When someone once meant the world to us, we often cling to an illusion of who they were. The hardest part isn’t the moving on itself; it’s coming to terms with the fact that the person we hold onto in our minds is not the same person who ultimately hurt us.
The person who hurt us is not someone we actually know, nor are they who we are actually holding on to so tightly. The person we are holding onto is not the person who hurt us — it is the person we thought they were. The person we wanted them to be. The person we hoped they were, or would grow to be. The person who hurt us is who the person we thought we knew, really was. And, we didn’t know the person we thought we knew, at all. Right?
My inner Self trying to explain this over and over in different ways from different perspectives but actually saying the same thing each time is exactly how it feels – it’s that chaotic within us sometimes, isn’t it? It’s so hard to express in words. It’s even harder to reconcile within. This dissonance—between who we believed them to be and who they truly were—can feel like a fracture deep within our psyche.
What makes this kind of letting go even more excruciating is that it often feels worse and more difficult to navigate than if they had physically died. That kind of grief and pain I have experienced to an alarming degree and in abnormal amount in my lifetime, thus far. I get it. I understand it. I’m so familiar with that version of grief. When someone passes away, we grieve their loss knowing that the love and connection we felt was real, even if imperfect. But in situations like the one I’m referring to, the person is still alive, leaving us to mourn the death of an illusion while the physical person remains unchanged.
If you’re working through something similar, know that you’re not alone. Here we are, together, sorting it out. The strangest part, and maybe the hardest to come to terms with? There is no closure, no finality—just a constant tension between memory and reality. The grief in these situations isn’t just about missing them; it’s about grappling with the loss of who we believed they were, and this deeper kind of grief can cause profound pain and difficulty in letting them go.
The Illusion of the Other
As Plato suggests in Phaedrus:
Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.
It is easy to idealize someone based on fleeting moments of connection, warmth, or validation. Our memories craft an image of who they were at their best, and this mirage can hold us captive long after they’ve shown their true colors. Psychologically, we can fall into what Carl Rogers called unconditional positive regard. When we love deeply, we often see the best in the other person, sometimes to our own detriment. Our mind works overtime to reconcile the dissonance between their actions and the potential we believed in. This self-deception can be deeply painful because it demands that we confront not only the other person’s reality but our own misplaced trust.
Grieving the Loss of Versions of Ourselves
But the struggle goes beyond letting go of the illusions we held about others. For example, if a loved one passes away, a friendship breaks apart, and a physical relocation also leads to a change in job and work environment, all in the same timeframe, the experience as a whole will force us to confront how many versions of ourselves we must let go of. When we experience multiple losses/changes—of relationships, friendships, family members, living situations, work/financial situations, or even dreams—there is a parallel loss that occurs within us.
Not only do we grieve who we thought people were, or what our lives had been. We also find ourselves mourning the loss of who we once were in those connections. This is the point at which a slippery slope can form.
Psychologist Carl Jung said:
I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.
But, as I worked out some of the aforementioned thoughts relating to my own life, I realized that before I could become, I had to face the pieces of who I used to be—those parts of me that lived in connection to my mother, to my friend, to my career, and to each dream that seemed to die in parallel with each of these losses. Grieving the loss of those connections inevitably led me to grieve the loss of those past versions of myself that were no longer viable, no longer relevant to my path forward.
Grieving Who They Weren’t, and Who We Were
Expectation is the root of all heartache. (Shakespeare)
What makes it so excruciating is that our grief isn’t just for the loss of the person, relationship, situation, or even selves, but for the loss of the narrative we had crafted about them. The struggle is to mourn not only the end of what was, but the end of what never truly existed. Buddhist philosophy teaches that attachment to illusions creates suffering, as we’re not holding onto reality, but to the stories we’ve woven.
In psychology, this type of grief is called disenfranchised grief, which refers to the grief that doesn’t fit society’s norms and isn’t openly acknowledged. It’s the internal turmoil of knowing that the person or the reality you loved never existed in the form you had once believed. The grieving process involves acknowledging this as a legitimate loss and understanding that healing comes not from vilifying them, but from reclaiming the energy you invested in the illusion.
Simultaneously, healing requires acknowledging and allowing ourselves to mourn the past versions of ourselves that held onto those illusions, those connections, and those roles.
Finding Solace in Self-Reclamation
Spiritual teachers often emphasize the importance of coming back to oneself. As Rumi says:
The wound is the place where the light enters you.
If you sit with this wound, allowing it to breathe, you might find that the light is not one of blame or self-doubt, but one of recognition. The illusion was real to you, and that matters. But now, reality requires your allegiance, not the past.
In psychological terms, this process involves self-compassion. According to Kristin Neff, self-compassion means being kind to yourself when confronting painful truths rather than falling into a cycle of self-judgment. Healing requires acknowledging the vulnerability you felt, forgiving yourself for trusting, and not shaming yourself for holding on. It also requires allowing yourself to let go of the past identities tied to those losses and illusions.
The Path to Healing: Acceptance and Presence
The spiritual practice of acceptance isn’t passive resignation, but rather the deep acknowledgment of what is. As Eckhart Tolle writes in The Power of Now:
Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.
This resonates deeply with the process of letting go because the longer we clutch to the false version of someone, or to a past version of ourselves, the more we withhold from our present self—our growth, our peace, and our path forward.
In this sense, psychology also aligns with spirituality in focusing on presence. Mindfulness and acceptance-based therapies encourage letting go not as an act of forgetting, but as an act of being fully present with the self. Dr. Tara Brach, a psychologist and meditation teacher, calls this Radical Acceptance, which involves accepting not only the other person’s reality but also our pain without judgment, and extending that acceptance to the shifting selves we have become.
Moving Forward
Letting go isn’t about erasing the memory of a person or experience, or invalidating the good moments. It’s about recognizing that the person who caused you pain was not a deviation from their true self—they were their true self. The illusion, though painful to relinquish, can give way to a new reality where you aren’t weighed down by unmet expectations or unresolved hopes. And letting go of past versions of ourselves isn’t about disowning who we once were, but allowing ourselves the space to evolve and grieve our transformations.
To break our illusions, we must grow through what the reality of the experience we had is teaching us. While we believed we were experiencing one reality, we were being given lessons. In that way, the experience remains a valid one, even if the perspective we thought was reality wasn’t valid. It was through similar experiences of letting go—of both the illusions we hold of others and the illusions we hold of ourselves—that this post came into existence. We share it not as a solution or a definitive answer, but as a testament to the continuous journey of surviving, growing, and recognizing the multiple layers of loss that shape who we become.
As you move forward, we encourage you to practice self-compassion, mindful presence, and conscious acceptance of reality. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting; it means remembering differently, seeing clearly, and letting go of the illusions that no longer serve you—be they of others or past versions of yourself.
You are so very capable and worthy.
The Twin Tree Project 