Decluttering Gets Good

Thursday's declutter: I shredded 17 pages of the three-ream pile. Notice how the number of pages is shrinking daily, haha! I never intended to do 80 pages the first day, but 17 is a bit on the low side. My plan was about 30 pages each time. I think if I do 50 I'll get through it faster.

Results: This week in my life has been what decluttering is all about. From all I've read and the segments on hoarders I've seen on TV, clutter stems from emotional issues. Each story is different, but the basic, bottom-line issue seems to be one of security or feeling safe.

I've also found that when I reach a certain level of unclutteredness, I stop decluttering and stay at that level or let the clutter build up again. There's a comfort zone for me and going beyond it has been very tough. I think this is also common with clutterers. I have found on the few occasions that I've done massive decluttering, that things tend to get chaotic for a bit afterward, which brings me to this week.

This week I've been on the most intense emotional roller-coaster I've experienced in a long time. On Monday I saw my boyfriend for the first time since returning from my vacation. I had decided to break it off because things weren't moving forward and I had been feeling hopeless about my dreams. But when we talked about it, he said some things that made me realize just how much he loves me and how committed he is to me. I didn't get that right away - first I reconsidered breaking up, then freaked out about it and told him, and THEN I thought about what he had said and finally GOT IT.

So for the next two days, I was flying on a cloud. Nothing bothered me, I had great days at work, everything went according to plan, I had job offers coming in - I was in the zone. Then Wednesday he told me something I hadn't known about him that brought up all these feelings of being the loser that no one had ever wanted to marry. I was right back into the despair of dreams unfulfilled. I was also very upset that he hadn't mentioned it before because it was important. Oh, the places we go...

So I went into a spiral of intense hurt feelings, which were really mostly about being the one no one ever wanted to marry rather than about my guy not telling me this thing about his life. It's a place I haven't visited for awhile, and while there I discovered something had changed. In the past, when I went there I'd go into the despair of being unlovable, worthless, a loser, and anything else bad I could feel about myself. But this time, in the middle of crying over what a loser I was, I knew that I was NOT a loser. I knew I was NOT worthless. And I knew I AM lovable. I was able to feel this enormous hurt from years and years of zero self-esteem, while having self-esteem. For the first time in my life, I was hurt but not broken.

On Thursday I started to get my equilibrium back. I remembered two men who had been crazy about me when I was young, and thought they probably would have married me if I'd been in love with them. So I wasn't the loser no one wanted, I was just the loser who didn't want the ones who wanted me :) And, I still knew I wasn't a loser, I just have had commitment issues of my own. My guy told me more about his past, and said it was so long ago he hardly ever thinks about it.

So today, I'm just marveling at having my self-esteem back. It took a very long time, but it's amazing to be able to look at events in my past, feel the old feelings, and yet know it was not about me.

I credit this crazy, amazing week to the big paper declutter I did last weekend. The EFT exercises are a part of this as well - appropriately, this week involves feelings of hurt! Best of all, I don't need to hide from these feelings any more, so I bet I'll be able to get past my clutter comfort zone now! YAY!