The Things That Keep Us Safe (Until They Don’t): Why Letting Go Feels So Hard

Most of us learn to cope long before we learn to feel. We adapt, survive and keep moving forward. For many, this means developing subtle strategies that protect us from pain. Staying busy, being helpful, keeping control or turning to something that soothes. These patterns often begin in childhood and quietly follow us into adulthood, long after the original threat has passed.

Coping is not weakness. It’s intelligence in action, the body and mind doing what they must to keep us safe. But as life moves on, what once protected us can become what imprisons us. Therapy often begins here, at the threshold between survival and freedom.

The Neuroscience of Survival

When the world feels unsafe, the human brain does what it was designed to do: it seeks stability. The limbic system, responsible for processing emotion and reward, learns to associate certain behaviours with relief. Each time we engage in that behaviour, whether it’s drinking, working excessively, or emotionally withdrawing the brain releases dopamine, reinforcing the pattern (Koob & Volkow, 2016).

Over time, these patterns form a neural blueprint for coping. The brain no longer seeks pleasure, it seeks relief. Polyvagal theory (Porges, 2011) helps explain why. When the nervous system senses threat, it activates physiological survival states: fight, flight or freeze. For people who have lived through neglect, trauma or chronic emotional stress, these states become over-activated. The body forgets what safety feels like.

In such conditions, numbing behaviours are not irrational; they are attempts to regulate an overwhelmed system. They are the body’s way of saying, “I need calm.” This is why clients often describe feeling “addicted” not to a substance but to the momentary sense of quiet it brings.

The Emotional Logic of Addiction

Gabor Maté (2008) reminds us that addiction is not about pleasure-seeking, but pain relief.

The question, he says, is not why the addiction but why the pain.

Take Michael, for example. He began drinking heavily in his twenties. Alcohol helped him loosen up in social settings where he often felt awkward and unseen. Over time, it became a nightly ritual, a way to quiet the self-critical voice that never stopped talking. In therapy, Michael traced this back to a childhood spent trying to please a volatile parent. He learned early that being “good” and staying quiet was the safest route to affection. Drinking later became a way to recreate that same emotional quietness.

In Person-Centred Experiential (PCE) therapy, we don’t start by tackling the behaviour itself. We explore what the behaviour protects. When clients begin to understand the emotional logic beneath their coping, shame eases. The behaviour begins to make sense and what was once seen as self-destructive is reframed as a creative act of survival.

Conditions of Worth: The Roots of Coping

Carl Rogers (1959) proposed that psychological distress stems from a disconnection between our organismic self, our authentic, felt experience and our self-concept, the identity shaped by external approval. As children, we learn love is conditional. We discover that being calm, clever, or compliant earns praise, while being angry, messy or sad does not.

To protect our connection to others, we begin to filter ourselves. We internalise these messages. “I’m only worthy if I’m helpful,” “I must be strong,” “I can’t need too much” and they become what Rogers called conditions of worth. Through a process known as introjection, we swallow these beliefs whole, accepting them as truths about who we are.

As adults, these introjected values continue to shape our lives. A person may overachieve to feel loved, caretake others to avoid rejection or numb feelings of failure with alcohol or food. In each case, the coping mechanism maintains the illusion of worth. But beneath it lies a deeper fear: that without these strategies, we might not be loved at all.

This is why letting go is so frightening. The familiar patterns, even when painful provide a sense of identity and control. When clients begin to loosen their grip on these old ways of being, they often feel a sense of groundlessness, as though the self they’ve known is dissolving. In truth, what’s dissolving is not the self but the false structure that once kept it safe.

The Shadow and the Self We Reject

Jung (1953) described the shadow as the parts of ourselves we disown; the traits, emotions, and impulses we’ve been taught to suppress. These exiled aspects don’t disappear. They wait. They show up in our relationships, in addiction or in the moments we feel most ashamed of who we are.

A woman who was told she was “too emotional” may grow into an adult who prides herself on composure but feels empty inside. A man taught to be self-reliant may struggle to admit his loneliness. These stories are not moral failings; they are emotional blueprints written in childhood.

In therapy, meeting the shadow means gently bringing those parts back into awareness. The angry, needy or frightened parts and allowing them to be seen without judgment. As Rogers (1961) wrote, “When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Integration begins when we welcome the disowned pieces of self into the light of empathy.

The Fear of Letting Go

Letting go of coping mechanisms can feel like standing on the edge of a cliff. They’ve been with us for years, sometimes decades. They’ve given us a sense of predictability, even comfort. Without them, who are we?

Clients often describe this moment as both terrifying and liberating. The mind clings to the known, even if it’s painful. The body may react with anxiety or grief, signals of an identity unravelling. Neuroscience shows that emotional safety, provided through empathic connection, can help regulate these responses (Schore, 2019). The therapeutic relationship becomes a safe container where fear can coexist with curiosity.

This process is slow, experiential and deeply personal. It’s not about pushing away the coping strategies but understanding them so fully that they no longer control you. The goal of therapy is not to “get rid of” defences, but to render them unnecessary.

The Work of Integration

In Person-Centred Experiential therapy, healing happens through relationship. The therapist offers unconditional positive regard, acceptance without conditions, which directly counters the old conditions of worth. Over time, clients begin to internalise this acceptance, developing what Rogers described as unconditional self-regard.

Research supports this. Murphy and colleagues (2017) found that people who cultivate unconditional self-acceptance experience higher authenticity and psychological well-being. In neurological terms, these relational experiences foster new neural pathways of safety and regulation (Siegel, 2012).

As clients integrate their disowned parts, shame gives way to compassion. The shadow becomes not something to fear, but a source of wisdom. The nervous system, once primed for defence, learns that connection does not always mean danger. This is where real change happens, not through control or discipline, but through understanding and love.

Living Beyond Coping

To live beyond coping is not to erase pain, but to live honestly with it. It’s learning that emotions are messages, not enemies. It’s discovering that worth was never conditional, even if life once taught us it was.

In therapy, people often describe the moment they begin to feel whole again as a kind of homecoming. It’s not about becoming someone new, but returning to who they’ve always been beneath the layers of survival.

Letting go of old coping mechanisms takes courage. But it is also an act of profound self-respect, a decision to live as a whole, unfragmented person. As one client once said, “It’s strange, but the more I stop trying to hold myself together, the more I actually feel whole.”

That is the quiet revolution at the heart of therapy: learning that you no longer need to earn your right to exist.

• Gilbert, P. (2010) Compassion Focused Therapy. London: Routledge.

• Gendlin, E. (1982) Focusing. New York: Bantam.

• Jung, C. G. (1953) Collected Works Vol. 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. London: Routledge.

• Koob, G. & Volkow, N. (2016) ‘Neurobiology of addiction: a neurocircuitry analysis’, The Lancet Psychiatry, 3(8), pp. 760–773.

• Maté, G. (2008) In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. London: Vermilion.

• Murphy, D., Joseph, S. & others (2017) ‘Unconditional positive self-regard, intrinsic aspirations and authenticity: pathways to psychological well-being’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 57(1), pp. 3–25.

• Porges, S. (2011) The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. New York: Norton.

• Rogers, C. (1959) ‘A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships as developed in the client-centred framework’, in Koch, S. (ed.) Psychology: A Study of a Science. New York: McGraw-Hill.

• Rogers, C. (1961) On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

• Schore, A. N. (2019) Right Brain Psychotherapy. New York: Norton.

• Siegel, D. (2012) The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. 2nd edn. New York: Guilford Press.