A five-stage model developed by Dr Ben Bander Abudawood explores why letting go is not a single decision, but a gradual journey from awareness and acceptance towards renewed identity, purpose and flourishing.
“Let it go” is one of the most common pieces of advice offered to people facing heartbreak, disappointment, rejection, loss or failure. The words are simple, but the emotional process behind them is rarely straightforward. A difficult experience may be over in practical terms while continuing to influence confidence, relationships, choices and the way a person imagines the future.
Ben’s Five-Stage Framework of Letting Go, developed by Dr Ben Bander Abudawood, offers a structured way of understanding that process. Instead of treating letting go as forgetting, suppressing emotion or simply deciding to move on, the framework presents it as a gradual psychological transformation through five interconnected stages: Recognize, Reveal, Release, Rebuild and Rise.
The first stage, Recognize, is where the process begins. People can carry emotional weight for a long time without fully acknowledging it. They may stay busy, avoid certain memories or convince themselves that they should already be over what happened. Yet unresolved emotions can continue to appear in behaviour, relationships and everyday decisions. Recognition is about becoming aware of what is still present and being willing to name it.
That awareness creates the foundation for Reveal. This second stage moves beyond identifying pain and asks what the experience has come to mean. A rejection may quietly become a belief that someone is not good enough. Betrayal may develop into the assumption that nobody can be trusted. A professional setback may begin to shape a person’s entire sense of competence. Reveal invites individuals to look at the story surrounding the event, not only the event itself.
This distinction can be important because what happened and what someone came to believe about themselves because it happened are not always the same thing. By examining those beliefs, interpretations and personal narratives, the framework encourages a deeper understanding of why certain experiences continue to carry emotional power.
The third stage, Release, focuses on acceptance. This does not mean approving of what happened, excusing another person’s behaviour or pretending that a painful experience no longer matters. Instead, Release is about recognising what cannot be changed and gradually reducing the struggle against that reality.
For many people, this can be one of the hardest parts of letting go. The mind may repeatedly return to how things should have happened, what someone should have said or what could have been done differently. The framework shifts the question away from trying to rewrite the past and towards deciding how to live in relation to it now. The memory can remain, but it does not have to keep the same control over the present.
From there, the framework moves into Rebuild. Adversity often affects more than emotion; it can also change identity. The end of a relationship can leave someone wondering who they are outside that partnership. A career setback can challenge a professional identity built over many years. Loss, rejection or major life transitions can alter confidence, priorities and expectations for the future.
Rebuilding is therefore not simply about returning to the person someone was before the difficult experience. It is about considering who they are becoming after it. Values may become clearer, priorities may change, boundaries may strengthen and new goals may emerge. The experience remains part of the person’s story, but it begins to occupy a different place within that story.
The final stage, Rise, turns attention towards purpose and flourishing. At this point, the framework moves beyond the idea of recovery alone. The question is no longer only whether a person can feel better, but whether they can build meaning, direction and resilience beyond what happened.
Rising can look different for different people. It may involve pursuing a new ambition, developing healthier relationships, contributing to others, discovering greater self-understanding or simply approaching life with a clearer sense of what matters. The difficult experience is not celebrated or romanticised; rather, it is no longer allowed to define the limits of what comes next.
One of the most useful ideas within Ben’s Five-Stage Framework is that these stages do not have to unfold in a perfectly straight line. Emotional change is rarely that tidy. Someone may feel they have accepted an experience and later find an old emotion returning. A person rebuilding their identity may discover another belief that needs to be examined. Even after finding renewed purpose, moments of sadness or uncertainty can still appear.
That does not necessarily mean progress has been lost. The five stages can be understood as connected parts of an ongoing process. Recognize brings awareness. Reveal brings understanding. Release develops acceptance. Rebuild turns towards identity. Rise creates space for purpose. People may move between these processes as their circumstances and understanding evolve.
This is also what makes the framework different from the familiar instruction to “just move on.” Moving on can sound as though the goal is to leave the past behind as quickly as possible. Ben’s Five-Stage Framework suggests something more nuanced: the past may remain part of a person’s life, while its meaning and influence can change.
A memory can remain without controlling every future decision. A loss can remain significant without becoming an entire identity. A failure can become part of experience without becoming a permanent definition of the self. In this sense, letting go is not necessarily about removing a chapter from the story; it is about preventing that chapter from writing every page that follows.
The framework can be considered across many kinds of adversity, including relationship breakdown, bereavement, rejection, personal or professional setbacks, uncertainty and major life transitions. Its accessible five-stage structure also gives educators, coaches, wellbeing practitioners and individuals a vocabulary for discussing a process that is often described only in broad emotional terms.
At its heart, Ben’s Five-Stage Framework of Letting Go offers a different way to think about transformation. Recognize asks what is still being carried. Reveal asks what meaning has been attached to it. Release asks what reality needs to be accepted. Rebuild asks who the person is becoming. Rise asks what purpose can be created next.
The result is a perspective on letting go that is less about forgetting and more about changing one’s relationship with the past. Difficult experiences may remain part of life, but they do not have to remain in control of it.
About Dr Ben Bander Abudawood
Dr Ben Bander Abudawood, Associate Professor and Senior Educator, is the founder and developer of Ben’s Five-Stage Framework of Letting Go. He is a researcher and author whose work focuses on psychological transformation, resilience, wellbeing and human flourishing.
Through the Five-Stage Framework, he presents letting go as a process of recognising emotional burdens, understanding their meaning, accepting what cannot be changed, rebuilding identity and developing renewed purpose. The framework seeks to make the complex experience of psychological transformation more accessible to both professional and wider public audiences.
