There are times when a problem, a thought, enters our mind in such a way that it haunts us relentlessly.
At some point we realize it and make an effort not to think about it, but in vain, it finds a way back. For me, it usually happens just before I go to bed to sleep.
On one such evening, just before I fell asleep, I tried something different: I stopped listening to myself.
I didn't try to solve the problem, I didn't try to banish it, I just stopped looking at it. I managed to trigger it with the thought and action of, well, I can't solve it now anyway, I'll write it down on my phone and I'll look at it tomorrow.
At that moment something surprising happened: My heartbeat slowed down. My breathing became easier. My mind suddenly shifted to a different place, as if I had passed through a door to a parallel universe.
Was this a coincidence?
Then I realized that it was not the thought itself that was challenging me. It was trying to stop it. It was fighting it. And when I stopped fighting it, there was no one left fighting it.
This small moment led me to a much bigger question: Why are we so enslaved by what we cannot have? And is freedom really about obtaining it?
Philosophical and Scientific Background
Philosophical Perspective
Stop Listening to Yourself - We Don't Have to Obey Every Call of the Inner Voice
A voice inside us speaks constantly. Sometimes it is the voice of wisdom: "Stop, think, be careful." Sometimes it is just noise: "I want this, I don't want that, this has to happen, that shouldn't happen."
We can't always tell the difference between the two. And so we listen to both voices.
But I think that not every thought represents a truth, not every feeling represents a need. The inner voice is sometimes wisdom, sometimes just accumulated habit, unprocessed fear, unhealed pain.
It is as much a freedom to stop listening to it as it is to choose to listen to it.
It is not avoidance. It is not suppression. It is a conscious detachment. "This voice exists, I hear it, but I don't have to join it."
And sometimes it is precisely this distance that changes everything.
Freud and Phillips: What We Want Most
Adam Phillips, in his book "On Giving Up", summarizes Freud as follows: What we want most is often what we shouldn't have. (1*)
When I first heard it, I couldn't help but ask, "Wait a minute, what is he saying?" But the more I thought about it, the more I realized what an apt observation it was.
Why do we want the unattainable more? Why does the forbidden seem more attractive? Why is it precisely what we can't have that we seek?"
Freud explains this in terms of the structure of the unconscious: Desire always gravitates towards the forbidden or the unattainable. The prohibition feeds the desire. The obstacle strengthens the desire. (2*)
Phillips takes this even further: Giving up is not a loss, but a maturation. Learning to let go of what we can't have is psychological growth. Because continuing to pursue that thing doesn't get us where we want to go, it just keeps us in the same cycle.
For me, Phillips' idea is this: Letting go is not surrender. Letting go is sometimes an honest look at reality.
Lacan: Desire Can Never Be Satisfied
Jacques Lacan reads Freud in a very different way. According to him, desire can never be satisfied. Because the object of desire is not an object, but desire itself. (3*)
I think: What happens when we finally get something we really want? After a while we lose that feeling. Our sense of desire shifts to something else that we want. The thing we have is no longer the "thing that is not" and therefore cannot feed desire.
So how do we break this cycle?
Lacan's answer is disturbing but honest: The way out is not in the satisfaction of desire, but in the nature of desire itself. Desire is nourished by absence. When we realize this, we can stop running after every "non-thing."
Making Peace with the Non-existent - Achieving Perfection
I think this is one of the secrets of life: If you want to become mature, you have to learn to make peace with what is not.
When I first uttered this sentence, it sounded strange to me too. Isn't maturity about achieving more? Isn't it being better, earning more, having more?
Perhaps not.
Perhaps maturity is the opposite: It is to see that what you don't have doesn't tell you that you lack something. It is to realize that what is not defines you. And instead of fighting what is not there, it is to feel that it is there (and in this state everything is complete).
In the Sufi tradition, the concept of "kemal" points exactly to this: Accepting what is not, seeing what is complete. Incompleteness is not a threat, it is the natural fabric of life. (4*)
When we try to achieve what is not there, our minds are always focused on that thing. But when we make peace with it, we begin to be able to see what is already around us.
Taoism: Wu Wei - Power in Action, Freedom in Letting Go
There is a paradox in the Tao Te Ching: "Acting without action." Wu wei, the action of inaction. (5*)
It sounds mystical. But in practice it says something very concrete: The river does not wage war against the rock. It goes around it. And it is not the strong that erodes the rock over the years, but the unyielding and constant.
Fighting the inner voice makes it grow. Trying to force what is not there consumes us. But flowing (without resistance, without fighting) paradoxically makes us stronger.
Wu wei is not laziness. It is letting go of unnecessary effort. And when we let go of unnecessary effort, to see where the real energy should flow.
Scientific Perspective
Ironic Process Theory - Fighting Makes You Grow
Daniel Wegner has a very interesting experiment: Participants are told "Don't think of a white bear". And as you can imagine, they all think about the white bear all the time. (6*)
This is called the "ironic process theory". When we try to suppress a thought or feeling, the mind has to keep going back to that thought to control it. Suppression reinforces what is unwanted.
For me, this finding explains this: When we say "why don't I think about this", we think exactly that. When we say "why don't I want this" we want it more. War feeds what we fight.
