Emotional Clutter

Moms don't have time to sift through emotional clutter they may have. We’re too busy raising our children and taking care of the family. Everything else comes first and our emotional needs get put on the back burner, all the while, simmering...simmering way too long until things get to a boiling point and there's chaos. Then and only then do we find ourselves willing to deal with our emotions. And a lot of times there are things that are there, emotions that we feel, that we are not even aware of. To tell you the truth, we don’t even really understand most of them, and definitely don't know how to deal with.

     We naturally accumulate clutter in the process of living life. Clutter occurs when you have things that you either don't have a place for (to store and file away) or you have something that you just don't know what to do with. Every year, typically twice a year, Spring and Fall, I go through stuff that I have accumulated over time. Six months is enough time to accumulate quite a bit of stuff that can easily add up to clutter if not monitored and if there's no system in place for filing, storage, and elimination, especially mail and documents. Taking inventory is absolutely necessary. Taking inventory is something that I would say is only required once a year, maybe not even that often. It could be every two years or every few years. But at least once a year I believe you should take inventory of where you've been, where you're at now, and where you're heading or would like to be. Usually at the beginning of each year, because this is usually when most people are looking at what has been accomplished in the previous year, so we get in gear for the New Year and set new goals for ourselves. It's like the process a store owner would go through as he or she walks through the storage room. Clipboard in hand, the store owner, or someone they have appointed, takes stock of what's there. He or she walks through the storage room or warehouse taking inventory of what's there, what's broken, what's good and in working order, what needs to be thrown out from wear and tear, and what needs to be replaced. It's all a process of maintenance. Very rarely do we do this on a personal level. Why? Because we're not taught to do it and, we don't know how to go about doing it. Most people don't even know where to even start taking inventory of their emotions or even what to do with their emotions.

     One of the most powerful emotions is love. But just as equally powerful is another emotion that is the opposite of love, hate. But there are a range of emotions that one may feel before these emotions evolve and turn into hate. Anger is usually the first. Anger is a natural human emotion, but many people are afraid of anger because they don't know what to do with it and don't know how to express it properly. Some people have so much fear of anger that they even deny that they feel this emotion. But it's nothing wrong with feeling anger, it's only wrong when anger is expressed the wrong way.

     As I was going through some things during my fall cleaning and decluttering routine, I found myself left with a bucket of stuff that I just didn't know what to do with. These were things that I wanted to keep and couldn't part ways with. There was quite a bit of stuff that I definitely wanted to get rid of and throw out because I was just tired of looking at it, tired of it just sitting there taking up space and having no use and no longer having any value, and just wanted it gone. So it was very easy for me to throw it in the trash or bag it up to give to Good Will. But there's this bucket of stuff that I had a really hard time letting go of. This was stuff that had sentimental value. Some of them were things that I could possibly use later and wanted to keep “just in case”. I've had many situations where I've thrown out things in the past only to have a situation come up where I could have used what I threw out. So I found myself keeping some of those things that I felt may be of use later. We sometimes do this with our emotions. Because we don't have other tools to use to deal with our challenges and problems that we go through in life, we rely on those tools that are familiar to us. Even if that tool is old, outdated, and no longer really serves us, we still hang onto it. We need to learn new tools of dealing with life. For example, we may have an argument with our spouse and give him the silent treatment. This is a tool we may have learned from a parent. It's a manipulation tool to get what we want. To make the other person give in to our demands or pay attention to our needs. We deny them something in order to gain something. We do the same with our emotions. We hold on to them. We hold on to things (emotions and physical things) that have sentimental value. We hold on to things that we don't know exactly know what to do with. We also hold on to things that we feel we may need later. Things that are not necessarily a tool that would be effective in our current life, but if a situation arises, we feel we may need to pull this tool out and use it because that's all we know. We certainly don't want to be left without our tools right?

     This is how we end up with emotional clutter. Life happens, situations arise, and we react to them either with anger or fear. If you're not able to deal with the anger and resolve it, it usually gets stuffed and you find yourself stuck in this emotion. Emotions are supposed to flow. They are energy in motion. When this energy whether negative or positive is not flowing, we become sick emotionally. Physical pain is a signal that the body sends us to alert us that there is something wrong. When we ignore the signals, when we ignore pain, eventually it moves into another stage and develops into an illness.  

