When Giving Up is Resilience
By: Patrice Flanagan-Morris, LCSW
Recently, I have found myself in the position of wanting to do it all again. The old stories of what being a hard worker means, what owning a business requires, and how life should be hard before it is good. You probably have heard the stories too growing up -- what resilience is supposed to mean. We get so much messaging from our society that to be resilient means pushing through. Bearing down, working the 80 hour weeks. Constantly working on yourself, pushing yourself, being a part of the hustle, is so valued. It is so validated.
As kids we take our cues from what is right and wrong, good and bad from the impactful adults in our lives. We get highly praised for good grades, achieving in sports, and being in a lot of extracurriculars. Never for rest, never for knowing what we can and cannot do. So it is only natural that we are driven towards the hustle culture. It feels like the right way to be.
Giving Up
Giving up, and letting go, honestly, can be synonyms here. Letting go is praised, we have moved on from our past, it no longer haunts us we can embrace the future. But isn't that what giving up means too? Why does it have such a different response? We so often are taught that giving up is for losers. In giving up I have learned to let go. To not hold on so tightly to needing to be the best at everything.
I trust that I can learn new skills, in a pinch I can do things that I need to even if I don't like them. But when it comes to what I want to do on a day to day basis, I have to give up what isn't working. What is taking me more time than my time is worth? When it is time to say "I'm not good at this". It is okay to not be good at everything, we were never meant to be. But too often we try and try and it gets us stuck. We feel badly about ourselves, and maybe even lean heavily into self-criticism.
Sometimes the most brave and resilient thing we can do is walk away, give up, let go. Think about all the times you have held on too tightly to something. Notice what has happened when you have given it away and some of the lightness that has come with that. It's just like going to therapy and saying "I can't do this on my own anymore", quitting your side hustle because it takes away from other parts of your life, or walking away from a relationship that isn't going to work.
Sometimes resilience means pushing through, other times it means walking away
Even as I wrote this blog, I started it, and then came back to it one month later. I was bombarded with some negative thoughts and messaging that I had taken in elsewhere. Feeling the pressure to do additional things, make the business grow, support my staff, be a present mom. Something had to go, so mid blog I was out I had to trim the fat.
It might be small but sometimes we hold onto these tiny things that create such an energy suck that they actually get us more stuck in life. Now a blog post is simple, when the giving up is finding a new career path, deciding to not have children, or getting a divorce it gets a whole lot harder. And the harder you are on yourself the more stuck you will find yourself.
If you notice yourself putting something off, avoiding thinking about it, or continuing to preserve in the face of something that doesn't fit in your life anymore this is where therapy can help out. Resilience is grown within us, not outside of us. Brainspotting is designed to support you in moving through blocks, limiting beliefs of yourself, and finding what path is best. It helps you trim the fat, shed what no longer works, and embrace the process of grieving and letting go. It helps you find your way back to yourself and engrains in you that you do not need to do it all.