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  Paul and I continued to have many sessions afterwards and he slowly began to understand where his daughters were coming from with regards to his visits with their families and especially with regard to spending time with his grandchildren.

  Paul showed up early for an appointment many months later. “I talked with both of my daughters. Their husbands were there, too. I told them I’d been talking with you and you helped me understand what they had to deal with regarding my drinking when they were little girls. I told them I was deeply sorry for all the pain I caused them and the pain I caused their mother. I told them I understood why they didn’t want to leave their children alone with me. I told them I am proud of them for being good parents and while I know I would never harm any of my grandkids, I respect their wishes and understand why they feel the way that they do.” Paul was openly tearful and grabbed a tissue from the box to wipe his eyes and nose. “They started crying. I even got a hug from both of my daughters. It was the first time in a long time I felt ok.” Paul took a breath and hung his head. “I drank to avoid the pain of my father’s abuse. He was an awful, mean tyrant who broke my jaw when I was 11, after I tried to defend my mother from his wrath. He was known in town as the drunk. He couldn’t keep a job and the only money we had came from the ironing and sewing my mother would do. It was all she could do to keep her head up. She was exhausted morning, noon, and night. My father would get drunk, accuse her of cheating, and would spend hours beating her. “When was she going to cheat?” he stated in feigned sarcasm. “She was his slave from sunrise to sunset. She never left the damn house!” Paul’s tears had dried at this point, as he gazed out of my office window. “My father was a drunk and awful and I turned out to be just like him, at least for a while.” He broke his gaze from the window and looked at me “I’m not awful. I’m not a drunk. I’m a good person who hurt the people I care about. I know they have forgiven me years ago and now I’m ready to forgive myself. I don’t want to carry this burden anymore.”

  Paul married his girlfriend and, in his vows, promised to always take good care of himself for her. His daughters also attended his wedding. Paul remains sober to this day.

  Paul’s journey is not that unusual. Many people experience domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse within the home to grave results. Many people are traumatized from having had to deal with the outbursts from the traumatized alcoholic. Children often internalize these experiences as having been their fault and thus the cycle continues. Paul’s recovery is one that posits an example of what psychotherapy and good old fashion hard work can do in isolating the logical cause of harm. When we remove shame, blame, and self-judgment, miracles can and do happen!

  Paul’s evolution began simply because he was able to see his worth. He was able and willing to do the work to recover, not only from his own childhood trauma, but to grow from accepting accountability for the harm he caused his own family. He was able to do this by isolating his judgment of himself. He grew up feeling worthless and broken so, therefore, he believed that about himself. His judgments of himself created the template for his abusive and neglectful behavior, especially when he was drinking.

  Perhaps your narrative is different from Paul’s. However, if you have anything that you need to grow and recover from, the question is do you believe that you deserve to?

  Do your judgments of others keep you from growing and healing? Do you judge yourself harshly? Do you hold bias, views, and opinions of yourself that act as roadblocks to your own wellness?

  Think about these questions as you read on.

  Chapter Three

  Clutter

  We talk all the time about clutter in our home, on our desk at work, in our car, or in our purse. etc. It is not common that we discuss the clutter in our minds, in our lives, and in our hearts, and in our spirit. However, it is vital that we address the clutter we all collect over the years and in doing so, how it drains our energy and distracts us from focusing on the things that are functional and healthy to us. It is no wonder that we feel more relaxed, focused, and in control of our lives when the things that are important to us are managed well, organized, and are not out of place. Energy, stressors, and the projected influences from those in our lives can often become emotional clutter in our hearts much like random items scattered about in our homes. Additionally, we find ourselves discarding items in our home when we inventory their relevance and importance. It should be no surprise when we do a similar inventory on our emotional influences, we learn to bag up and cart off negative and irrelevant stressors as well.

