Emotional Spring Cleaning - How to Emotionally Declutter Your Brain

Hey there, welcome. I have a cold, so my voice sounds a little bit like somebody else's, but it's actually me, Dr. Zoe. Welcome and thank you for tuning in. Today's topic is emotional spring cleaning, how to emotionally declutter. Hi there, I'm Dr. Zoe. I'm glad you're here. This is the place for developing your strength as a woman and helping you navigate difficult relationships in your life, including that sometimes difficult relationship with yourself. Being a strong woman is not about what other people can see, and it's not about how It's a quiet knowing. This isn't therapy, but you may feel like you've been to therapy after one of my episodes. Here we also explore the intersection of psychology and faith, all with the purpose of creating a new kind of strong. Welcome to Redefining Your Superwoman. Before I get to my win and my fail, I just wanted to thank a new reviewer, Christine Rose L. She said, Dr. Zoe gives great advice and is a pleasure to listen to. I highly recommend her amazing podcast, Grounding And Ann Thom, June 6th episode, you said everything that I've been feeling. Thank you. Sarah143am said, thank you so much for this podcast. It's a great one. I hate that I can't talk to other women about being strong without other women bashing men and putting them all in one category. Thank you so much for reviewing the show. And for you listening right now, if you enjoy the show, subscribe, share it with your friends, and please leave a review so others can also find it. So onto my win and my fail. My fail is that I was doing this book giveaway with the Grit and Grace Project. I'd been on their podcast and was giving away one of my books, a couple of my books, I think. And I was supposed to sign and send the books out. And I got the books out a little slower than I intended. I just kept forgetting. I finally got them in the mail, feeling a little badly that it had taken so long. And a few days later, I got a DM from one of the winners that it arrived on her birthday. So it's a fail. I took too long. I procrastinated. But sometimes we think we're late, but we're actually right on time. My win is that I got a wonderful opportunity to coach these speakers in the Speaking Your Brand conference. It was a summit, virtual. It already happened. And it was my first experience coaching other speakers, and it was just phenomenal. These women, these young women, and I'm going to invite one of them, Deanna Riley, onto the podcast to share her story. But it was just a Such a wonderful experience. The summit is awesome, and maybe you guys can catch it next time. So, on to the topic: emotional spring cleaning— how to emotionally declutter. This is such a timely episode because it feels like spring, and spring is my absolute favorite season. The smell, the warmth, just the newness of everything blooming. And for some reason, we humans are driven to start Decluttering and cleaning up at this time. About a year or so ago, I became obsessed with the idea of minimalism. I read The Minimalist book— I think maybe a friend gave it to me— and I set about finding ways to declutter my space, take up less time, and live more simply. I think that I developed this bent after growing up with a mom who was reticent to let anything go. My mom holds on to everything, and I tend to actually find joy in throwing things away that no longer serve me, much to the frustration of my family. I can't say that I've become a minimalist though. I kind of let go of that idea as a result of living with 6 people and multiple dogs, and I felt that it wasn't really fair to force my desire to live a certain way on them, especially when it involves throwing their stuff away. At least that's my rationalization, because I certainly force plenty of my other desires about how I want to live on them. But I guess this one is just one of those battles that I don't want to fight in this season in my life. But I do still adhere to the concepts that I learned, and I apply Apply them to myself as much as possible. As spring has approached and I find myself itching to spring clean, especially as my house is in disarray with a renovation, I find myself coming back to the not-new idea of emotional spring cleaning. I know how freeing it feels to have zero obstructions or clutter in my physical space. Everything feels aligned, easier, more efficient, calm, in order. But that's just a start. An uncluttered house is awesome, it's great, but you might not realize the stressful effects of emotional clutter or even what it is. So what better season than now to tackle it? I'd like to caution you that as much as listening to a minimalist podcast makes you want to toss out every single thing, it's not wise to throw your whole house away, not just yet anyway. You'd suffer all kinds of shock and withdrawal symptoms, not to mention you are going to want to get that toaster back someday. So it's healthier to start small and work your way to a lifestyle that feels comfortably minimal. The same needs to happen with your emotional spring cleaning. So what are the issues rattling around in your brain that are creating clutter? Well, there's anger, resentment, to-do lists, shoulda-couldas, regret, comparison, disappointments. The list goes on. Emotional decluttering is not about getting rid of emotions, so let's make that clear. All of your feelings and emotions are good. Emotional decluttering is about expressing and aligning them, getting some order in your darn brain and tossing out the unnecessary or redundant items. So what are these items? Well, let's start with anger. Ask yourself if you're holding on to any anger— anger at your spouse, your kids, that high school teacher who insinuated that you'd never amount to anything. A helpful way to release your anger is to work on increasing understanding and decreasing judgment. So we're not talking about forgiveness. That's for another topic, another episode, but just understanding how the person could have made the choice to do the hurtful thing they did can help release some of those feelings. And I promise you, everybody does something for a reason. Might not make sense to you, but no behavior happens without a reason. It never makes it okay, but there's always a reason why people are idiots, are harmful, or rude, or whatever they are. Sometimes just knowing that helps you take it a little less personal and release a little bit And then there's envy. Envy can make us scroll for hours on Insta and spend our hard-earned money trying to nip, tuck, and keep up with fake perfection. So start with compassion for yourself. It's okay to acknowledge that it's hard to want things