Letting Go of Control and Resistance

Julia Papale, Advanced Clinical Fellow

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about control, and how often when we try to control something it begins to control us.

For example, an attempt to control our thoughts and emotions by pushing away the ‘bad’ and only striving for the ‘good,’ results in a rejection of part of the self, of the rich human experience that comprises both pain and joy. Inevitably what we push away returns, lingering over us like a shadow.

When something sticky or uncomfortable begins to occur, an attempt to control the situation to avoid unwanted feelings might arise. Planning, worrying, future-tripping, self-shaming or blaming, storytelling, mind-reading, the list goes on. But control is an illusion, an avoidant strategy of ‘what is.’

To me, letting go of control means surrendering to life as it is, not as we wish it were in the past, in the present moment, or hope it will be in the future. It means detaching from outcomes and trusting in ourselves to handle whatever comes our way and trusting in our own process. It does not mean passivity or powerlessness. On the contrary, it leads to self-agency and empowerment when we realize what we can control includes our choices and the way we move forward: the way that we act and react.

I believe the attempt to control is rooted in fear, a fear of the unknown and what will happen if we loosen our grip, thinking that the second we let go we’re not going to be okay. So how can we un-grip? We can accept what is occurring without resistance. As the equation goes: pain x resistance = suffering. By trying to control an emotion like pain, rather than letting it just be as it is, we find ourselves trapped in suffering.

So, by letting go and giving ourselves over to the inescapable ups and downs that will befall us, we open ourselves up fully to presence, which is the only place where life is ever occurring in the first place. Mindfulness teacher Tara Brach offers us an alternative equation to consider: pain x presence = freedom. What this means is that if we accept reality and its truths without a fight, we can rid ourselves of the self-made web of controlling strategies that might otherwise keep us entangled. Instead of remaining stuck, we can choose to be free.