If “just let it go” has never worked for you, there is a reason. Letting go is what becomes possible when the body feels safe enough to stop holding — not an act of will. A somatic therapist on what actually helps.
By Abi Beri | Integrative Therapist & Nervous System Specialist · Dublin & Online
TL;DR. If you have spent years failing at the instruction to “just let it go,” nothing is wrong with you. Letting go is not an action, a decision or an intention. It is what becomes possible when the body finally feels safe enough to stop holding. The thing being held is almost never in the head — it is in the body. Resentment lives in the jaw. Grief lives in the chest. Shame lives in the belly. Ungrieved anger lives in the upper arms. Telling the head to let go of something the body is holding is a structural category error. From a somatic therapy perspective, the work is not to force release. It is to build the conditions — slowly, relationally, in the body — in which the holding can finally ease on its own.
Key facts at a glance
- Letting go is not an action or a decision — it is the result of the body feeling safe enough to stop holding.
- Most attempts to “let go” are actually suppression, performance or intention, all happening in the head.
- The thing being held lives in the body — resentment in the jaw and shoulders, grief in the chest, shame in the belly, ungrieved anger in the upper arms and hands.
- Trying to let go from the head while the body is holding adds shame to the original holding.
- The body holds for reasons — it is not malfunctioning. Holding is intelligent protection.
- Release becomes available when the conditions allow: felt safety, relational support, slow somatic attention.
- Somatic therapy is the slow building of those conditions, in Dublin and online.
What “just let it go” has been confused with
Quick answer: Most people attempting to let go are actually doing one of three things, all of which fail: suppression (trying not to think about it), performance (trying to feel different), or intention (declaring you are done with it). All three happen in the head. The thing being held is in the body.
Most people, on hearing the instruction “let it go,” attempt one of three things. They try to stop thinking about the thing. They try to feel different about the thing. Or they try to declare, sometimes out loud, that they are done with the thing. None of these are letting go. They are, respectively, suppression, performance and intention. They share a feature — they are all happening in the head, and they are all being attempted by the will.
The thing being held, however, is almost never in the head. The thing being held is in the body. Resentment lives in the jaw and the shoulders. Grief lives in the chest and the diaphragm. Old shame lives in the belly. Anger that was not allowed lives in the upper arms and the hands. The mental story is the surface report. The actual holding is somatic.
Which means that telling someone in their head to let go of something that is being held in their body is, structurally, a category error. It is like telling your liver to please stop processing alcohol while you continue to drink. The instruction is in the wrong language, delivered to the wrong department.
Trying to let go vs Actually letting go — a comparison
| Trying to let go (head) | Actually letting go (body) |
| An act of will. | The result of conditions. |
| Happens (or doesn’t) in the mind. | Happens (or doesn’t) in the nervous system. |
| Suppression, performance, intention. | Felt safety, slow attention, somatic release. |
| Adds shame when it fails. | Recognises that the holding is intelligent. |
| Treats holding as malfunction. | Treats holding as protection. |
| Demands release on schedule. | Allows release on the body’s own clock. |
| Often makes the holding tighter. | Slowly makes the holding less necessary. |
Why the body holds in the first place
Quick answer: The body holds for reasons. Each kind of holding — chronic resentment, ungrieved grief, old shame, swallowed anger — is the body’s intelligent protection from feeling something that was, at the time, unsafe or impossible to feel. It is not a malfunction. It is an adaptation.
Whatever you are holding, the body did not hold it for no reason. The system, at the time the holding was laid down, calculated that fully feeling whatever it was — the original loss, the original injustice, the original shame — was either unsafe, or untimely, or beyond what the system could metabolise in that moment. So the body held it. Not out of stubbornness. Out of intelligence.
The holding allowed you to function. It let you finish school, raise children, hold down jobs, get through the years when feeling fully would have been catastrophic. The holding kept you alive. It deserves credit, not contempt.
The problem is that the conditions that made the holding necessary often pass — the person is gone, the era is over, the threat has receded — without anyone telling the body. The body keeps holding, on the assumption that the original conditions still apply. It is not malfunctioning. It is doing exactly what it was asked to do.
