Why You Can’t Let Things Go (It’s Not Your Fault)

Do you ever feel like you just… can’t let things go?
Like something happens and other people move on—but you’re still thinking about it days, weeks, or even years later?

If that’s you, this episode is going to change how you see yourself.

Because it’s not that you’re overreacting.
And it’s not that you’re too sensitive.

It’s that your brain and body are trying to process past hurt—and no one has ever shown you how.

In this episode, I’m breaking down what trauma actually is (and why it’s not always what you think), how a sensitive brain stores and replays emotional pain, and why trying to “think your way out of it” will never work.

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In This Episode, I Cover:

• What trauma really is (and why it’s different for everyone)
• Why you don’t get to choose what your brain labels as traumatic
• How past hurt shows up in everyday moments (conversations, tone, silence, looks)
• Why you replay conversations and overanalyze what you said
• The real reason you assume “I did something wrong”
• How your brain uses the past to try to create safety in the present
• Why this is NOT a logic problem—it’s a feelings problem
• Why trying to change your thoughts first keeps you stuck
• What’s actually happening when you feel anxious, triggered, or reactive
• Why suppressing or “shrinking” your emotions makes everything worse
• The cycle of overthinking → reacting → reinforcing fear
• Why your brain is working exactly as it’s designed to
• The truth about trauma: it doesn’t disappear—and it doesn’t need to
• Why willpower, discipline, and “just calming down” don’t work long-term
• What it actually takes to stop looping and start feeling steady

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Key Takeaway

You’re not holding onto things because you’re weak.
You’re holding onto them because your brain is trying to protect you.

This isn’t a logic problem—it’s a feelings problem.

And until you learn how to process what you feel,
your mind will keep trying to solve it… over and over again.

You don’t need to think better.
You need to learn how to work with your nervous system and your emotions.

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Invitation

I’m teaching a brand new free class on April 16:

Sensitive, Not Fragile

If you’re done overthinking everything,
replaying conversations,
and feeling like you can’t fully relax in your life…

I’m going to show you a completely different way to work with yourself.

Inside this class, I’ll teach you how to:

• Stop the overthinking loop
• Work with your emotions instead of against them
• Regulate your nervous system in real time
• Feel more steady, even when life feels hard

👉 Register here: joinamanda.ca

Ready to Go Deeper?

If you want support implementing this work in your own life, you can book a discovery call with me.

We’ll talk about what’s going on for you and whether coaching together would be a good fit.

Book here:

amandahess.ca/bookacall

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Connect With Me

If this episode resonated, I’d love to hear from you.

Send me a message on Instagram: @theamandahess

Or visit www.amandahess.ca to learn more about working together.

Featured on the Show:

• Book a free consultation call with me!
• Send me a DM over on Instagram!

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• Leave me a review in Apple Podcasts and let me know what topics you would like to hear.
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Full Episode Transcript:

Hey my friend. Welcome.

Alright. Listen, it’s really interesting to me when we talk about letting things go, I have a lot of conversations with women, um, on coaching sessions, on discovery calls just in person where they just can’t understand why they can’t let something go. And what I want you to know, and this might surprise you, is that it has a lot to do with your past hurt, it has a lot to do with you experiencing trauma and how your sensitive brain tries to navigate it.

And I wanna really talk about that. And I think that where we need to start is we need to start with what is trauma. And trauma ultimately, in its simplest form, is something that has caused you pain.

It’s something that could be minor to somebody else and major to you. It could be something that is major and everybody agrees it’s major. Sometimes you’ll have something that’s been major, some major thing that’s happened to you, and somebody else might identify it as trauma and you might not.

I was having a powerful conversation about this with a client today because she was saying to me, you know, I just… I don’t really notice it. It’s not something that bothers me. Is there something wrong with me? And the answer is no.

We don’t get to choose what our brain decides is traumatic and what our brain doesn’t decide is traumatic, but we do have to navigate it.

Right? So when you are replaying a conversation and you are overthinking what you should have said differently, um, what you should have said differently, what they said and what it meant, how it should have gone differently, how you could have responded differently, what they said meant, when you are worrying about what other people are thinking about you and you’re looking at their face and you’re searching for tone and you’re looking for evidence.