that you don't have. Go ahead and say it to yourself: it hurts that she gets to have the whatever it is, fill in the blank. I'm even understanding a new concept now. called self-envy, and I'm fascinated by it. It's the concept that we look at the avatar that we create of ourselves on social media, and we're prettier, skinnier, our life is way more interesting than the real one that exists, and we feel oddly envious of the self we wish we could be. Guys, oh my gosh, that, my dear friend, is damaging. And that deserves some emotional spring cleaning because that emotion can actually be completely subconscious as you look through your own feed. And I hope that now that I've brought it to your conscious awareness, if you're experiencing it in any way, that you will let that go. And instead transform envy into joy by shutting off your phone and taking a few minutes a day to focus on your own lane, the real one, and all the beautiful things that you have. And while you're at it, create a practice of attempting to feel joy for other people. Yeah, other people who actually have things that you don't. That's a Buddhist concept, and I can't remember the name of it right now, but focusing— when you're feeling envy and you actually focus your energy on feeling joy for the person that you're envious of, it creates an amazing release and transformation in your emotions. Next, minimize grudges. Holding on to stuff can sometimes feel really comfortable and familiar, even when we trip over it every time we enter a room or when it's long outgrown its use. I have a shelf in my closet— I know we all do— that holds all those things that are sentimental to me, and I don't want to get rid of those things. But our grudges can sometimes be like that too. We clear grudges out with forgiveness. We're not going to go into forgiveness today because that is a whole other episode, like I said, but you can do some emotional spring cleaning today by looking at what grudges you need to clear out. Another one is self-judgment. When we are decluttering, in order to do a good job of it, we have to throw things away or give them back to their rightful owner. As a mom, I find that many items in my home that are not mine get deposited into my bedroom often, and I have to remind the kids that my bedroom or my car is not their closet, toy room, or bedroom, and that they need to take their things back. Self-judgment is like that. It doesn't belong to you. Someone else gave it to you, and it's time that you hand it back to them. You may have been carrying it around your entire adult life. It's still not yours. Declutter by giving it back to whomever gave it to you. They don't have to be present for you to do that either. Just visualize yourself handing it back to them and don't pick it up again. The last is overcaring. I'm going to tell you something interesting, so listen up. I have been a stressor and worrier my whole childhood and early adulthood, and I've always admired people who seem to not care and don't hold on to things, and I've noticed that their lives seem a bit easier. My grandfather, who was severely overweight his entire life, lived a very long life in seemingly good health, and nothing seemed to bother him. He was also probably a narcissist. He hurt a lot of people in his life, but he wasn't bogged down by guilt and anguish because he thought of himself first. Although I don't suggest you take the entire page out of his book, it may be useful to take a sentence or two. Research has clearly demonstrated that narcissists live longer and in better health because they experience less emotional stress. Why? Because they simply don't care about others, and that's a whole lot of emotional stress that they're not holding on to. That saying, only the good die young, is true, like a lot of sayings are. So how can you still be your wonderful, caring self and reap some of the benefits that narcissists have? Narcissists don't take criticism well because they don't believe it. They consider themselves perfect, and therefore the problem is you. All of your concern about what other people think about you is emotional clutter that you don't need to hold on to. What concerns about others' problems are not yours to hold on to? What concerns about the way others think about you that are not yours to hold on to? Visualize yourself as a warm hedge that keeps negativity out, not a sponge that soaks up everything indiscriminately. And regularly monitor those stressors that come in and ask yourself, is that mine to hold on to, or is that somebody else's? Because I can give it back to them. So how do we spring clean our brain generally? The same way we spring clean our home. We purge, we clean, and we rearrange. Venting is an excellent form of emotional purging. There's a fine line between venting and complaining though, and I want you to ride it hard. Venting should include some processing where you're pointing out your thoughts in an attempt to reorder them. Make decisions or change your perspective, deciding what should go and what should stay. Complaining is just listing off all your grievances with no desire to process, connect, or repair, and sometimes an unconscious desire to stay stuck. Complaining is really just a bullet list excuse for why you can't move forward. Complaining would kind of be the equivalent of you walking around your room and picking up all the things you don't like and And saying you don't like them and then putting them right back where you found them. Big waste of time. So don't do that. Once you have vented to yourself though, in a journal, to a trusted friend or a therapist, work on changing your negative self-talk that doesn't serve you. All of that negative noise in your brain is unnecessary clutter. And I actually have a course for changing your self-talk, and I encourage you to access it. I'll put the link to the course in my show notes, and you can also find it on my website. Last, I will leave you with a gratitude affirmation from my book from November 15th. Speak these truths out loud as a cleansing, affirming practice. I am grateful for the people in my life because— I am grateful for my place of residence because— I am grateful for my body because— I am grateful for my mind because— I am grateful for the mundane Because I am grateful for all the unnecessary luxuries in my life. Because happy spring cleaning. Thank you for listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. New shows go up every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and text the word strong to 38470 to get my weekly encouragement. I look forward to connecting with you amazing women on social media throughout the week. Have a super week.