  There are all kinds of clutter, in every capacity and in every variety that you could possibly imagine, that occupies space within our lives and our hearts ,rent free. Some of that clutter comes in the form of friendships, family relationships, poor financial management, and our inability to say no to the intrusions of other people, for example. There is virtually no limit to the way clutter can infiltrate our lives. Let’s explore this analogy, for instance. Let’s pretend that you are covered in dirt from head to toe. You have grime, oil, mud, and dust in your hair and all over your body. You have been covered in this dirt for years. Let’s imagine that you have finally decided to rid yourself of all dirt on your body. That’s a great choice to make because who doesn’t like to be clean? So, let’s imagine that in this process you have chosen to prepare your shower by making sure that you have all the necessary soaps, shampoos, conditioners; loofahs, and washcloths you need in order to have a successful shower and to successfully remove all of the dirt and grime from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. You’ve made sure you have clean towels ready once you step out of the shower. Now that you have taken the time and made the energy investment in turning on the water and getting it to the right temperature, you step inside and it feels wonderful. You look down in the shower you see the grime falling off your body and running into the drain. You let the warm water completely soak your head, you use shampoo that smells wonderful, and you lather up your hair, and you wash your head carefully with kindness and love for yourself. It makes you feel wonderful. You rinse out your hair, you put the conditioner in, and you make sure that you run it through all your hair to ensure that it does its job efficiently and effectively. While you are conditioning your hair, you take your loofah and you put the lavender scented body wash on it, you are getting it soapy and bubbly and lathered up and you start from the ears all the way down to the bottom of your feet, scrubbing away all the years of grime and all the years of dirt and grease and dust, and rinsing it off of your body into the drain. Once you’ve removed all the dirt, you take time, care, concern, and love for yourself to ensure you have fully rinsed all the soap and every bit of any remaining debris off your body. Next, you’re standing there in the shower, squeaky clean, ready for your towels. You step out of the shower, you grab a fluffy clean, white towel, and you start to dry yourself off. You take the other fluffy white towel and wrap it carefully and with love around your head so that it can absorb the remaining water out of your hair. Then you stand there and after all of your effort, after all of the time and energy and money you invested in preparing your shower and getting yourself squeaky clean, you look around your room and realize that it is full of the very grime, dirt, grease, and filth you just took off of your body. What do you think will happen if you continue to live in this type of environment, with all this clutter, dirt, and grime around you? Don’t you think if you invest so much time and energy taking care of your body, that you should prevent your body from getting that dirty again? If you allow that type of dirt, grime, and clutter to be manifest in the environment that you exist in regularly, then it only makes sense that the clutter and the dirt that you live in will only naturally get on your body once again.

  How does it make you feel to be clean?

  How does it feel to look around at your environment? Are you tired of living this way?

  The point is, you can get all the therapy in the world to ta
ke care of what is going on in your head and your heart, but until you start doing the hard work in your life and categorically making command decisions on what you will and will not tolerate to have an influence on you and your family, then you will continue to be triggered and you will continue to have the lasting effects of trauma due to the exposure of being around the very clutter that you need to remove from your life. Showering will have a limited affect if you are living in squalor. Therapy is only as effective as the changes you are willing to make.

  Perhaps you look around and you think “Well, yes ,it does appear to be clutter from the outsider’s perspective, but there are things here that I need. I need these papers and I need this tool and I need this piece of decor that I’ve never managed to use and, oh, by the way, I need this piece of sporting equipment, etc. I just haven’t had the time to put it away in a proper storage area. So, I can’t get rid of this clutter I just need to organize it.”

  Much like our personal lives and our professional lives, our homes often reflect what is going on in our heart and our mind. If your home is cluttered, chances are, you’ve got some questionable boundaries with regards to the things you focus your energy on in your mind. Of course, it’s understandable to know that thinking about organizing can be an insurmountable and overwhelmingly stressful concept. If it were easy, people would be neat and tidy all the time.

  It’s important to take inventory of what is affecting us. Everyone is different. We all have different levels of tolerance with regards to clutter. Clutter doesn’t bother some people. In fact, I’ve met many people who say that they feel comforted with having lots of things lying about in disarray. Much like a nest gives a small mammal comfort and warmth, clutter can do the same for some people. The question is, does the clutter cause stress? If the clutter causes stress, then there needs to be mitigation of that stress. Does the idea of removing the clutter cause stress because you believe that the removal will cause other people stress, so therefore why bother?

  Do you live in a nest because your partner likes it that way? Is there a middle ground you can agree to in order to organize the clutter?

  Is there filth around you? Do you need help to clean it up?

