The Grip Can Loosen

A hard thought shows up. That part is ordinary.

Most of us treat the arrival of the thought as the problem. The replay of a conversation. The mistake that keeps knocking. The worry that circles back at 2 a.m. We assume the trouble is that it came at all, and we brace against the next one. But the arriving is not really where the weight lives.

Researchers gave a broad set of rumination measures to two groups of college students, 423 in one sample and 329 in another. When they ran the numbers, rumination did not hold together as a single thing. It came apart into separate pieces. There was the repetitive intrusive thought, the part that shows up uninvited. There was reflectiveness, the honest turning-over of an experience. And there was a third piece, quieter and easy to miss: the inability to let go.

That third piece stood on its own. Even after accounting for the intrusive thoughts, the inability to let go predicted more anxiety, lower mood, and a thinner sense of well-being. And when the researchers looked at mindfulness, much of its benefit seemed to run through this same channel. Mindfulness helped, in large part, by strengthening the capacity to release.

Notice the distinction the study draws. Letting go is not pushing the thought away. Suppression is its own kind of grip, a hand clamped shut around what it swears it is holding at arm’s length. Letting go is closer to opening the hand. You see the thought, you let it be a thought, and you stop identifying with it long enough for it to pass.

What this means for you

This is kinder news than it first sounds. The stone is not the thought. The stone is the grip. And a grip is not your character. It is a thing your hand is doing, which means it is a thing your hand can learn to do differently.

You do not have to win an argument with your own mind. You do not have to keep the hard thoughts from coming, which tends to be a losing project anyway. You get to practice the smaller, more possible move: loosening. The researchers are careful here, and so am I. This was a correlational study of students, and letting go was measured by questionnaire, not cured by one. They are not promising anything. They are pointing at a muscle most of us were not told we had.

The next time the thought knocks, you might try noticing the grip before you argue with the guest. Then, gently, one finger at a time.

The thought can come. You can set it back down.

If you want writing like this in your inbox each week, the newsletter lands every Sunday: findingwithkevin.com/subscribe

What prompted this: Letting Go as an Aspect of Rumination and Its Relationship to Mindfulness, Dysphoria, Anxiety, and Eudemonic Well-Being, Behavioral Sciences