Dropping the Rope: A Personal Encounter With Letting Go

Dropping the Rope: A Personal Encounter With Letting Go

The first time I truly understood the Drop the Rope metaphor wasn’t while reading about it or practicing it with a client, it was while watching Steven Hayes use it in a training video.

There was a woman sitting across from him, holding a rope, pulling with all her strength while an imagined “monster” tugged from the other end. The struggle was so human it felt familiar in my chest before I even consciously understood why. She pulled harder. The monster pulled harder. And Steve, in that way he seems uniquely able to do, became the voice of her mind—persistent, automatic, believable. Watching that unfold was mind-blowing. Not because it was clever, but because it was recognizable. It was me. It was all of us.

That moment stuck.

For weeks afterward, whenever I found myself wrestling with a difficult thought: "You’re not doing enough, You should fix this, You shouldn’t feel this way," I’d see her hands wrapped around that rope. I’d feel the strain, the urgency, the effort to overpower something internal by force.

Then I’d remember the moment she loosened her grip.
Not triumphant.
Not enlightened.
Just… tired.
Willing.
Human.

The first time I tried dropping the rope myself, it wasn’t elegant. It didn’t instantly dissolve the fear or uncertainty. The rope was still there, so were the thoughts and sensations that had hooked me, but something shifted: I was no longer stuck in the tug-of-war. I could move. I could breathe. I could choose.

More importantly: I could act.

Over time, the metaphor began to reveal itself not as a single ACT process, but as a doorway into all of them.

• Acceptance: The rope remains, the urge to pull remains, and still, here you are.
• Defusion: Thoughts shift from absolute commands to background noise, something held lightly, not obeyed.
• Present Moment Awareness: Instead of fighting an internal battle, I could notice: Right now, in this moment, am I safe? Am I here?
• Self-as-Context: There was the struggle and there was the one aware of the struggle.
• Values: If I stop pulling, if I put my energy somewhere else, what matters enough to move toward?
• Committed Action: Not because the discomfort is gone, but because life is waiting on the other side of the struggle.

That’s the strange gift of Drop the Rope: it doesn’t promise ease. It doesn’t erase fear, frustration, pain, or doubt. Instead, it gently exposes a truth:

Control is not the same as freedom.
And struggle is not the same as living.

So now, when a client enters the room gripping their own invisible rope, jaw tight, body braced, exhausted from the internal war, I don’t rush toward technique. I don’t claim to have the solution.

Instead, I remember that woman.
I remember myself.

And when the time is right, I offer the same quiet invitation:

“What happens if—just for a moment—you stop pulling?”

Not as a command.
Not as avoidance.
But as an experiment:

A willingness to shift from fighting the mind
to living a life.

And every time I use it, every time I watch someone test that moment of letting go, I’m reminded why this work matters.

Not because it’s easy.
But because it’s possible.