When We Let Go of Should: Listening to the Body and Its Parts

Many people come to therapy feeling caught in an ongoing internal pressure about what they should be doing. Shoulds often sound sensible on the surface. I should cope better. I should be more productive. I should not feel like this. Yet over time, these internal rules can become exhausting and quietly disconnecting. Rather than guiding us, they often pull us away from our own lived experience.

In my work, I often notice that when someone begins to soften their grip on should, something important shifts. Attention moves away from external expectations and towards what is actually happening inside. This is not about becoming impulsive or abandoning responsibility. It is about developing a more accurate relationship with the body, the nervous system and the different parts of the self that are trying to help.

The Body as a Source of Information

From a sensorimotor perspective, the body is not simply reacting to life. It is constantly offering information about safety, threat, capacity and need. Pat Ogden’s work reminds us that symptoms such as tension, collapse, restlessness or numbness are not problems to eliminate but signals to understand. When we live under rigid shoulds, these signals are often overridden. We push through fatigue. We dismiss discomfort. We ignore the body’s attempts to regulate.

When attention returns to the body, people often begin to notice subtle shifts. A tightness in the chest when agreeing to something they do not want. A sense of settling when a boundary is honoured. These moments offer guidance that is more immediate and reliable than rules learned long ago. Over time, learning to track the body in this way can support regulation and a greater sense of internal coherence.

Understanding the Role of Parts

Internal Family Systems offers another helpful lens here. From this perspective, shoulds are often carried by protective parts. These parts usually developed early, often in response to relational environments where approval, safety or connection felt conditional. A part that says you should keep going or should not need help is often trying to prevent rejection, failure or vulnerability.

Rather than challenging these parts head on, therapy invites curiosity. What is this part afraid would happen if it relaxed? What is it trying to protect? When these questions are approached with respect, parts often soften. As they do, space opens for other parts to be heard, including those that carry exhaustion, grief, desire or creativity. Choice becomes possible when no single part is running the system alone.

From Obligation to Alignment

When internal pressure reduces, decisions tend to shift in quality. Choices become less about meeting an internal rule and more about responding to capacity and values. This does not always lead to doing less. Sometimes it leads to doing something with more clarity and commitment. Sometimes it leads to rest. Sometimes it leads to a clear no that makes space for a more wholehearted yes elsewhere.

Importantly, this process unfolds relationally. Many people have never had their internal experience taken seriously by another. Therapy offers a space where bodily signals and internal parts are met with interest rather than correction. Over time, this can support a deeper sense of self trust and agency.

A Slower and More Sustainable Way of Living

Letting go of should is not a single decision. It is an ongoing practice of noticing, listening and responding. It involves tolerating uncertainty and allowing internal experience to guide behaviour in ways that may feel unfamiliar at first. Yet for many, this shift supports a life that feels more self directed and sustainable.

When the body is included and all parts are welcomed into the conversation, clarity does not need to be forced. It often emerges quietly, from within.