    

     Emotions are there to alert us and guide us. Anger has a purpose. It lets us know that there's a situation where you are not being treated right. If anger is ignored and looked at and dealt with, it can turn into other emotions that make us emotionally unhealthy or ill. Bitterness and hatred are symptoms of this. 

3 reasons why we carry emotional baggage and clutter:

1.      Holding on to things that have sentimental value. My kids' toys had sentimental value to me so I always kept most of them in a storage bin for many years until they got older. I finally parted ways with these toys and gave them to Good will although I still have one or two that I keep because of its sentimental value. It reminds me of when they were babies and toddlers. There are a couple of stuffed animals and McDonald toys that I have. What emotions do you hold on to that have sentimental value that no longer serve you? Emotions that you keep you stuck, keep you from moving forward in life. Maybe it's emotions from a past relationship that ended 2 years ago, 5 years ago, even 10 years ago that you are not letting go of. Maybe you're a single mom who can't seem to understand why you can't find the man of your dreams and why although you go out on dates and seem to have decent relationships with men, they don't stick. Maybe you're holding on to emotional baggage that you just won't let go of. But, until you can work through these emotions, you won't be able to let them go. You have to understand the connection you have with them before you can release them. It's a process. You may even hold on to emotions from relationships with friends and family that no longer have value. Maybe there are some relationships that have soured or you've grown apart from but you are still holding on to 'feelings' that you can't seem to let go of and continue to mentally go to that place in your mind that dig up these feelings, but yet leave you feeling empty, like there's a void.

2.      Holding on to things we don't know exactly what to do with. That storage bin of things that I just don't know what to do with, where exactly to put it after sifting through all the other junk that I've thrown away......I usually just end up looking at it with a blinking stare. Then after about a minute or so I say to myself, “I'll just put it away for the moment and go back to it and organize it”. Usually I don't end up filing it away and organizing it. It just sits there in the storage bin. Every now and then when a situation arises where I may need something I'll go through this bin and look to see what's in it and if there's something I can use for that particular situation, but even after going back through it I still don't end up organizing it. It's just so much easier to tuck it away and not deal with it. This is how we do with our emotions. I like to use the analogy of an attic. I like to call it our “Soul's attic”. The attic of our soul can have sooo much stuff accumulated over the years. Things that we've literally just stuffed there not wanting to deal with, not knowing how to deal with. Negative emotions are not easy to deal with and process. Sometimes they're just down right hard. We don't like to “feel” those feelings. The storage bin is a little bit easier to deal with because there's not as much stuff there. At least with the leftover storage bin you've attempted to sift through all of the baggage and end up with a little, but when you're dealing with an attic of things you don't know what to do with, things you've tossed in your soul's attic for years and years that you've never sifted through and processed, that can be a huge challenge to deal with. Where do you even begin? There can be so much stuff in your soul's attic that you'd be surprised is there. You think “I forgot about that!” “I didn't even realize I still had this.” Sometimes we evolve and grow to a place in life where we actually have developed the tools to be able to deal with our emotions and work through them, but sometimes an emotion may come up that we still don't know what to do with and still don't know how to deal with.

3.      Holding on to things we feel we may need and can use later. How can you possibly save an emotion and use it later? This is part of the problem with unforgiveness. Things we refuse to let go that we feel is benefiting us in some way because by holding on to it we are making the other person pay for what they did to us. We don't want to release the anger, the bitterness, the animosity because if we do we won't be able to make that person pay up on their debt that they owe us. If we move on we will be letting them off. They owe us. If a situation arises where this person has not paid up on their debt according to our perception and reasoning that they should have to pay whether with time or punishment and it seems that this person is happy, free, living it up in life and having a good time, we need to be able to bring up the past, what they did to us. So we hold on to anger so that we can remind them of what they did. We hold on to bitterness because the benefit to us is so that they can remember how much pain they put us through and hopefully that will bring so much guilt that they suffer emotional turmoil just like we had to. But it doesn't work that way. Or maybe there may be a situation where we can use our emotions to manipulate and get other people to see that person in a negative light based on what they did to us. So this may be a reason why we hold on to emotions.

4.      Holding on to things because of fear of the empty space. For some people emptiness equals loneliness. You may have a real desire to clear the clutter but fear keeps you hanging on to it. One big fear is that you may be afraid that once you've cleared the clutter, now you have to move forward. Now you have no excuse for not taking action, not doing, not being productive because your excuse (the clutter) is now gone. Maybe you've hung on to the clutter so that you could have excuses for not moving forward. This is part of procrastination.