#42: MBT Group Therapy > Between Letting Go and Losing Control

🎙️ Group Session – “Between Letting Go and Losing Control”

Welcome to this episode of the MBT podcast.

In this episode, we step inside an MBT group therapy session where the past, present, and future seem to continuously overlap.

What happens when someone becomes important to you, but you do not know whether that connection will remain?

And how can someone from your past still have so much influence over what you feel today, even years later?

Today, we listen to a group where loss, powerlessness, anger, and uncertainty gradually become visible.

Not everything can be solved.

Not everything can be controlled.

And perhaps more importantly:

How do you stay connected to yourself when you have no control over what someone else does?

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🧠 What is central in this episode

When your mind knows something your feelings do not

Sometimes you understand exactly what is happening rationally.

You know the facts.

You know you cannot predict everything.

And yet, your emotions tell a completely different story.

This session reveals just how wide the gap between knowing and feeling can sometimes become.

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The fear of losing something valuable

When someone finally makes you feel seen and understood, the possibility of losing that connection can hit especially hard.

Not only because you miss someone.

But because you fear losing something that may have been missing for a very long time.

What happens when that connection suddenly becomes uncertain?

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Influence that remains

Another conversation within the group focuses on something that began years ago but continues to trigger powerful emotions today.

Anger.

Powerlessness.

Disappointment.

And above all, the question:

Why does this person still have so much influence over me?

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When something positive is difficult to trust

Sometimes a situation finally begins to move in the direction you have hoped for.

And yet, relief does not come.

Instead, caution takes over.

What is behind this?

What will this cost me?

Can I trust that things will really be different this time?

Even positive change can feel threatening when your past has taught you to expect something else.

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Taking your own position

Throughout the session, increasing attention is given to an important question:

How much space do you give to the other person?

And how much space do you allow yourself to take?

Not by fighting harder.

But by exploring where your responsibility begins — and where someone else’s ends.

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When the way we tell our story reveals something too

Toward the end, something interesting happens.

The focus shifts from the story itself to the way it is being told.

Why do we sometimes need so much context before we dare to say what something actually does to us?

And what happens to the people listening when the emotion only becomes visible at the very end?

At that moment, the group itself becomes part of the exploration.

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🌟 The common thread

The common thread in this episode is control.

Control over relationships.

Control over what others do.

Control over what will happen.

And control over what we feel.

Mentalizing sometimes means accepting that we cannot have complete control.

But we can explore what that uncertainty does to us.

Instead of only asking:

What is going to happen?

We can also ask:

What is happening inside me right now?

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💬 Closing

This episode shows how difficult letting go can be when something — or someone — truly matters to us.

Sometimes we try to think ahead.

Create scenarios.

Understand why something is happening.

Or maintain control over something we cannot actually control.

But perhaps space begins to emerge when we stop trying to predict everything.

When we allow ourselves to feel what is here now.

And ask ourselves a different question:

“If I cannot control what the other person does… how do I want to respond to what I am feeling?”