That closet stuffed full of junk

You know that one drawer, closet or room in your house that you just stuff things into? Maybe you're getting ready to have company over and want to quickly clean the house, but don't have time. Or maybe some items don't really have a home, so you need to just get them out of view quickly. Maybe it's the place where the "I'll think about this later" items live until you have a chance to think about them, organize them, or decide what to do with them. Or maybe you have limited storage space, so this one closet becomes the coat closet, game closet, seasonal storage space, oversized items storage, backstock and indoor tool storage.

It may become a space that starts overflowing. The door gets difficult to shut or the floor space is so full of stuff that we can't move around or get to the back shelves. Maybe we open the door and something falls out, or fabric gets caught in the door jam or pokes out from under the door.

At some point this space becomes some place you dread. It garners itself a nickname like "Clutter Cave". Every time you refer to it, an expletive or grunt comes along with it. "Ugh. That's in the front closet." And the idea that you "really should organize this" starts to weigh on you more and more, creating even more negative connotations about the space.

We use this analogy for mental health and personal growth. We take emotions and stuff them away because we don't have time to deal with them, or we don't want to make time to cope with them. We may stuff them away because we don't feel confident that we know what to do with them. Or maybe we've tried to cope with them in the past but it was too painful, so we keep them in the closet. And then they start eeking out in various ways. Maybe we start to feel intense anger over small issues, or we are sad more and more often. We might feel agitated or struggle to be patient. If we're self-aware we might know darn well that we've got emotions that we're choosing not to attend to. We might know darn well that they're eeking out. And like the overstuffed closet, we may recognize, with a sense of dread, that we really need to give those emotions some time and space, but it feels overwhelming so we keep avoiding it.

But what if...

What if you approached this emotional closet a little differently? What if you focused on gratitude for how it supports you? What if every time you stuffed something into that closet you said, "I am so grateful that I have this space so that I can focus on being present for my guests today."? Consider how you might feel more empowered with your emotions if you were grateful for a space to put them for a time so that you could address them when you felt more well-resourced. More ready, able and willing to honor yourself and your emotions. Changing your mindset in this sort of way is like looking at a problem from a different point of view. It may allow you to see things you couldn't see just standing in place staring at it.

Give that Clutter Cave some respect and love and see how it changes you.