Spring Cleaning! – As Good for Your Emotions As for Your Closet!

Spring cleaning may have begun with the practical concern of getting rid of the accumulated grime of a long winter, back when we’ve heated with wood or coal and lit with oil lamps.

But even today, with the benefits of electricity and robovacuums, 72% of Americans still do some form of spring cleaning.

So, what are some of the practical and emotional benefits we still derive from it even in our modern era?

Practical Benefits of Spring Cleaning

Letting in fresh air improves humidity and changes the oxygen balance. Sunlight shining in through freshly cleaned windows not only cheers us up, it helps clean the air. Deep cleaning removes allergens, like dust and pet dander.

Moreover, putting away bulky winter clothes makes room for lighter spring and summer wear. And purging closets and drawers of clutter makes life more efficient by giving us more space and making it easier to find things.

For excellent advice on how to approach the task of spring cleaning see Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up or Kim Carruthers’ book The Art of Tidying Up: how to de-clutter your life.

Emotional Benefits of Spring Cleaning

The emotional benefits of spring cleaning may actually outweigh the practical ones. For example, as a physical activity, spring cleaning gets us moving. We get some of the same benefits as running or biking. And, the sense of accomplishment releases those happy brain chemicals.

Moreover, the way our physical surroundings look affects how we feel, especially for women. One study showed that women who said their homes were messy had flatter daily slopes of the brain chemical cortisol, associated with depression. These women also showed greater increases in depressed mood, more fatigue in the evening, and found it more difficult to transition between work and home.

The facts show that clutter limits the brain’s ability to process information. It affects our mental and physical health. Just looking at clutter can bring on anxiety and make it harder to get things done.

Spring cleaning, on the other hand, makes us feel better. It improves mood, decreases stress, and heightens creativity. A house free of clutter and mess reduces stress. In fact, spring cleaning sets us up for more relaxed living. It gives us a fresh start when we’re stuck and things seem overwhelming. And when the house looks different, we feel more energized and ready to tackle the things in our lives that need attention.

How Clean Is “Clean?”

Just clean enough.

Your home or workspace don’t have to be pristine for optimal living and working. People differ on what is the most productive and efficient environment. You will have to find your own best level.

However, psychologists have reported that clients who take charge of cleaning and organizing may also take charge of their general health, i.e. like weight control.

Spring Cleaning Your Emotions

Spring cleaning your house benefits your physical surroundings and your emotions.  But the principles of spring cleaning can also be applied to your emotional themselves. Things can pile up in your emotional life, just as they do in your physical environment. Anger, jealousy, hatred, sadness, all can end up being stuffed inside a mental closet when you can’t stand to face them.

This time of year, when you’re feeling more energized and motivated, is a good time to clean out that emotional closet by sorting through negative emotions, attitudes that hold you back, and relationships that don’t support you. In fact, reordering your priorities, revisiting your good intentions, and taking stock of what’s working and what’s not will help you move forward emotionally.

How can you get started?

1. Get Rid of What’s Dragging You Down

Pay attention to things that keep you up at night:

• Toxic relationships
• Suppressed emotions like worry or sadness.
• Unhealthy habits like overeating, smoking or drinking
• Over-scheduling
• Unrealistic expectations
• Self-criticism, guilt, and shame
• Holding a grudge
• Fears and pessimism

Notice negative thoughts and emotions that are taking up space in your brain, which could instead be used for creative, positive, and fulfilling thoughts and emotions.

2. Focus on Keeping Good Habits

Take stock of the good things in your life—the habits and activities that work for you.

• Good friends
• Exercise, adequate sleep, healthy eating
• Habits that support growth, like journaling and learning
• Habits that foster relaxation, like meditation
• Creative habits like art, hobbies, and creative enterprises
• Quality time with family and partner
• Healthy boundaries
• Self-esteem and self-forgiveness

Noticing what’s good in your life and the habits and practices you use to keep these good things is a positive part of emotional spring cleaning. Add new positive habits to your repertoire as you feel the need for them.

3. Notice and Accept Your Feelings

Being aware of and accepting your feelings precedes finding ways to cope with them. Bringing your feelings to the surface may take some time. Let yourself react. Take time alone. Write without censoring. Cry or yell if you need to.

Consider sorting through messy feelings part of your emotional spring cleaning.

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Along with the emotional benefits of physical spring cleaning, be aware of the benefits of spring cleaning your emotions. Getting your physical environment and your inner emotional environment clean and fresh will give you space to grow into a healthier, more productive, and happier you

Feeling Paralyzed by Anxiety – 5 Keys to Get Moving

In this rapidly changing world, keeping up with constant transformations in technology, our work, and social lives is a scary job.

