This weekend I decided to go through my closet to reorganize the mess that built up on the shelves. To unclutter my closet, I make the biggest mess by unpacking every item onto my bed often finding squashed items hidden in the back of the piles. I put on music and enjoy the time to myself. I hate the thought of doing this, but I never find the process quite as bad, and I love the outcome.
On Friday night I met a friend for a lite dinner, and we chatted for about 3 hours. I had been feeling irritable for the past week and was using all my tools to deconstruct and work through it, but nothing was working. My inner child (ego) was raging but I knew to just allow the emotion to be there and not give it too much power. That night however, I slept soundly and woke up feeling full, grateful, and abundant. My irritability was gone! When I was unpacking my closet later in the day, I realized that this is what we had done on Friday night. My friend and I both shared deeply and unpacked our emotional closets. We helped each other reorganize our emotions more neatly. We also found some suppressed crumpled items squashed to the back of our minds and brought them out.
You know that feeling the day after you clean out your closet? It’s so refreshing to see everything neatly lined up and there is less in there because hopefully you were able to toss those items that no longer serve you. It’s the same with our emotional closets. Speaking to a close friend or a coach can help you unpack all your emotions and then repack only the ones that need to stay. This can also be done privately in a journal. Write down everything that surfaces as if you are dumping every item on your bed. Then read it through your narrative slowly and make a list to keep the ones that serve you. You will find many that can be dumped and do not need to be on the list. For instance, one of my items was being nervous about doing an upcoming presentation. I put it on my list as “Prep for presentation”. Another item that arose was feeling upset about something that happened last week at work. That one I dumped! This also applies to all materialistic items big or small that are no longer serving you, dump them! Our emotional attachments need to be to living breathing humans/pets, not with objects. I am culprit of saving clothing because of some emotional attachment. I am working on this and slowly getting better at tossing items aside.
For Parents: You will see your children’s struggles showing up as a tantrum, irritability, or silence. Work with them to dump out all their emotions. Their age will determine if they are willing to tell this to you or if they need to work through it privately in a diary or offer them a coach/therapist. Some children/young adults want to tell their parents everything just to release their inner tension. This does not mean parents need to absorb their child’s emotions and fix it for them. My husband has a great line, he asks, “Am I just listening, or do you want my input?” Most times it’s listening only. Many parents also get involved without the child even asking. Giving children space often allows them to work it out on their own. For children ages 3 - 6, acknowledge their “big” feelings and see if you can help them communicate their mood. If they can’t verbalize them, there are many face charts online that they can use to point how they are feeling. They will probably find this fun and you can talk about each emotion. This Process will be validating in future that they are in a safe space to speak about their emotions. As a conscious parent we should do this deep emotional declutter to ourselves at least 4x/year. Tie it to changing your clothes with each season, we can’t help our children if we are not helping ourselves first.
If you find you are consistently absorbing your children’s closet of clutter or repeating patterns which bring you to the same place of despair, it’s time for a Do Over. I can help guide you and your child through the process to manage it alone in the future.
~ Andi
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