Compassionate Ocean
Interesting. I'm not certain letting go is the thing so much as holding onto one's self is. If one can hold on--firmly--to a sense of self-worth, then the bad person stories lose their power.
Thank you for the opportunity to examine a crucial distinction (in my own heart and mind), AT. As I read your comment, I looked carefully at the words. Initially, you have "holding onto one's self," and a little later holding on to "self-worth".
What I am actually experiencing, and practicing, is the letting go of myself, while allowing the fullness of my value / worth / essence to emerge in my life. Holding onto myself has caused me nothing but pain and suffering, and I'm so tired of it that I want to let myself go, entirely.
Paradoxically, letting myself go doesn't mean that I'm becoming more boundary-diffuse in an unhealthy way. It's true that we need good "boundaries" in order to function well in relationships of every kind. I'm becoming no less assertive -- though my assertiveness is much more tender than it used to be. I'm becoming no less committed to things. I'm not really losing anything of what I am in letting myself go. Rather, what I am is emerging as a joyful, growing freedom. By letting myself go I am becoming who and what I am. I'm allowing astonishing wonderous life to tease me ever more open and kind and truthful and couragious.... This process is so freaking marvelous and healing and good that I wish it upon everyone! I wish
clouds would rain this upon all of us! Wet us down with letting ourselves go.
It looks to me that when I or anyone let ourselves go, in this way, our self-worth grows by leaps and bounds. Because we are not a thimble full of water in need of protection; we are the very Ocean itself.