QOTW DECEMBER 1, 2021
What Is The Relationship Between Energetic and Physical Clutter in Your Life?
Bingz Huang asks
This December, I’m running a little experiment.
Each week, I’ll choose one question comment from an article of mine and turn the answer into a story.
We’re kicking it off with Bingz’s question on my recent article Today I Tried Not to Cry Over Spilt Coffee When My Day Didn’t Go to Plan.
Bingz highlighted this passage:
I tend to avoid things I don’t want in my space, whether that’s doing dishes, talking when I don’t want to, or decorating for Christmas. — Aimée GramblinBingz QOTW:
I have a friend who's highly sensitive and helps other highly sensitive women declutter their living spaces. She noticed her clients are very tolerant of other people's belongings cluttering their physical spaces, and it seems that it's because they're so used to having their energies being cluttered with these people's energies.Do you resonate with this, Aimee?
Hi Bingz! Thank you for leaving this question on my article.
It wasn’t one I was expecting, and to be honest, it caught me off-guard.
I think of clutter as a physical expression of something that is wrong with me and something that is my fault.
Maybe that is part of why I avoid it?
I also feel like it’s an energetic zap to spend time decluttering.
I’d rather write, sleep, or play candy crush.
I really like to live in my head and when daily tasks remind me that I need to come back to my body, I get kind of irritated and annoyed.
That feels juvenile, but it’s how I feel.
When I wrote Cleaning Ideas For Imaginative Introverts and Messy Creatives back in May, the comments affirmed a lot of creatives have difficulty with cleaning and organization.
That made me feel less alone, at least, and less like something is wrong with me.
And, I still want to work on having a decluttered environment.
But, I’ve had some big AHAs this year.
Be Self-Supportive
Edward Riley worked with me on this earlier in the year and helped me understand that I’d been decluttering and cleaning while enduring really mean self-talk, such as:
- You suck at cleaning
- You’re incompetent at decluttering
- You are a terrible wife
- You are a terrible mom
- Clean this shit up and maybe you will love yourself more
- Clean this shit up and maybe your husband will love you more
- Clean this shit up and maybe your kids will think you’re a better mom
- You are incapable and bad at this, so why are you even bothering?
When I finally realized this narrative was playing, I flipped it on its head
Gentle Self-Talk
- You are capable of organizing your clutter
- You are worthy of an uncluttered environment
- It will feel better when your space is clear
- Work on uncluttering for yourself first and watch how it positively impacts your relationships
- Decluttering is an opportunity to see where your values are
- Decluttering is an opportunity to release what you no longer need
I felt an immense wave of relief wash over my entire body when my self-dialogue changed.
Highly Sensitive People and Clutter
Highly Sensitive People (HSP) are what we sound like — highly sensitive. This can be to sounds, clutter, and criticism.
My mother-in-law once noted, “Aimée, you have such an immense capacity for joy. It’s really beautiful. I think that it also means you have an immense capacity for sadness when that hits you.”
She’s right. I’ve tried to temper this more as I grow in life because high-intensity emotions can be exhausting for the people around us and for ourselves as HSPs.
You’d think that’d make me control the messiness around me.
Instead, I tend to go into a FREEZE mode. My brain thinks clutter is a matter of survival and it freaks out.
Reminding myself clutter isn’t a matter of survival takes me out of Flight, Fight, Freeze mode and allows me to gently make decisions.
As an empath, I’ve spent a lot of my life figuring out how to navigate life as an empath. It’s a gift, but most of us aren’t given the gift of discernment from the beginning of our lives.
I’ve learned how to put up energetic boundaries, let other energies pass through me instead of trapping them inside.
I find a lot of this is facilitated through bodywork.
It’s a privilege to be able to afford bodywork and I’m thankful that I can right now. I haven’t always been able to seek the services I know will help my body, mind, and spirit.
Last night, my friend and bodyworker, Rebecca Southard, spent two hours treating me.
She used facial acupuncture, craniosacral, and cupping modes of treatment. I could feel my energies “unsticking.”
It felt amazing.
It’s like she knows how to work with my body so that we can declutter and move my chi into a more healthful modality.
Here are a few photos of cupping for those who are curious.
Sidenote: I learned the proper terminology for what us westerners tend to call “alternative medicine” is actually eastern medicine, which makes sense because it’s not alternative medicine to eastern practitioners.
The issue of clutter in my life is definitely a psychological, emotional, intellectual combo.
The intellectual part is I’m an idea person, a big picture thinker.
Attention to detail?
No thanks.
Could someone else do that for me, please?
So, I’m working on gently and kindly cleaning and decluttering as a way to honor my worth.
It’s a huge mindset shift.
And, it’s interesting to note that this is the first time in our 20+ year relationship that my husband, David and I, are having more kind and calm discussions about household management.
We’re also seeing the results of our efforts.
It feels really, really good to be in organized spaces.
My brain is catching on to this and craving it more.
I think my neural pathways are changing around clutter.
It’s pretty amazing how much capacity for change humans really have.
Empaths and Energetic Clutter
At first, I thought, naw, Bingz Huang, I don’t think that’s me. I’d like to say your friend is right and that this all resonates, but I don’t know…
Then, I allowed myself to really feel into Bingz’s question:
"[HSP] clients are very tolerant of other people's belongings cluttering their physical spaces, and it seems that it's because they're so used to having their energies being cluttered with these people's energies."Does this resonate with me?
Well, yes, it does, actually.
I think of my clutter as an energetic extension of myself and allow it to be in others’ spaces.
By doing so, I’m not respecting the space of people I live with and love.
Alternatively, when my family leaves their clutter all over the place, I feel like I’m not being respected.
And, you know what?
I think, well, then why bother?
Screw it.
We’ll just live like this.
Which is when I go back to gentleness.
Slowly, slowly.
Kindly, kindly.
Gently, gently.
We are talking, puttering, rehoming, releasing, reordering, remodeling our space.
We are taking back our energetic boundaries.
Phew.
Aimée Gramblin writes across topics. Writing, Mental Health, Humor, and Memoir are a few favorite subject areas. Support Aimée’s writing by becoming a Medium member today.
