotional Hustle and founder of Just Breathe Solutions, where her work focuses on helping people understand the patterns that can keep stress going and develop practical skills to interrupt them.