And you’re looking for evidence to show whether or not they are okay, not okay, happy, unhappy, liking you, disliking you. It’s when you’re holding onto a slight or a conversation for years because it was so painful. You are holding on to a slight or a conversation for years because it was so painful, and therefore you don’t want to feel it again.

It’s thinking that something is wrong with you after every encounter because you interpret awkwardness as meaning you did something to create the emotional pain that it is now bringing up.

You know, I remember talking to my dad a long time ago, maybe over a year ago, and we were on a walk and I was telling my dad, I was sharing with my dad something that had gone on, and that immediately when this happened, my brain went to, “You did something wrong.”

And my dad said to me, and I thought this was so fascinating, he said to me, “I think the complete opposite. When that happens to me, I think that person did something wrong. This is on them. This is their problem.”

And I just thought that was so fascinating and I was thinking to myself at the time, why don’t I naturally think like him? But the truth is it’s just because I’m not built like him. And that’s not wrong. It’s just different.

When our brain is faced with uncertainty, it will work very hard to try and create certainty. So for instance, if you have a past like mine where you were severely bullied, when that scar gets rubbed, when somebody says something or somebody does something, there’s a look, there’s a tone, there’s a silence, there’s a gap, and you are sitting there, you know, I’m sitting there taking this in.

There’s a scar that gets rubbed and the memory shows up. And what it is, is it’s the memory of the pain. It’s the memory of the pain of rejection. It’s the memory of the pain of not fitting in. It’s the memory of the pain of how that felt in that moment.

And because I am sensitive, because you are sensitive, you and I, we will feel it like it happened yesterday.

And what’s important to know is that it’s a strong emotion, but it’s also illogical. And where we go wrong helping sensitive women is trying to solve what’s going on here by using logic.

Because when someone says to you, you know, you don’t have to view it that way. That was a long time ago. This happened in your past. Uh, that’s not what’s really happening here. You’re making assumptions that aren’t true. That is all logical, but this isn’t a logic problem.

This isn’t a logic problem, and it’s not that you are not logical, okay? You’re logical. It’s that this is just not a logic problem at all for a sensitive woman. This is a feelings problem.

So when I’m looking at a feelings problem, I want to address it differently. When we’re talking about a feelings problem, the first thing we need to do is we need to identify and address the feeling.

Not to overindulge in the feeling, not to completely collapse into the feeling, but also we don’t want to be just running over the feeling. A lot of times what happens is we will feel fear, which we will label as anxiety, and then that fear is something that we try very hard to get rid of, so we start thinking and it just won’t work.

Most people are trying to change the thought first, and it will never work. It will never work for a sensitive brain. It will never work for an ADHD brain. It will never work for an ASD brain. It will never work for a neurodivergent brain. It will never work for an HSP brain. It will never work for a PTSD brain.

That’s a lot of letters, but to me, when I hear these things, when people say these things to me, they’re all just versions of a sensitive brain.

So when we break this down, when we look at, okay, if I can’t solve this with logic, when I’m overthinking, when I’m thinking about what they’re gonna say, what they said, what they meant, what they’re thinking, what’s happening, whether or not we’re gonna be okay, whether I can get all this done, when I’m just piling on all the thoughts, right? What do I do?

Now, before we start there, what I want you to know, and it’s an important caveat, is that life has always been and will always be 50/50. And what I mean by that is you will feel positive emotion 50% of the time and you will feel negative emotion 50% of the time. And that will always be true.

Why is it like that? Well, because you have a human brain and a human brain is set up for survival. Our biggest asset and our biggest problem is our brain. So when we have our brain just operating the way that it wants to operate, it is a survival brain.

And what it’s gonna be doing is it’s going to be seeking pleasure, yes. But it’s also gonna be looking for problems. It is going to be looking for what’s unsafe.

And so when a sensitive brain, a sensitive human, has been through pain, it is going to try and protect you from more pain and therefore a meaningless conversation, right, something that means practically nothing, can sometimes trigger a very ferocious bear-like response, and then that bear-like response can create some really chaotic results, right?

Start fights, issues, problems, or it can just be internal, just what’s happening for you. When you have these chaotic results and other people are reacting to you and you’re cleaning up sort of like the mess of what’s happening, when this is all happening and your brain is seeing this unfold, it will make your brain more fearful.

