Letting go is something people love to suggest, usually when they’ve got no idea what you’re carrying. The phrase gets thrown around like it’s as easy as dropping a bag of shopping. Of course, if you’ve ever tried to truly move on from something painful, you know how stubborn the past can be. It doesn’t just go. It lingers, it loops, and it keeps showing up in the most inconvenient moments.
The idea that you should just “let go” is not only unhelpful, it can also leave you feeling like you’ve failed at something that’s meant to be simple. However, moving forward doesn’t start with forgetting the past. It starts with understanding why it still has a hold on you—and what might help ease its grip.
You never got the closure you needed.
One of the biggest reasons people stay stuck in the past is because the story never had a proper ending. Maybe someone left without explanation. Maybe you were hurt and never got an apology, or maybe life changed so suddenly you didn’t have time to process it. That kind of emotional limbo doesn’t just disappear because time passes.
Without closure, your brain tries to make sense of things after the fact. It replays memories, re-examines conversations, and imagines different outcomes, all in the hope that it might finally get a sense of peace. But instead of helping, it keeps you circling the same emotional roundabout, with no real exit.
A 2015 study published in Memory journal found that unresolved emotional experiences tend to stay more vivid in our minds, and we’re more likely to ruminate on them compared to events we’ve made peace with. The mind naturally wants to complete the story— and when it can’t, it latches on even tighter.
You’re still blaming yourself.
Regret is a heavy thing to carry, especially when it’s tangled up with self-blame. You might replay choices you made, things you said, or moments you wish you’d handled differently. And instead of accepting that you did what you could with what you had at the time, you keep punishing yourself.
It’s hard to move forward when part of you believes you don’t deserve to. But the truth is, making mistakes doesn’t make you unworthy. It makes you human. And no amount of replaying the past will rewrite it, but it can absolutely stop you from moving through the present.
Research from the University of California shows that self-compassion—being kind to yourself when remembering painful events—is far more effective for emotional recovery than self-criticism. Guilt doesn’t build growth. Understanding does.
You never got to feel what you needed to feel.
When something painful happens, most people just want to feel better as quickly as possible. That’s understandable, but it often means emotions get pushed down rather than dealt with. You might have been told to “move on” before you were ready, or you might have told yourself to “be strong” instead of letting yourself grieve.
The trouble is, emotions don’t just disappear because you ignore them. They sit in your body like unopened letters. And until you actually stop and read them—until you let yourself feel the sadness, the anger, the hurt—they keep resurfacing, often in ways you don’t expect.
The Centre for Emotional Health at Macquarie University suggests that avoiding or suppressing painful feelings actually increases emotional intensity over time. What we resist doesn’t vanish, it builds.
You’ve tied your identity to what happened.
Sometimes the reason the past sticks is because it’s become part of how you see yourself. Maybe it’s a relationship you poured everything into. Maybe it’s a job that defined your sense of worth. Maybe it’s a version of yourself you miss, or one you wish you could forget. Either way, letting go feels like losing a piece of who you are.
However, you’re allowed to grow beyond the things that shaped you. Who you were isn’t all you are, and who you are now doesn’t have to stay tangled up in who hurt you or what went wrong. Rewriting your story doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t happen; it means reclaiming the pen.
Psychologists often refer to this as “narrative identity.” If you’ve wrapped part of your identity around your pain, of course it’s going to be hard to loosen your grip. The thing is, reframing it as just one chapter rather than the whole book can be a powerful first step.
You never felt understood.
Sometimes it’s not the event itself that keeps you stuck, but how alone you felt in it. Maybe no one believed you. Maybe people minimised it. Maybe they told you to get over it before you even had a chance to speak. That kind of dismissal can do more damage than the original experience.
When your pain is met with silence or disbelief, it leaves a kind of emotional residue—a sense that you have to keep explaining yourself, or that your feelings weren’t valid in the first place. That can make moving forward feel unsafe, because part of you is still waiting to be seen, heard, and taken seriously.
A 2021 UK survey by Mind found that 48% of people struggling with mental health didn’t speak to anyone about it, largely due to fear of being dismissed or misunderstood. That silence doesn’t mean people are fine; it means they’ve stopped expecting anyone to get it.
You keep trying to “get over it” the wrong way.
There’s a lot of pressure to tidy up your past like it’s clutter. But healing isn’t about forgetting or pretending something didn’t matter. It’s about making room for it in a way that doesn’t crowd everything else.
Trying to block it out, ignore it, or cover it with positivity usually just pushes it further down. What tends to help more is sitting with it, even when it’s uncomfortable. Naming what happened. Letting yourself feel whatever comes up. Talking about it with someone you trust. And realising you don’t need to have it all resolved to begin moving forward.
In psychological therapy, techniques like acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) focus on helping people accept thoughts and memories rather than trying to erase or replace them. The goal isn’t to “fix” your past; it’s to learn how to carry it differently.
So how do you actually start to let go?
Letting go isn’t a single decision. It’s a hundred small choices—to be kind to yourself, to stop arguing with what’s already happened, to put your energy into things you can control. It’s not a quick win. It’s a quiet process.
Try writing down the things you keep circling back to. Say out loud what you wish had happened. Give your pain some kind of shape. When you acknowledge it instead of fighting it, it slowly loses its grip. And with time—not forced, not rushed—things that once held power over you can start to soften.
You can also think about who you were when the painful thing happened. What did that version of you need? What would you say to them now? Sometimes speaking kindly to your past self helps loosen the emotional knot.
Moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. It just means deciding that your future matters more than your memory of what went wrong. And that’s not weakness. That’s strength you can live with.
Letting go isn’t passive. It’s active. It’s a slow, messy, brave kind of self-respect, one where you choose not to let pain decide your story anymore.