It’s easy to feel paralyzed by anxiety.

You’re not a gazelle encountering a lion in the bush. You’re just giving a speech. And yet, your palms are sweating, your eyes feel like they’re popping out of your head, and your legs are wobbly.

You feel like you’re going to faint!

It’s so overwhelming that you back out of the speech. Or, you go through with it anyway, feel like a failure, and refuse to ever speak publicly again.

You want to succeed in your job, but not being able to speak is crippling your success.

Most of all, your freeze response is keeping you from living the life you want.

Fight, Flight or Freeze: Your Body’s Response to Stress

Your body and brain are designed to respond to stress automatically: fight, flight, or freeze. If you’re bigger than the problem, you fight. If it’s bigger than you, you run away. And if there’s no way to escape, you freeze.

When fight or flight does not take you to safety, your freeze response manifests in several ways. You go into a state of high alert. Your bodies freeze in fright. You may even dissociate from your bodies and the situation. And then, you may faint. 

An alternative to freeze is the submissive compliant response.  Just like an animal that rolls over and shows its belly and exposes its neck, you may find yourself agreeing with the person you are afraid of, or complying with requests that you know, in your heart of hearts that you should refuse. 

At its most severe, the freeze response becomes the immobilization response—a re-experiencing of trauma associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Sometimes the freeze response is the best way to deal with trauma. The rabbit hiding in the grass may be overlooked by the fox. Numbing out or dissociating from a horrific event may keep you sane until it’s over. Or, the chemicals released in your brain by the freeze response may help you feel less pain from an injury.

But this natural immobilization system is meant to function only for a few seconds. When chronic, it’s harmful. Being paralyzed by fear drains your energy and keeps you from acting.

The Freeze Response and Social Conditioning

In animals, the freeze response causes physical collapse, stillness, and dissociation. For example, a gazelle chased by a lion first runs away. If it can’t escape, it collapses. The dissociation shields the gazelle from the pain of attack. And there’s a chance the lion will lose interest. If it does, the gazelle shakes off the intense energy of the chase and goes on with its life.

As a human, your social conditioning doesn’t let you go through the full cycle. When you’re threatened, you tend to suppress the yelling, running, fighting, and trembling. That means your bodies deal less well with stress. The next time you are threatened again, you freeze.

Over time, you begin feeling helpless and depressed. You may feel shame for complying rather than refusing.  And you may blame yourself for not being able to act.

Especially if you’ve suffered a traumatic experience, your body may respond to anything that reminds you of that experience by freezing. For example, your fear of public speaking might have started from a childhood experience when you were ridiculed for speaking out.

Your freeze response to the original frightening or threatening event was automatic—and natural. But chronic freezing in response to what happened long ago is not. Constantly shutting down is no way to live.

Five Keys to Get Moving

Your freeze response means that your body is out of resources. Seeing yourself as shameful, weak, or cowardly because you were unable to act is not the answer.

Instead, find ways to keep from being blocked before you go into a freeze response. Find ways to remind yourself that you are safe after you “thaw.”

The following five keys can help you in frightening situations:

1. Attend and Befriend Your Fear

Allow yourself to feel your fear. Agree to let it be there. Notice it. Name it. Hold it. Paradoxically, giving yourself permission to feel helpless can create space for healing.

2. Attend and Befriend Your Body

During the freeze, connect with your body. Ask what it wants to do. Focus on one need at a time. Giving attention to your feelings will ease your conflict.

After the freeze, during the “thaw,” tune in to your body. Ground yourself with deep breathing, and meditation techniques. Exercise. Stretch. Stand up tall. Increase your feelings of power by carrying yourself in a confident way. Eat well. Get enough sleep.

3. Attend and Befriend Your Thoughts

Shift away from seeing the scary situation as a threat. Identify your anxiety-provoking thoughts. Do a reality check. How likely is your worst-case scenario? So, your speech may bomb. What’s the worst that could happen?

4. Attend and Befriend Yourself

The “attend” part focuses on what you can do to help yourself in this fearful situation. The “befriend” part is caring for yourself.

Your freeze response to physical and emotional threat keeps you closed up. Shifting to attend and befriend helps you open up. Ask yourself for advice. What would you tell a friend in your situation?

5. Take Action as You Are Able

If the prospect of public speaking is too much right now, decline the opportunity. Protecting yourself will help you replace your feelings of helplessness with the experience of power. Then, get help. Learn about your triggers and limiting beliefs. Make a plan to conquer your anxiety.

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Remember, you don’t have to be paralyzed by anxiety! Attend and befriend your fear, your body, your thoughts, and yourself. Act to protect yourself and to deal with your fear in the future. These 5 keys will get you moving.