Please Don’t Tell Me to Let Them

My old therapist is on a bit of a hiatus right now, and I’ve been on a mission to find someone similar to her.

I swear, if one more therapist suggests I read The Let Them Theory, I might actually scream.

And before anyone gets defensive, let me be clear; I like Mel Robbins.

I’ve listened to her podcasts. I’ve read the book. I understand the concept. I actually think there is something incredibly freeing about recognizing that other people’s choices are outside of our control.

Let them.

Let them make their choices.
Let them have their opinions.
Let them misunderstand you.
Let them be disappointed.
Let them be who they are.

Great.

I get it.

I’ve got it.

What I don’t need is to spend my entire therapy session talking about it.

Eventually, there comes a point when “let them” starts to feel less like a therapeutic tool and more like a prescription for every complicated emotion I’ve brought into the room.

Relationship problems?

Let them.

Family conflict?

Let them.

Resentment?

Let them.

Someone is behaving in a way that hurts you?

Let them.

And I’m sitting there thinking, yes. I know I can’t control them. But can we please talk about what the hell is happening inside me?

Because that’s why I’m here.

Knowing isn’t always the problem.

One of the things I’ve learned through years of therapy is that intellectual understanding and emotional ability are two completely different things.

I can know something and still struggle to do it.

I can know that another person’s anger isn’t mine to manage and still feel my entire nervous system light up when they’re angry.

I can know that I am allowed to have boundaries and still feel guilty when someone doesn’t like the boundary.

I can know that I shouldn’t take responsibility for everyone else’s feelings and still find myself doing exactly that.

Knowing doesn’t automatically make something easy.

I don’t need someone to tell me what I already know.

I need help understanding why I can’t seem to do what I know.

That’s the work I came to therapy for.

Maybe this is part of why I’ve been thinking so much about my old therapist.

I miss her.

Not because she had some magical answer that nobody else possesses, or because she always told me exactly what I wanted to hear.

Actually, quite the opposite.

I miss her because I felt like she knew me.

She knew the history behind the reaction.

She knew when something I was saying was really about something else.

She could hear the difference between I’m angry and I’m hurt.

She understood that sometimes my tendency to fix, explain, accommodate, smooth things over and take responsibility wasn’t a personality quirk I could simply turn off.

There was a reason I had learned to do those things and instead of giving me another catchy phrase to remember, she helped me understand where those patterns came from.

That mattered, because when you’ve spent years becoming a person who keeps the peace, learning to stop doing that isn’t as simple as deciding you’re going to stop.

You have to understand what you believe will happen if you don’t.

Will someone be angry?

Will they leave?

Will they think I’m selfish?

Will I disappoint them?

Will I become the bad guy?

Will everything fall apart if I stop holding it together?

Those are the questions underneath the behavior.

And that’s where I think good therapy lives.

I don’t need another slogan!

Maybe I’m just getting a little tired of the way therapy has started to feel like it comes with its own collection of bestselling books and Instagram-friendly catchphrases.

Set the boundary.

Let them.

Protect your peace.

Choose yourself.

Stop people pleasing.

And again….yes.

I’m not arguing with any of it.

But sometimes these ideas can become so simplified that they lose the messy humanity underneath them.

Because what happens when you set the boundary and spend the next three days feeling guilty?

What happens when you “let them” and then you feel sad?

What happens when you choose yourself and someone you love is genuinely hurt?

What happens when protecting your peace means accepting that a relationship may never become what you hoped it would be?

What happens when you finally stop people pleasing and discover that some people don’t actually like the new version of you?

That’s the part I want to talk about.

Not just what I should do.

I want to understand why doing it feels so damn hard.

Maybe that’s what I’m actually looking for.

I don’t expect a therapist to fix my life.

I don’t want someone to hand me a list of rules for becoming emotionally healthy and I definitely don’t need another book recommendation every time I walk through the door.

I want someone who can sit with the complicated stuff.

The resentment.

The grief.

The guilt.

The anger that sometimes makes me uncomfortable.

The parts of myself I’m not particularly proud of.

The contradictions.

The moments when I know better and still don’t do better.

I want someone who can say, “You already know you can’t control them. Let’s talk about why you feel responsible for them anyway.”

That’s a conversation I can use.

The goal of therapy isn’t always to learn another way to let go; sometimes the goal is to understand why we’ve been holding on so tightly in the first place.

That’s why I miss my old therapist.

She didn’t just tell me to let them.

She helped me understand me.