Understanding Fogginess: Letting Go and Self Forgiveness as Two Sides of the Same Coin

Heal and Shine with Komal

Fogginess, Letting Go and Forgiveness — Why It Feels So Heavy, and How to Actually Walk Through It

A slow, honest, human conversation on why we hold on, why self-forgiveness takes longer than forgiving others, and how to finally put the weight down.

Okay, so let's sit with this topic today. Not rush through it. Because this one is close to almost everyone's heart, whether they say it out loud or not.

Fogginess. You know that feeling, no? Where your mind is not clear, your emotions are not clear, and even your decisions are not clear. You are standing in your own life, but somehow, you cannot see two steps ahead. That is fogginess. And most of the time, if we go deep into it, this fog is not coming from outside. It is coming from something we are still holding inside. Some incident, some person, some version of ourselves that we have not yet forgiven.

That is why today we are going to talk about fogginess and letting go together. Because really, they are not two separate topics. They are almost the same conversation, just looked at from two angles. When there is fog, there is something unreleased. And when we finally let go of that something, the fog lifts on its own. Nobody has to push it away. It just lifts, like morning mist when the sun comes.

What Is Fogginess, Really

See, fogginess is not one single feeling. It is more like a mixture. A bit of confusion, a bit of tiredness, a bit of "I don't know what I want," and somewhere underneath all of that, a bit of pain that we have not fully looked at yet.

When people come to me and say, "Komal, I feel so foggy these days, I can't think straight, I feel low but I don't even know why" — nine out of ten times, when we go a little deeper, there is an old story sitting there. An old hurt. Something someone did, or something we did, that we never really closed the file on. We just pushed it to the side and kept living. But energy does not work like that. Whatever we do not process, it does not disappear. It just sits in the background, and it keeps draining our clarity little by little. That draining is what we feel as fog.

So fogginess is basically unprocessed emotion asking for your attention. It is not your enemy. It is actually a message. It is your inner self saying, "something is still open here, please come and close it."

Signs You Are Sitting In the Fog

Before we go further, let me tell you some signs, because sometimes we are in the fog for months and we don't even recognise it as fog. We just think "this is how I am now" or "maybe I am just a bit lazy these days" or "maybe I am just tired." So see if any of these feel familiar to you —

• You feel tired even after a full night's sleep, like the tiredness is not in the body, it is somewhere deeper.

• Small decisions feel very heavy — even choosing what to eat or what to wear feels like too much effort.

• You catch your mind drifting into an old conversation or old incident, again and again, without even meaning to.

• You feel a low, background irritation through the day, and you cannot always point to why.

• You feel disconnected from your own excitement — things that used to interest you now feel flat.

• You avoid certain topics, certain places, certain people, not because of logic, but because something in you tightens up.

If two or three of these are true for you right now, chances are, somewhere there is an old story still open. Not to worry, this is exactly what we are here to work through today.

Let Go and Forgiveness Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

Now here is something I really want you to understand today, because once this clicks, half of your confusion around this topic will disappear.

Letting go and forgiveness are not two different practices. People treat them like separate chapters — "first I will forgive, then separately I will let go" — but that is not how it works. They are one and the same thing, just wearing two different names.

Forgiveness is the inner decision. Letting go is what happens after that decision, in your day to day life. Forgiveness is you saying, "I am no longer going to carry this as a weapon against myself or the other person." Letting go is you actually living that decision — not bringing up the old topic in every fight, not replaying the scene in your head at 2 a.m., not flinching every time that person's name comes up. So you cannot really let go without forgiving, and forgiveness that is real always shows up as letting go. Two words, one process.

Why Self-Forgiveness Takes Longer Than Forgiving Others

This is something I have felt very deeply in my own life, and I see it in almost everyone I talk to. We somehow manage to forgive others faster than we forgive ourselves.

Think about it honestly. When someone else hurts us, we get angry, we cry, maybe we distance ourselves for some time, but slowly, slowly, we find a way to make peace with it. We tell ourselves, "they were going through their own stuff," or "maybe they didn't know better," and somehow we move on.

But when it comes to our own mistakes? Oh, that is a different story completely. We become our own harshest judge. We keep replaying it — "why did I trust that person," "why did I stay so long," "why did I not see the red flags," "why did I say that thing," "why did I give them one more chance." We give ourselves zero benefit of the doubt, the same benefit of the doubt we so easily give to others.