What actually allows release
If forcing does not work, what does? The honest answer is: conditions. The body releases what it has been holding when the conditions in which it can safely stop holding finally arrive. Those conditions, in my experience as a somatic therapist, typically include several of the following:
- Felt safety in the body.Not the idea of safety. The body’s own physiological registering of safety — slower heart rate, softer breath, a settled ventral-vagal state.
- A relational witness.Another regulated nervous system, present, attentive, non-judging. Co-regulation does what self-effort cannot.
- Slow, paced, body-based attention.Not interpretation. Not insight. The slow allowing of sensation to be present without being managed.
- Permission to not let go yet.Paradoxically: the recognition that you do not have to put it down is often what allows the body to start, on its own, to ease.
- Time.The body has its own clock. Some holding eases in weeks. Some in years. Some becomes integrated rather than released. All are valid.
- Sometimes, tears or shaking or sound.Discharge in the body is not always pretty. The body knows what to do when it is finally allowed.
Signs the holding is somatic, not mental
- You can describe the thing clearly but cannot stop carrying it.
- Insight has not produced relief — you understand it and still feel it.
- There is a specific place in the body where the thing lives (jaw, chest, gut, shoulders, hands).
- Physical practices (breath, movement, slow attention) shift it more than thinking about it does.
- Stress amplifies it; rest sometimes eases it.
- You can sense it even when you are not thinking about it.
- Trying to “let it go” by force makes it worse.
How somatic therapy supports the conditions
Somatic therapy at its best does not try to make you let go of anything. It does the slow, relational work of building the conditions in which the holding can finally ease, on its own terms. The therapist provides a regulated relational field. The body is given slow, paced attention. Sensation is allowed to be sensation, without being immediately translated into language or interpretation. Over weeks and months, the body learns, in small repeated experiences, that the original conditions are no longer present — and the holding, slowly, becomes less necessary.
Foundational thinkers in this lineage include Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score), Pat Ogden (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy) and Stephen Porges (polyvagal theory). The technical concepts — window of tolerance, titration, pendulation, vagal brake — exist to keep the work within the range the nervous system can integrate, which is precisely the range in which actual release becomes possible.
Frequently asked questions
Why can’t I let go of someone or something? Because letting go is not an act of will. The body is holding something — usually for a reason that was once intelligent — and the holding does not respond to being instructed to stop. What it does respond to is the slow building of conditions in which it no longer needs to hold.
Is somatic therapy effective for chronic resentment, grief or shame? Particularly effective. These are all forms of body-held material, which is exactly what somatic therapy is designed to support.
How long does it take? The body has its own clock. Some holding eases in weeks; some in months; some in years. The work compounds; each small release makes the next more available.
Do I have to know what I am holding? Often not at first. The body knows what it is holding. The therapy uncovers it as it becomes safe to.
Can I do this work online? Yes. Online somatic therapy is genuinely effective with a trained practitioner. The relational field travels through a screen.
How do I book? The easiest first step is a short, no-pressure intro at somatictherapyireland.com.
Working with a Somatic Therapist in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge & Online
If you have read this far and recognise the pattern — quietly failing at the one piece of advice the culture agrees on — that is the territory of the work I do. As a somatic therapist working in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and online, I support the slow building of the conditions in which the body can finally, on its own terms, exhale. The work draws on Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine), polyvagal-informed practice, inner child work and Family Constellations.
If you would like to find out whether we would be a good fit, book a short intro at somatictherapyireland.com. The companion somatic talk — On Letting Things Go — is on Insight Timer and wherever you listen.
About the author
Abi Beri is an Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. He is trained in somatic methods, family constellations, polyvagal-informed practice and inner child work. He is IPHM-accredited. He sees clients in person from a practice base across Dublin and Kildare, and online globally. More at somatictherapyireland.com and blissfulevolution.com.
Further reading & references
- Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books.
- Levine, P. A. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice. North Atlantic Books.
- van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.
- Ogden, P., Minton, K. & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body. Norton.
- Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton.
- Companion somatic talk: On Letting Things Go (Insight Timer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube).
