Cleaning Out Your Psychological Closets:

The Toxic Dump:

De-cluttering has been all the rage for a few years now – asking ourselves whether old underwear sparks joy, closet and cabinet porn with images of surgically organized stuff, and the huge personal organization industry with professional organizers and stores devoted to organizational “stuff.”  That’s just stuff. What about harmful people? If we can give ourselves permission to hold aloft a pair of old sweatpants, or an old toaster, or the old lawnmower and ask if they are good for us, and these are OBJECTS that cannot harm us – what holds us back from asking the same question of people around us? Does this person bring joy? Do I grow from their presence? Am I being held back? Is this person invalidating and hurting me? The old underwear’s only harm is taking up drawer space, but what about the person? Why do we keep people in our lives who are resulting in harm to our psychological, physical, behavioral, mental, emotional, and spiritual health? That’s what this month is about – it’s a great time to take “cleaning out your closets” to a whole new level.