And this, as per my understanding, is exactly why self-forgiveness is the harder journey. Because somewhere we feel — if I forgive myself too easily, doesn't that mean I am letting myself off the hook? Doesn't that mean I am saying what I did was fine? So we keep punishing ourselves, thinking that punishment equals responsibility. But punishment is not the same as responsibility. You can take full responsibility for something and still forgive yourself. In fact, you can only take real responsibility once you stop being in self-punishment mode, because punishment keeps you stuck in the past, and responsibility asks you to build something better going forward.

Self-forgiveness is not saying "what I did was okay." It is saying "I am a human being who did the best I could with the awareness I had at that time, and now I have more awareness, so I will do better."

Let me give you a small example, very common one. Say a woman stayed in a relationship for three years even though there were signs, quite early, that things were not right. She kept giving the benefit of the doubt — "maybe he is just stressed," "maybe I am overreacting," "maybe it will get better." Now when she finally comes out of it, forgiving him is somehow easier. She can say, "he was who he was, that is on him." But forgiving herself for staying, for ignoring her own gut feeling, for giving away three years — that becomes the harder chapter. That is the flex she is talking about, that gap between what she felt inside and what she allowed to continue outside. That gap is where self-blame lives, and that is exactly where self-forgiveness has to do its deepest work.

So please understand, if you are finding it harder to forgive yourself than to forgive someone else, you are not broken, you are not unusual. You are simply human, going through something almost everyone goes through, just very few people talk about it this openly.

What Forgiveness Is NOT (Please Read This Slowly)

I want to clear a very big confusion here, because this is where most people get stuck and then they resist the whole idea of forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not mean saying that what happened was right. Forgiveness does not mean saying, "it's okay, no problem." Forgiveness does not mean you are telling the universe, or telling yourself, or telling the other person, that the wrong was not wrong. Wrong is wrong. That does not change. If somebody betrayed you, that betrayal was wrong. If you made a mistake that hurt someone, that mistake was still a mistake. Forgiveness is not erasing that truth.

What forgiveness is actually saying is this — "yes, this happened, and yes it was wrong, but I am no longer going to let this one incident control my present and my future." That's it. That is the whole thing. Forgiveness is not about the other person deserving it or not deserving it. Forgiveness is about you deciding that you deserve peace more than you deserve to keep proving how wrong they were.

"Whatever Has Happened, Has Happened" — Now What

This is such a simple line, but honestly, if you really absorb it, it can change your whole relationship with your past.

Whatever has happened, has happened. You cannot go back and change one single second of it. Not with all your regret, not with all your anger, not with all your "if only I had done this differently." Time does not run backwards for anyone. So the incident is closed from the universe's side. It is only open from our side, because we keep opening the file again and again in our own mind.

So then what do we do with it? We learn. We take the lesson, we take the wisdom, and we let the emotional charge go. This is very important to understand — taking the lesson does not mean carrying the pain. You can keep the wisdom and drop the wound. Many people think if they let go of the pain, they will also lose the lesson, so they hold onto both together, thinking that is safety. But it is not safety, it is just suffering that is disguising itself as growth.

The Loop — Living the Same Incident a Hundred Times

Now let's talk about something that I think almost every person on this planet has done at some point. Replaying an incident again and again in the mind.

Somebody said something to you once. Maybe it lasted two minutes in real life. But in your mind, you have replayed it two hundred times — in the shower, while driving, while trying to sleep, while sitting quietly doing nothing. Each time you replay it, your body reacts as if it is happening again, right now, fresh. Your heart rate goes up, your stomach tightens, your mood drops. So technically, that one incident which happened once in reality, you have made your body and mind live it a hundred separate times.

This is what keeps us in fog. This is what drains our energy so much that by evening we feel exhausted even though we did not do much physical work. This looping is the opposite of learning the lesson and moving forward — this is learning nothing new, just re-living the old pain on repeat, and calling it "processing" when really it has become a habit loop.

So this is a very important awareness to build — noticing when you are in the loop. The moment you catch yourself going into the same old scene for the fifth time this week, that is your cue. Not to suppress it, but to gently say to your own mind, "I have already taken the lesson from this. I do not need to relive it again to prove I understood it."

