PURGING PEOPLE AND EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE

14 July, 2018

PURGING PEOPLE AND EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE

I think that when it comes to cleaning house, purging, and decluttering, our minds, our emotional baggage, and the toxic people around us are areas that we tend to overlook the most. We justify holding on to these negative people and events, but why? Maybe we feel obligated because they are family, or because the events were simply a part of our lives? Maybe because relationships and emotional damage are not as tangible and obvious as are a moth-eaten sweater or a pair of shoes worn through at the soles. Would you run through the rain with holes in the shoes you know you should have thrown away? Not if you could help it! Embracing things that are unhealthy for us can have profoundly negative impacts on our lives. Maybe they’ll give you the flu! At the least, negative energies will wear you down.

Emotional baggage is something we all have. Even though I have huge gaps in my memories growing up and through college (the mind protecting itself), I still have many vivid memories both good and bad. It is the negative memories I work hardest at forgetting. Honestly, what good are they to me now? The only thing that painful memories do is to undermine my happiness and sense of well-being. I have worked far too hard, especially in my bipolar wellness, to let bad memories drag me down into a dark place. I owe it to myself and to my loved ones to stay on track and keep unburdened. Think of emotional baggage is the one suitcase you want the airlines to lose!

One of my favorite things I tell people is that “Always looking backward keeps you from seeing all of the good that sits in front of you.” If ever there was anything I am ADAMANT about, it is that phrase. The past will hold you back if you let it. I think I perfected the phrase using my mother as the primary example of what not to do. Even at 70, she can tell you every instance of who it was that wronged her (or she thinks wronged her), what the instance or event was, and when and where it happened. My sisters and I have had MANY conversations with her about “letting go” all to no avail. Her stories and events have been told so many times that my sisters and I could relay them to you with pinpoint accuracy. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, my mother is trapped in her past and no amount of effort on our part will ever get her to focus on the future. Still, we try.

An article in Psychology Today (28 Feb. 2016) makes it clear that brooding or clutching to negative memories and events can have very adverse effects on our mental and physical well-being. It can also (think of my mother) be a very hard habit to break. Whether it is something that happened 60 years ago or yesterday, it happened! It cannot be undone. Over-thinking it as a “would-a, could-a, should-a” only takes you deeper into the negativity hole and makes it harder for you to get out. Let-it-go!!! Move forward. The article gave advice about letting go: 1- Recognize what is happening in your head and find a way to escape it. 2- If this is a solution-based problem, find answers quickly. 3- Dedicate a piece of time (20 minutes a day?) to think about the negative things on your mind and then to tell your problems: “not now” when they confront you outside of that time frame. 4- Don’t just tell yourself not to think negatively, distract yourself with something positive and meaningful (you all know how busy I keep myself. It works!!!) 5- Practice mindfulness meditations. Positive thinking in the moment is something that can be done almost anywhere and at almost any time. It does work, I use it often.

Purging toxic people, friendships, and relationship can be equally as difficult. For many of us, the sense of family responsibility or obligation is the superglue that stops us from letting go. We all have those friends and relatives who only reach out to us when they need something whether it is a favor or money (in my family usually the latter). I have an aunt who was famous for dropping her children off unannounced (she didn’t even live in the same state!) and then is gone for months, leaving my parents with their hands full of additional children. If it wasn’t leaving children (and even if she was), she was known to always need my parents’ financial help. This financial habit of my aunt was so common (well into my adulthood) that my parents finally gave up and severed the relationship. I have also declined her attempts to connect with me via Facebook.

I have spoken in the past of my brother and the fact that my sisters and I have completely severed all contact with him. It is very hard to have grown up with someone and then determine that his monstrous behaviors and actions are abusive to the point that to continue is to allow him to drag yourself down with him. To demonstrate his ungratefulness, I gave the example of the day I literally walked out of my classroom in the middle of the afternoon and was on a plane to him less than two hours later, my sisters, my parents, and my answer to his desperate health crisis. Still ungrateful, all he could do was ask for more … more money, better accommodations, more this, more that. More, more, more. The thought of doing anything for himself (which put us all in that situation, to begin with) never registered in his head. My last contact with him was in 2015 responding to his outrageously abusive and accusatory email. It was a tough call for me: “Never contact me again,” but my mental health is one of my top priorities.

And then there are the relatives we want to be in touch with but finally write off. In my case, I have two aunts who were my favorites growing up, “J” and “D.” In the case of the former, I was told I was her favorite nephew (well, I think for the longest time, my brother and I were her only nephews). Over the years and with the aid of Linked-In and Facebook, I have repeatedly reached out. Many attempts over many, many years and I have had no respectful response from either. And then just last weekend I learned that the former was in Upstate New York and I was on-the-ready to jump in the car and make the four-hour drive to visit. Ironically, I had already made the decision to put these two relationships in the same shut-box as my brother before I knew she was up there. But after receiving no reply again, the choice was made to dispose of these two relationships. Why should I work so hard at relationships not reciprocated, even if they are family? Sad, but done.

When it comes to friends it can still be very difficult to cut the cord, especially when we think of the amount of time we have invested in some of them. There was one woman whom my husband and I stayed friends with for many years despite all of the warning signs that we needed to stamp the friendship with an expiration date. We were her only friends because she was neither good at making nor keeping friends and we felt really bad for her. She alienated almost everyone she came into contact with and lived from one self-induced crisis to the next. She thrived on massively-scaled dramas, usually created by meddling in the affairs of others (especially her brother’s), and we were the ones stuck picking up the pieces when she fell apart. We also realized we were useful to her as party guests in order to suggest to her new “friends” that she had actual “old” friends. And then a couple of years ago we caught her in some conflicting and insulting stories about why she did not respond to us all summer, showing up unannounced two months later in the middle of yet another self-induced crisis. We stamped this relationship, “Expired.” The end.

I think that one of the reasons I find it easier to draw the line and purge people and mental baggage is that as I’ve gotten older, I realize I like fewer and fewer people anyway and that the emotional baggage never does any good to keep around. My time is valuable and I know who is important. I have culled the crop to be very few people. These people to me are priceless, and I cannot possibly understate the power of the word “priceless” to describe them. These are the people who, together, we have each shared our darkest days and most brilliant nights. These are the friends and family we keep forever. We do not need to always talk to them to know they are there because we always know it is the same sky above our heads, day and night, that helps bond us and keep us linked. Maybe the word “Cosmic” describes these relationships best?

As you move forward in your lives, decide who and what makes your life healthy and happy. Purge the people and things that do not. For those things and people who do not inspire your good mental health, remember that there is a certain sense of liberation, accomplishment, and power in telling someone, “My happiness and well-being does not depend on your approval.” Find your healthy and happy place and stick to it.

Blessings,

Baer