As a psychotherapist in training, I was required to be in twice weekly psychotherapy for a minimum of four years.

There I discovered that I badly wanted someone to blame!

It’s hard to let go of wanting someone to blame when we feel that we have been hurt, treated unfairly, were the innocent one in it all.

We want to shout, “Why me?!” and for someone to hear us and listen. We want to say, “Look what they did to me!” and for someone to tell us that we’re right, “they” were to blame.

We long for the relief of being heard and of our story being validated.

I watched my therapist so closely in the early months for any sign that she didn’t believe me. Or didn’t get it.

Or thought I was making a fuss about nothing.

I didn’t see that once. But if I had I known, I wouldn’t have gone back.

I needed to tell my story and to know that another human being really understood.

The same is true when we know that the one we feel was to blame—or is to blame—is us. I reckon that’s harder still.

It’s excruciating to live with the sense of having been hurt or damaged. That pain wakes us up in the night far more than the feeling of outrage that someone has hurt us.

I want to share with you something I learned in those years of sitting in the client’s chair, and that I’ve discovered since, over the many years I’ve been sitting the other chair, helping my fellow travelers to walk along this path we all have to walk.

The path from blame to letting it go.

The secret to relief is this: we have to let it be complicated.

One of the things I say pretty frequently in my psychotherapy room—just as my therapist eventually said to me—is, “I guess it was complicated, wasn’t it?”

Not straight way. But eventually…when it seems they are maybe close to being ready to be able to hear it.

I didn’t want to hear it either, when the person sitting in the client’s chair was me. I had found great comfort in the empathic understanding of my own therapist. She really got it, and that was like healing balm. I had needed someone to get it. Just as those who come to see me, in pain and confusion, really need someone to get it.

And I do. I really do get it.

I get just how badly we need someone to hear our story and understand. Just as I myself needed that.

Just as we all do.

But I also know that, beyond that, I have another job to do. The same job my own therapist had to do.

The gift that makes the difference.

That job is to help this person to find the relief of finally being able to let it go. And to do that, I have come to understand that we human beings have to allow it to be complicated.

Let me tell you what I mean.

At first, many of us don’t want to touch it, because it’s hard. We struggle with the realisation of just what it means…this thing we know we need to do to find relief.

So what does it mean, this letting it be complicated?

It means we have to give up our story.

Our version.

It means allowing that there are several stories here, not just ours.

It means allowing it to be complicated.

It involves looking at the big picture.

It means allowing the possibility that in the big picture we all come into a particular situation as a powerful co-creator, with a history and set of circumstances that has prepared us perfectly to fulfil the particular role we have agreed to play in this manifestation which has taken place.

It means allowing that there are no mistakes, no accidents, and that nothing is random here.

It may not be immediately clear what the gift of it will be, to ourselves and to others; but it is about allowing that there will be one.

And it involves allowing that, despite everything, we have survived, and will survive. And that, through, it we have grown.

Just as long as we will allow it to be complicated and to begin to appreciate how perfectly we all, as powerful co-creators in this situation, touched each other’s lives.

“It was complicated” is the only way we can come unstuck. It is the only way we can let go and move on. It is the best way I know to compassion and forgiveness and acceptance. And letting go.

Letting it be complicated means allowing, fully, that not everything is as it seems. That we are not as we seem.

It means allowing that there is only one being here, going through a process of expansion, which is achieved every time through challenge and bewilderment, often pain, and which every time leads to greater compassion and a return home to unconditional love.

It involves allowing that we came eagerly and willingly, as powerful creators on an adventure of expansion, and that when we planned this adventure with all the other players—because that’s what we did—we felt no fear or blame, only awe and love at the courage and glorious intention to share this experience as a gift for all.

Are you in awe yet? I certainly am!

Don’t we all deserve to feel the relief, to feel the new energy flood in, and the gift of our amazing co-creation!

Don’t we all deserve to be allowed to let go and journey beyond!

To write a new story.

Isn’t it time?

Author: Janny Juddly

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Vic at Flickr