Why We Can’t Just “Let It Go” - The Missing Piece in Emotional Wellbeing
Have you ever been told to "just let it go?"
Maybe you’ve tried. You’ve journaled, meditated, thought positively, talked it through, do exercise or practice yoga. And still, something lingers. A feeling. A pattern. A tension in your body that just won’t fully shift.
That’s not failure. It’s not resistance. It’s biology.
The truth is, we can’t release what we haven’t been taught how to process. And when it comes to emotions, most of us never learned how.
The Body Remembers What the Mind Tries to Forget
Unprocessed emotions don’t disappear. They get stored in our bodies and in our subconscious minds.
Neuroscience and somatic research have shown that when overwhelming emotions aren’t discharged in the moment, they are held in the nervous system, often for years or even decades.
This stored emotional energy can manifest as:
Chronic anxiety, stress or emotional reactivity
Freeze or shutdown responses
Chronic pain, fatigue, or digestive issues
Overwhelm, burnout, or difficulty setting boundaries
"Trauma is not the story of something that happened in the past. It is the current imprint of that pain, horror, and fear living inside people."
— Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
The Science Behind It
The amygdala, our brain's fear center, stores emotional memory and activates survival responses when it senses similar threats, even if the actual event happened long ago.
Emotional suppression has been shown to increase activation of the sympathetic nervous system, keeping us in a state of chronic stress.
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) works with regulating the amygdala response and has been shown to reduce cortisol by up to 43% in one session. [Church, 2012]
We are not designed to think our way out of trauma or long-held emotional stress. We need to discharge it through the body and we need to update the subconscious patterns that were formed during those emotionally overwhelming moments.
The Body Has to Process It to Release It
You can’t just "let it go" by thinking about it.
True emotional release happens through the body — not through the mind alone.
Tools like EFT provide a safe, structured way for your nervous system to feel and discharge stored emotions and trauma.
Through tapping on specific acupressure points while tuning into the emotion, your body is guided to process what it couldn't complete at the time.
When the nervous system is allowed to safely process and release the stuck emotional charge,
balance is naturally restored.
And when the body lets go — the mind follows.
Without this embodied processing, "letting go" becomes suppression — forcing the mind to override what the body is still holding.
And over time, that unprocessed emotion often resurfaces as reactivity, anxiety, burnout, physical symptoms, or emotional numbness.
EFT gives your system a way to complete what it never got to finish — safely, gently, and fully.
So release isn’t forced — it happens naturally.
What Most Wellness Approaches Miss
Yoga, meditation and exercise are beautiful tools to support a regulated lifestyle. But they can become a management system when emotional tension hasn’t been truly released.
You end up relying on them to cope, rather than using them to elevate.
Subconscious integration and nervous system work is what allows us to shift from coping to clearing.
It’s not about "erasing" the past. It’s about:
Discharging the emotion the body couldn’t process at the time
Rewiring the subconscious belief attached to that experience
Helping the nervous system feel safe enough to update its response
When that happens, your system lets go on its own. No force needed.
Why I Do This Work
I don’t do this work to sell something. I do it because I believe this is the missing piece so many people are looking for.
We were never taught how to process emotions. We weren’t taught how to complete a trauma response. We were taught to cope, suppress, override.
But there is another way.
I offer 1:1 sessions and workshops both in person and online to help people understand this gentle, science-supported path to true emotional regulation and subconscious reprogramming.
It’s not magic. It’s not performance. It’s a return to what our bodies always knew how to do, when we give them the chance.
The Path Forward
There is a way to process and release, without reliving the pain. A way to shift your patterns by working with the body and subconscious, not against them.
That’s the work I do and it’s why I share this message so widely.
I truly believe in the power of this approach, and I would love for it to become something we all grow up knowing, a new norm in how we understand and care for our emotional wellbeing.
But it starts with us.
If you're curious to experience this work for yourself or share it with your family, community, or students I’d love to support you.
Together, we can shift what our wellbeing and mental health looks like for ourselves and for future generations.