For years I clenched my teeth harder as things slipped away from me. Something unexpected, and I doubled my efforts to catch up. A delay, and I ran faster still to close it. I believed that holding firm meant resisting everything, giving nothing up.
What I called holding firm was in fact wearing myself out trying to master what, from the start, never depended entirely on me. The world went on being unpredictable, whatever I did, and I paid a high price for that fight, a little more each day.
Loosening your grip is not giving up on action. It is ending the spend of energy on what refuses to be controlled, and keeping it for what really does depend on us.
The day I accepted that limit, nothing changed around me. But something eased inside, like a weight I had carried so long that I had forgotten it was optional.
The problem: why do we wear ourselves out trying to master everything?
Loosening the grip is often taken for surrender, a form of resignation before what is beyond us. That confusion pushes many people to hold on tighter still, exactly when they should ease the vice.
The problem is that this permanent fight against uncertainty almost never changes the final result. It simply exhausts whoever wages it, without ever delivering the total mastery it promised.
You may already know that tension: needing everything to go exactly as planned, and feeling anxiety rise as soon as reality moves away from the plan, even slightly.
Sarah, in Lausanne: the list that never ended
Sarah was carrying a demanding role and a full family life at the same time, in a company in the canton of Vaud. She lived with an endless mental list, convinced that everything would hold as long as she controlled every detail, from the family schedule to the professional files.
In Lausanne, one delayed train on a rainy day was enough to bring her whole inner structure down. She broke into tears in a station corridor, overtaken by a reaction that, she knew, went far beyond the event itself.
Why this mechanism sets in
This mechanism affects above all the people who learned early that safety came from control. Each unexpected turn then revives an anxiety far wider than the present situation.
Epictetus put a simple distinction at the centre of his thought: some things depend on us, our judgements, our choices, our efforts, others do not, external events, other people's decisions, chance. Trying to master what belongs to the second category leads only to exhaustion.
Knowing yourself helps to locate where that border runs for you. Some people fight to control their schedule, others the opinion of others, others again every material detail of daily life. Naming that zone of struggle precisely is what allows you to begin releasing it.
That release is not decreed in one go. It is learned in small touches, each time something unexpected happens and you consciously choose to hold back some of your energy rather than throw all of it against it.
The Mental Sofa method: a conversation to set down what weighs
Loosening the grip is not treated as a problem to correct through support spread over months. It is an intensive conversation, designed so that it clicks: you arrive with a load that has lost its name, you leave with a concrete path rather than one more theory.
This approach rests on a simple principle, one I share with the people I receive in Lausanne and across the canton of Vaud: you do not loosen your grip by forcing yourself, you loosen it by understanding precisely what can be released safely. I help you find calm again without giving up what really counts.
Exercises: the ritual for loosening the grip
Here is the simple ritual I offer for learning to loosen your grip:
- Faced with something unexpected, first ask whether it still depends on you or not.
- Breathe deeply three times before reacting to a situation slipping out of your hands.
- Each evening, write down one thing you tried to control where success was never possible.
- Allow yourself an imperfect action rather than standing still and waiting for total certainty.
- Once a week, give yourself a moment with no schedule and no set objective.
- Write down what went well anyway, despite the uncertainty.
- A mind that releases the uncontrollable recovers energy available for what matters.
- Someone at ease with the unexpected makes clearer decisions under pressure.
- Calm regained improves sleep and the quality of close relationships, over time.
Loosening your grip when nothing is under control does not mean giving up on action, but keeping your energy for what really depends on you. Sarah learned it in Lausanne, in a station corridor, the day her structure of control came down for good.
If you recognise, like Sarah, that mental list that never stops, book a first conversation of 15 minutes: one simple step towards a calm that no longer depends on mastering everything.