The solution is not to suppress. It is to watch without fighting.
ACT: Living without Identifying with Thoughts
Steven Hayes' Acceptance and Commitment Therapy says something very practical here: We don't have to identify with our thoughts. (7*)
There is a huge difference between "I have this thought" and "This thought is going through my mind right now."
The first one says, "I am this thought. I cannot escape from it. I have to solve it." The second one says, "This thought has come. It will stay here for a while. Then it will pass. And I am not just this thought."
ACT calls it "defusion". Not ignoring the thought. It is to distance from it. And making choices at that distance.
For me, this separation has changed this: When a desire or a feeling arises, I no longer consider it "me". I say, "There is a desire in my mind."
Polyvagal Theory - What Happens to the Body When You Let Go?
Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory says this: The nervous system constantly assesses threat. When the threat is perceived, the sympathetic system kicks in, the heart speeds up, the breathing becomes shallow, the mind becomes narrow. (8*)
But when the threat perception disappears, the parasympathetic system kicks in. The heartbeat normalizes. Breathing deepens. The mind opens.
And here's the interesting thing: This transition can be triggered not by something changing on the outside, but by letting go of the war on the inside.
This feeling of "crossing over into a parallel universe" is actually the body's transition into a safe mode. From war to serenity.
To stop listening to oneself is not only a philosophical attitude, but a physiological transition.
The Real Problem
Fight or Make Peace with What Is Not?
The problem is: We want something very much. But what if that thing is something that is not likely to happen? What if we can't have that thing, or what if that thing is hurting us?"
Our options in such situations are usually:
Try harder.
Run harder, ask more, try harder. But as Lacan said: Desire cannot be satisfied. Even if you get it, the next "what is not" is waiting for you.
Suppress.
"I don't want it, I won't think about it." But Wegner shows us: Suppression magnifies. The ironic process kicks in.
Watching without fighting.
Seeing the emotion, the desire, the thought, but not identifying with it. This is what ACT proposes.
Making peace with what is not.
The most difficult but the most liberating option. To accept the absence of what is not, not to despise it, but to stop fighting it.
Phillips reminds us: Giving up is not losing. It is maturation. And sometimes the greatest gain is learning to let go.
Solution Suggestions
How to Let Go Without Losing Ourselves?
It's like looking at things backwards, and this has the potential to be a bit confusing. Because it is up to us to decide what to let go of and what not to let go of. But there is also a wrong perspective possible here. Letting go of everything can turn into a nihilism that doesn't care about anything.
This doesn't liberate us.
I would like to share with you these practices that I have prepared for myself with this concern in mind:
"Stop Listening" Practice
When a feeling or thought gets too loud, I try this:
I don't solve it. I just stop looking at it.
I go back to my body. I breathe. "I have this feeling," I say to myself. "And right now I'm just breathing."
This goes on for a few minutes. And most of the time my heartbeat slows down, my mind opens. It's not always like I'm crossing over into a parallel universe, but for sure my body goes into safe driving mode.
"Inventory of what I don't have"
At one point I asked myself the question: What are the things I really want but don't have?
I wrote them down. Then next to each one I wrote the following: What am I really losing when I don't have it?"
And I realized that most of the time, it wasn't the absence of that thing that caused the real pain. It was the meaning I gave it, the idea that its absence said something about me.
When I saw that meaning, the absence was still there. But its weight had changed.
Redefining Renunciation
Inspired by Phillips, I ask myself: What am I gaining or losing by holding on to this thing?
Sometimes holding on to a thought, a desire, an expectation shrinks us. It drains energy. It leaves no room for real life.
And letting go of that thing creates a void. And emptiness means we make space for something new.
"Desire Diary"
When I feel a strong desire, I write down these three questions:
- What do I want?
- Why do I want it?
- What would change if I had it?
These questions often reveal something interesting: What I really want is not the object, but the feeling it represents. To be safe. To be seen. To feel enough. And there are other ways to achieve those feelings without acquiring the object.
Conclusion and Message to the Reader
We are so captivated by what we don't have because desire feeds on absence. This is a truth that Freud saw, that Lacan deepened, that Phillips turned into practical wisdom.
But seeing this truth can set us free.
Because then we realize that the problem is not in what we don't have. It is the relationship we have with what is not.
If we want to achieve perfection, we have to learn to make peace with what is not. This sentence takes on a deeper meaning for me every day. Lack is not a threat, it is the natural fabric of life. And when we make peace with it, we begin to see what is already there.
Wu wei says it beautifully: The river does not wage war against the rock. And yet it wins.
Perhaps this is where freedom is. To give up the war. To be able to say to that which is not, "I'm glad you exist, but I don't need you." And in that moment, in the present, to feel the sufficiency of what is.
Until next time, make peace with what is not and stay in love.
Source and Inspired Texts
- Phillips, A. - On Giving Up
- Freud, S. - Civilization and Its Discontents
- Lacan, J. - Ecrits (On desire and absence)
- Kushayrī, A. - al-Risâle (On the concept of kemal in the Sufi tradition)
- Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching
- Wegner, D.M. (1994) - Ironic Processes of Mental Control
- Hayes, S.C. - Breaking Out of the Cage (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
- Porges, S.W. - The Polyvagal Theory