And so then what happens is you become more sensitive. More sensitive to looks that people have, to the tone that they’re using, to the invalidation or the rejection that it might see in any way, in any scenario. And we loop around. We keep going back in a circle.

And this is where I come in with my Love Yourself No Matter What Method, because this is not a let’s-make-you-not-give-a-shit moment. It’s not. This is a let’s-work-with-the-way-your-brain-and-body-and-nervous-system-work moment.

What I found is that traditional self-help and therapy is going to tell you to shrink it. To shrink the feeling, to shrink the reaction. I’m not going to because it doesn’t work.

Because when you try to shrink the feeling, when you try to shrink the reaction, this is actually why you feel so stuck. You keep just going round and round the same bush. You try to calm down, you get somewhat calm, but need life to keep its shit together to be okay.

And then life, as it does, loses its shit a little bit. Somebody gets sick, you have a big expense, you experience loss, and boom, you’re back where you started. Or maybe someone just looked like they gave you a look and it just sends you, and you end up freaking out, shutting down, repeating fights with the same people, people-pleasing instead of setting boundaries, yelling, internalizing, and it just repeats.

Because the truth is, is that willpower will never be enough, and that’s because the hurt will show up. The past hurt will show up. It will show up in the big moments, it will show up in the small moments, it will show up in the really unexpected moments.

And my belief, and it has served me and my clients very well, is that trauma will not disappear and we don’t have to make it disappear. And nothing has gone wrong at all. Your brain is working exactly as it should.

Shrinking your feelings isn’t real when you are sensitive because what you are really doing, without understanding that that’s what you’re doing, is you’re shoving them down and then they pop up like a game of whack-a-mole.

And another way I like to explain it is trying to shove a beach ball under water. It requires a ton of effort and it doesn’t last, and as soon as you try and rest, it just pops back up. And this is what’s happening emotionally.

So if you are having this, it makes sense that you hold onto conversations. It makes sense that you are constantly worrying about what other people are thinking. It makes sense that you are anxious in moments that you can’t always identify or understand.

We need to deal with your brain in a way that is different. You really and truly need to learn how to love yourself no matter what. And in order to love yourself, you must understand yourself.

You feel deeply, you sense quickly. You are self-aware. You have a quick brain that is devoted to protecting you, and therefore you avoid pain. And the solution comes from learning how to use your sensitivity as your strength.

That’s why the Love Yourself No Matter What Method is so powerful. It’s not about changing you, it’s about understanding you, your unique self. Not one of us is the same. We are all different.

And it’s about learning how to regulate your nervous system using your senses. It’s about learning how to identify and understand what’s going on for you emotionally. It’s about learning how to show up for yourself when the emotions are there so they don’t escalate or begin looping.

It’s about being a fucking badass sensitive woman who knows who she is and therefore shows up for herself in new and powerful ways.

This is not about changing reactions or eliminating your feelings about what happened. You are not a robot, so you have a nuanced and highly sensitive system that just requires a different kind of fuel to work optimally.

When you do this, conversations get easier. Emotions become welcome, and your confidence increases. Which will change your friendships, your partnerships, your parenting, your career, your money situation, and your life.

It’s not that how you are is a problem, it’s just nobody has ever approached you in this way.

And so listen, I am teaching this next week on April 16th at 10:30 in the morning Pacific time, which is 11:30 Mountain, 12:30 Central, 1:30 Eastern. And I can’t do the time change for Europe, but I know I have European and international listeners, so if you just Google 10:30 AM Pacific, I’m gonna teach a class.

It’s called Sensitive, Not Fragile. I am going to walk you through everything you need to know to approach your life from this place. You will leave that class completely understanding why what you have tried so far hasn’t worked and what to do instead that actually will work for you.

So all you have to do is go to joinamanda.ca to register, my friend.

This is what I’ve got for you. I believe this to be a really powerful message. I hope it speaks to you. If you have feedback, if you saw yourself in this, I would love to hear from you. You can go to Amanda Hess on Instagram or on TikTok and message me. I will respond.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. I hope you have a beautiful day, and I seriously hope I see you at my training. Otherwise, talk soon, friend. Bye for now.