When Understanding Yourself Isn’t Enough — And You Still Can’t Let Things Go…

I thought I needed to write this post as many people who find their way to this work are not confused about themselves.

Who are they? They are thoughtful and intelligent. Perceptive. Often deeply self-aware.
They have spent years trying to understand themselves — where things began, what shaped them, why they react the way they do.

They know their story well, often being in various therapies before. And yet, despite all of that understanding — knowing where it all comes from, being able to explain it clearly, seeing the pattern (all of these is often called as ‘insight’) — somewhere deep there things still haven’t settled. Often not even close, if not worse. So, in fact, they feel more and more lost in life. They still can’t let things go…

When Insight Doesn’t Bring Relief

One of the most painful and confusing experiences is understanding yourself deeply, yet still feeling stuck inside your own system.

You may find yourself thinking:
“I know why I’m like this… so why hasn’t it changed?”
“Why can’t I relax, even when nothing is obviously wrong?”

When insight and understanding doesn’t bring relief, people often turn inward, starting to doubt themselves.
They wonder whether they’ve missed something.
Whether they need to try harder, reflect more, go deeper.

Most don’t say this out loud.
They carry it quietly, often with a sense of disappointment in themselves. And often this feels like the safest option, doesn’t it? When you don’t share with anyone, so that at least no one enters here…

This isn’t about a lack of effort or awareness. In fact, it’s something about how the brain and the nervous system actually reacts and changes.

The Part of You That Isn’t Listening to Understanding

There is a part of you that doesn’t respond to understanding alone.

Not because understanding isn’t valuable — but because this part of you isn’t listening for explanations.

What is It is looking for, in fact, is safety.

This part of the nervous system is always scanning:
Is it safe enough now to soften? To let go? To stop holding on?

If the answer is uncertain — even subtly — the system stays alert.

That’s why you can understand yourself very well and still feel tense, restless, emotionally tired, or unable to fully relax.
That’s why making sense of things alone — even in therapy — doesn’t always reach what is held deeper inside. Often, something inside still doesn’t shift. What I need to say here though is, that for some people it may be enough to move forward with life, and that’s ok as well. In case of deeply rooted traumas it’s not often that case I’m afraid.

This doesn’t mean nothing is happening.
It means something protective within the system hasn’t yet felt safe enough to stand down.

Why Trying to Let Go Often Makes Things Harder

When people can’t let things go despite all their insight, they often respond by trying harder. That’s the mechanism.

So, they reflect more.
They work on themselves more.
They search for the next piece that will finally make it ease.

But effort, in fact — especially when driven by a wish to finally feel different — can quietly reinforce the very state they want to leave.

My Neuroscience teacher, Dr Irena, recently wrote about how neuroplasticity is commonly misunderstood. The brain doesn’t change simply because something makes sense. Lasting change happens when the whole system has a different kind of experience — one that allows it to update how it has been protecting us.

This is why so many people say, often with frustration, anger or sadness:
“I understand all of this… but I still can’t let go.”

A Wisdom That Predates Neuroscience

Long before modern neuroscience, a Persian poet and observer of human nature, Rumi, noticed something essential about how people change.

He wrote:

“Why are you so busy looking for a cure?
You are the cure.”

This isn’t about self-belief or positive thinking.

It’s about the fact that healing doesn’t come from fixing yourself.
It comes from allowing something deeply protective inside you to finally relax.

Another line of his speaks quietly to those who feel they are always holding on:

“Try not to resist the changes that come your way.”

Resistance here isn’t stubbornness. It’s all about protection and safety.
It’s what the nervous system learned to do when letting go once felt unsafe. And so, it does not allow for it to happen by simply talking about things (or understanding them).

What Real Change Looks Like

Real change is usually quieter than people expect.

It doesn’t arrive as a dramatic breakthrough.
It arrives as a softening.

A sense of being more settled, without effort.
Reacting less, without trying.
Feeling that you don’t have to hold yourself together in the same way.

Nothing dramatic changes on the outside —
and yet inside, something loosens.

Not because you finally understood more.
But because your system no longer needs to stay on guard.

Having seen this many times, I recognise the moment it arrives — a quiet easing, a kind of a shift, that feels deeply personal and meaningful to those experiencing it. When this begins to happen, it isn’t loud or dramatic — it simply feels like something inside you softens.

And, that’s what changes everything…

If This Feels Familiar Somehow

If, as you read this, something inside you feels quietly recognised —
not excited, not hopeful, just seen —
that matters.

It often means you’ve already done the understanding part.
And what’s needed now is something different.

Not more insight.
Not more effort.
But the right conditions for your system to feel safe enough to let go.

A Gentle Next Step

If you recognise yourself here and feel curious about exploring this kind of work, you’re welcome to book a conversation.

Not to explain yourself. Not being judged.
Not to commit to anything.

Just to see whether this way of working feels right for you.

Sometimes that is enough to know.