Healthy Boundaries — Forgiveness Does Not Mean Allowing It Again

This point I really, really want you to remember, because so many people confuse forgiveness with permission.

Just because you have forgiven someone, it does not mean you now have to open the door wide for them to repeat the same behaviour with you. Forgiveness happens inside you. Boundaries happen in your outer life. Both can exist at the same time, and honestly, both should exist at the same time.

You can forgive your friend for breaking your trust, and still decide you will not share certain things with them anymore. You can forgive a family member, and still choose to keep some distance, or speak to them only on certain terms. You can forgive an ex, and still never let them back into your life the same way. This is not contradiction. This is maturity.

A lot of us were taught, especially growing up, that forgiving means "forgetting" and "going back to normal like nothing happened." But that thinking has hurt so many people, because it makes them go back into the same cycle, get hurt again, and then feel foolish for forgiving in the first place. That is not what forgiveness is asking of you. Forgiveness is asking you to release the emotional weight. It is not asking you to remove your own safety.

You can keep the relationship, but with healthy boundaries. Forgiving them is about your peace. Setting boundaries with them is about your protection. You need both.

Looking At This From Every Angle — Psychological, Spiritual, Practical and Universal Law

I told you this is going to be a depth conversation, so let's really go into it from all sides, because forgiveness and letting go touch every part of us — our mind, our soul, our daily life, and the bigger laws that run this universe.

The Psychological Angle

From a psychological point of view, holding onto resentment keeps your nervous system in a state of alert. Your body cannot tell the difference between an old memory that you keep replaying with intensity, and a new threat happening right now. So every time you go into that old story with full emotion, your body releases stress hormones exactly as if the event is happening today. Over months and years, this shows up as fatigue, anxiety, low mood, and yes — that fog we spoke about.

Psychologically, forgiveness is basically you telling your nervous system, "the danger is over, you can come out of alert mode now." It is a form of nervous system regulation, not just an emotional or moral decision.

The Spiritual Angle

Spiritually, holding onto old hurt is like carrying extra weight on a journey that was already asking enough from you. Every grudge, every unresolved anger, every place where we still feel like a victim — these become like knots in our energy. They keep us tied to that person or that timeline, even if outwardly we have moved on.

This is why so many spiritual traditions, in different words, all say the same thing — forgiveness is freedom, not for the other person, but for you. When you forgive, you are not releasing them from consequence. You are releasing yourself from the invisible cord that was still connecting you to that old pain. Energetically, you take your power back. As long as you are angry at someone, some part of your attention, your energy, your life force, is still with them. Forgiveness is you calling that energy back home to yourself.

The Practical, Everyday Angle

Practically speaking, unforgiveness costs you real, tangible things. It costs you sleep. It costs you focus at work. It costs you the ability to be fully present with people who actually love you today, because part of your mind is still stuck in a scene from the past. It costs you new opportunities, because you are so busy protecting yourself from old pain that you cannot say yes to new things fully.

When you actually let go, practically what happens is — your decision-making becomes clearer, your relationships in the present become richer because you are not projecting the old wound onto new people, and your energy that was going into resentment now becomes available for your goals, your creativity, your health.

The Universal Law Angle

As per universal law, whatever we hold onto with strong emotion, we keep attracting more of the same into our life. This is simply how energy works — like attracts like. If you are constantly in the frequency of "I was wronged, I was betrayed, people always do this to me," the universe, in its own quiet way, keeps sending you experiences that match that frequency. Not as punishment, just as a mirror.

So letting go is not just an emotional relief, it is also a frequency shift. When you release the old story, you stop broadcasting "I am a victim of this pattern," and you slowly start attracting people and situations that match your new, cleaner frequency. This is also connected to the law of cause and effect — every person's actions come back to them in their own way, in their own time. You do not have to hold the court case in your own head forever. The universe is already handling the account. Your only job is to take your lesson and free yourself.

The Real Steps of Letting Go and Forgiveness — For Yourself and For Others

Now let's come to the actual path. Not just theory, but what you can actually do, step by step.

Step One — Acknowledge It Fully Do not skip this step, please. So many of us jump straight to "I have to forgive and move on" without ever fully acknowledging what happened and how much it hurt. You cannot let go of something you have not even allowed yourself to feel. So first, sit with it. Say to yourself, "this happened, and it hurt me." No sugar coating, no spiritual bypassing here. Just plain truth.

