A few days into a cleaning and de-cluttering project I can see — I can FEEL — how my shame and guilt over acquiring so much stuff, not using it and letting it moulder over the years CONTRIBUTES HEAVILY to the hoarderiness of my collections and turning-to-junk stashes.
BECAUSE I think I am bad when I look at my stuff and try to sort it, I do not feel positively motivated to do the maintenance work of organizing, inventorying and keeping clean the things I’ve acquired, let alone any of the rewarding feel-good stuff of just ENJOYING my stuff and feeling GOOD while I play around with it.
When doing the work makes you immediately feel ashamed of yourself as soon as you just LOOK at your collection or project, naturally you are going to do everything possible to avoid looking at it.
When PLAYING with your stuff makes you feel guilty you haven’t done anything “productive” with it and just reminds you you’ve blown money and resources on stuff you’ve not yet used to make money or content, naturally you are not going to feel playful, free and happy about making use of your stuff for the pure joy of it. Instead you are just going to avoid even LOOKING at your stuff and assessing it realistically because, to you, all of your stuff represents your shittiness.
Working on tackling part of my “closet” clutter, the first day(s) and hours built up into a lot of anxiety and bad-feeling feelings. As much as I tried to detach from the feelings and just do the work without fear or judgment, I eventually had to acknowledge my feelings were making pretty strong statements and process where they come from and whether or not they are true.
I keep thinking about this piece of wisdom differentiating between guilt and shame:
Guilt is thinking “I’ve done something bad”. Shame is feeling and believing that “*I* am bad.”
Practicing radical self-acceptance continues to be a curious and instructive ongoing education and challenge. Allowing myself to simply acknowledge and accept my mistakes — I have a tendency to acquire stuff compulsively that I do not have money or room for or time to keep clean, organized and use, and have a very hard time letting go of, and I can SEE how bad it would look to other people if they knew, and I have squandered and ruined some stuff by my neglect and volume of items acquired — makes it easier for me to put them into a healthy context and make changes. There are some MISTAKES in there. But it is an even bigger mistake to exaggerate the seriousness of my “crimes” and to be so hard on myself. NOBODY HAS DIED OR GONE HUNGRY BECAUSE OF MY MESSES.
The truth is that shame is full of so much fear of what other people think that it distracts me and saps my energy to mitigate the “damage” I’ve done. The shame feels SO BAD I naturally want to *AVOID* going near my piles and stashes and stuff; how can you feel competent or hopeful to do basic maintenance on your stuff, let alone ENJOY piddling and playing with it (the stuff that’s kind of a prerequisite to actually be creative and “productive” with it)?
Of course, buried under that, though, I can’t ignore the hunch that “the disease protects itself”. Trying to avoid looking at The Stuff to avoid hearing the voices that YOU MUST GET RID OF ALL OF THIS SHIT!!! That is what they would tell you, anyone who sees it or finds out, and what is WRONG with you, and you’re disgusting and lazy and wasteful and a dreamer and crazy, etc.
That is the fear, you see: the fear of losing All My Stuff, all my plans, all my everything not coming to fruition and just being a junk pile my loved ones will be left with and hate me for.
ohmygod see how it circles back even when I started this feeling BETTER? Somehow the solution is to keep the mistakes right-sized, and to make progress without demanding or expecting perfection, or measuring results before you’re anywhere near done.
There’s a lot more to do with fear and shame associated with perfectionism, ADHD, procrastination, overwhelm, ASD, creativity, introversion, etc. AND ALL OF THE TRULY AWESOME TRAITS associated with those things that go along with this exploration and learning adventure to talk about later.