  The main purpose of this exercise is to determine what is causing you stress and to mitigate that in a healthy and productive way. Sometimes the removal of clutter can create stressful dynamics with loved ones. If that is the case, then perhaps a conversation about an agreed upon resolution would be appropriate. The important thing to remember here is to understand what needs to change and to make a concerted healthy effort to do so.

  Identifying what is “clutter”.

  What is cluttering up your psyche? In other words, what is causing you stress? Is this something that you could, in theory, address? For example, if a loved one has received a dire medical diagnosis, then clearly that would result in stress. There is not a whole lot that you can do to mitigate this kind of stress, beyond meditation or prayer and ensuring that you are doing everything you can to be supportive. Take this and compare it to, perhaps, dealing with an in-law or toxic coworker who does not respect personal boundaries. Perhaps you have the parents of your spouse or partner showing up at your home, unannounced, on a regular basis. Would this be a cause of stress that you could mitigate? Does it make you uncomfortable to think about addressing the dynamics of these influences? Perhaps a toxic co-worker expects you to handle part of their workload and functions in a disrespectful manner with regards to your workspace. Are you comfortable addressing your frustration to your boss? Sometimes we are faced with the difficult decision of the enforcement of boundaries with individuals who refuse to acknowledge and respect our space. It often results in a defensive posture from the offender. On the surface, it seems difficult, but quite honestly, it can be a simple fix once you feel confident in the tools that you use to mitigate this strife. Having that type of a situation can be clutter in your mind that is occupying space. Think about it. The things you worry about that you could potentially do something about; don’t you feel that you could invest that energy into something more worthy? For many people, it seems easier to “let it go” as opposed to confronting the issue. The fact is, “letting it go” translates into tolerance of the offending behavior and therefore, allowing it to continue. The result is built up stress that has nowhere to go, so it piles up in your head and heart, occupying space and expending your emotional resources in dysfunctional ways.

  Identifying clutter and taking action to make necessary changes might not seem like a simple way to navigate this world, however, once you’ve accomplished this, it will result in fewer stressors. In this case, less is most definitely more.

  Remember that removing clutter is critical to the long-term success in your journey to wellness. There are no number of showers you can take that will prevent you from being affected by the clutter in your environment. The same applies to your mental health. In order to preserve all the hard work you have done towards regrouping, rethinking, and re-learning who and what you are in the world, you must address those external influences that consistently erode your positive efforts to wellness.

  It’s time to break the cycle. It doesn’t have to be a heated argument. You can and should address issues that affect your ability to do your job, live in your home, and have your boundaries respected. It’s ok if you are unsure of how this should take place.

  Talk to your co-worker. Ask them to understand you’re trying to work and you don’t feel it’s fair for you to complete a task. If that doesn’t work, talk to your boss. If your boss doesn’t help you, perhaps it’s time to start looking for other opportunities. If you don’t feel like there are other opportunities for you, then maybe start looking at going back to school. Maybe taking some classes or training will empower you to have more choices. Remember, this is all about your own personal growth and ,while it may seem a stretch to consider the dealings of a rude coworker to quitting your job, it is all interconnected to your long-term wellness and happiness. Pay attention to the little things. The clutter in your home caused by poor organizational habits of your partner can trigger other issues in your relationship. Communicate your willingness to help as well as your need for change. If you are not communicating clearly then you cannot expect others to understand what your needs are.

  It’s ok when others get defensive. If you’re being fair in your assertion, you must remember that you’re not responsible for how other people respond. That’s something we all inherently fear in our relationships with other people. We naturally don’t want to rock the boat, so we avoid. When we avoid, we are denying ourselves the very change we are trying to inhabit in our lives. You’re not a bad person for asking others to be accountable. Likewise, you expressing a willingness to be accountable is the very foundation for cultivating healthy dynamics in all your interpersonal relationships. Likewise, if you’re the source of the clutter in your world, then change is much easier. Your efforts to make these changes may positively affect others, but ultimately it is up to you to do the work. Sometimes it’s easier to make adjustments in our lives regarding clutter when we are looking at our living or workspace. What can you change? What can you donate or discard? Then, when you’re ready, you can investigate the clutter in your heart. What are you ready to get rid of? What relationships or connections to other people are dragging you down? Do you find yourself overly invested in the relationships of family members, to a point that it is unhealthy? Are you pouring emotional energy into social media? What do you spend your time thinking about and is it healthy?