Step Two — Separate the Person From the Pattern Ask yourself, what did I actually lose here — was it the person, or was it the idea I had of them, or the safety I thought I had? Often we are not even grieving the person, we are grieving our own expectation. Seeing this clearly takes a lot of unnecessary weight off.

Step Three — Take the Lesson, Consciously Sit down, maybe with a journal, and actually write — what is this incident trying to teach me. Not what the other person should have done differently, but what you are learning about your own boundaries, your own worth, your own patterns. This is the wisdom part we spoke about earlier.

Step Four — Grieve the Loop, Then Interrupt It Give yourself permission to feel it fully for a limited period — cry if you need to, journal if you need to, talk to someone you trust. But then, consciously start interrupting the replay. Every time your mind goes back into the scene, gently say, "I already know this story, I do not need to watch it again," and bring yourself back to the present moment — your breath, your surroundings, something in front of you right now.

Step Five — Speak the Forgiveness, Even If Only to Yourself You do not need the other person present, and you definitely do not need their apology. Forgiveness is your inner ceremony, not a joint one. You can simply say, out loud or in your heart — "I forgive you for what happened. I release this from my body and my mind. I take my lesson and I take my peace back." If it is about yourself, say it to yourself by name — this matters more than people realise. Hearing your own name in a forgiving sentence has a different effect than a general "it's okay."

Step Six — Set the Boundary, Clearly Now decide, practically, what this relationship or this pattern looks like going forward. Do you need distance? Do you need new terms? Do you need to simply not discuss certain topics? Write it down if it helps. This step protects the peace you just created in step five.

Step Seven — Watch for the Repeat, Gently Awareness now becomes your daily practice. Not obsessive self-watching, just gentle noticing — am I about to repeat an old pattern that is not aligned with who I am becoming? This is where real transformation quietly happens, in these small daily choices.

Why Do We Even Do All This Spiritual Practice

I want to be very honest with you here, something I have realised deeply in my own journey. All this meditation, all this shadow work, all this healing, all this spiritual practice — what is it actually for?

It is not to become a "spiritual person" with a certain image. It is not to collect knowledge. It is simply so that life becomes easier for us. So that we suffer less. So that we stop making our own lives harder by holding onto things that are already finished. Every practice, every technique, every bit of wisdom — its only real purpose is to bring us back to ease. Back to peace. That's it. If a practice is making you feel superior to others, or more burdened, or more confused, something has gone off track. Real spirituality always simplifies you, it never complicates you further.

So when we talk about letting go and forgiveness, understand — we are not doing this to become "better people" in front of others. We are doing this for ourselves, so that our own mind becomes a peaceful place to live in. Because at the end of the day, you spend every single moment of your life with your own mind. So it better be a kind place, not a courtroom that is running old cases forever.

Awareness — Breaking Your Own Pattern

This is the golden key, honestly. As awareness grows in you, something beautiful starts happening — you start observing your own reactions before they take over you. You notice, "oh, this is that old pattern again," and just that noticing, that little pause, is enough to not repeat it the same way.

This is what real growth looks like. It is not that you become a person who never gets triggered again, or never feels hurt again. It is that you become someone who catches herself faster. Where before it took you three days to come out of a spiral, now it takes three hours. Where before you would call that person back and get hurt the fourth time, now you pause and choose differently. This is breaking your own pattern — not becoming someone else, just becoming more awake inside the person you already are.

A Small Meditation for Letting Go

Find a quiet corner, sit comfortably, and if you can, close your eyes. Take a slow breath in through your nose, and let it out slowly through your mouth. Do this three times.

Now bring to mind the person or the situation you are ready to release — it can also be yourself. Do not force it, just let the memory come naturally.

Place your hand gently on your heart or your stomach, wherever you feel the emotion sitting in your body. Just be with it for a moment. No need to fix anything right now, just acknowledge — "this is here."

Now, silently or softly out loud, say these words, replacing the name where needed —

"I see what happened. I felt the pain of it fully. I take the lesson it gave me, and I choose to release the rest. I forgive you. I forgive myself. I call my energy back to me, here, in this present moment. I am safe now. I am free to move forward with wisdom, and with peace."

Take one more slow breath in, and as you breathe out, imagine the weight physically leaving your body, like a heavy bag sliding off your shoulder. Sit for a few more moments in this lighter feeling before you open your eyes.

You can return to this meditation anytime the old story comes back knocking. Some things need to be released not once, but many times, gently, until the grip finally softens. That is completely normal, and it does not mean you have failed at letting go.

Questions People Often Ask Me About This

"What if the person never apologises? Do I still have to forgive them?"

Yes, and I know that feels unfair to hear. But think about it this way — if your peace depends on their apology, you have handed them the keys to your healing, and some people will never come to collect that responsibility, ever. Forgiveness that waits for an apology is forgiveness that may never happen. Do it for yourself, without the condition of them saying sorry. If the apology comes one day, good. If it doesn't, your peace should not have been waiting on it in the first place.

"I said I forgive them, but I still feel angry sometimes. Does that mean I haven't really forgiven?"

No, not at all. Forgiveness is not a single switch that turns off all future feeling forever. It is normal for a wave of anger or sadness to come back sometimes, especially if something reminds you of the old situation. What matters is — does that wave control your whole day now, or does it pass through you in a few minutes? If it passes, you have let go. If it pulls you into the old loop for days, that part still needs some more attention, and that is completely okay too.

"How do I know I have actually let go, and I am not just pretending or suppressing it?"

Good question, and an important one, because spiritual bypassing is very real — where we just say nice words like "I forgive, I release" without doing the actual inner work, and we call that letting go. True letting go usually feels lighter in the body, not just in words. You can think about the person or situation without your chest tightening. You can talk about it without needing to convince the listener how wronged you were. And most importantly, you stop needing the story to be validated by everyone around you. If you still feel the need to prove your pain to people, some part of the release is still pending, and that is fine, just keep going gently.

"What if it is a very big betrayal, not a small issue — does the same process apply?"

Yes, the process is the same, but the timeline is different, and that needs to be respected. A small disagreement with a friend might take a few days to fully release. A deep betrayal, a big loss, something that shook your whole sense of safety — that can take months, sometimes longer, and it may need extra support like therapy or counselling along with your spiritual practice. There is no shame in that. Depth of wound decides depth of healing time, not your willpower or your spirituality.

A Few Honest Reminders Before We Close

• Letting go is not a one-time event, it is a practice. Some days it will feel complete, some days the old feeling will visit again — that does not mean you have failed, it just means you are human and healing is not a straight line.

• You do not need the other person's apology to let go. Waiting for someone else's sorry keeps your peace in their hands. Take your peace back into your own hands.

• Self-forgiveness will likely take longer than forgiving others, and that is okay. Be patient with yourself the same way you would be patient with someone you love.

• Forgiveness and boundaries are not opposites, they are partners. One heals your inside, the other protects your outside.

• The fog you feel is not permanent. It is simply asking for your attention, not your fear. Once you attend to it with honesty, it lifts, slowly but surely.

One Last Thing — This Is Not About Being "Positive" All the Time

I want to add this before we close, because I feel this gets lost sometimes in the spiritual space. Letting go does not mean you have to walk around smiling, saying "everything happens for a reason" the very next day after something painful. That is not healing, that is just a nicer looking mask on top of the same unprocessed feeling.

Real letting go allows space for anger, for grief, for confusion, for a bad day, even after you have done all the inner work. It simply means these feelings visit you now and then, instead of living inside you permanently. There is a big difference between a guest who comes for a cup of tea and leaves, and a tenant who has moved in and refuses to pay rent or go. Our aim is not to shut the door on all feeling. Our aim is to stop letting old pain live inside us rent free, taking up space that could be used for our own peace, our own growth, our own present life.

So be gentle with yourself through this process. Some days you will feel completely free of it. Some days the old feeling will knock on the door again. Both are part of the same honest journey. You are not failing just because healing is not a straight, clean line — nobody's healing is.

So this is what I wanted to share with you today, from my own understanding and my own journey through this. Fogginess, letting go, forgiveness — they are all connected, and they are all simply pointing you back to one place: your own peace. Take the lesson, release the loop, protect your boundary, and let your energy come back home to you.

Sending you so much light and softness for whatever you are releasing right now. You are doing better than you think you are.

Komal Aravind

Heal and Shine with Komal