What do Emotional Relationship Baggage and Hoarding have in Common? They are both problems that may have a similar solution – Use It (to learn from and heal) And Lose It Fast! Move on with your life with a new resolve to never allow yourself to be burdened with the leftovers from your past again.

It is easy to become bogged down in your life by confusing the meaning of certain feelings about memories, and people and things. Memories and Emotional Baggage are two different things just like collectibles and junk are two different things. You can have some good memories from your past relationships even if the relationships eventually turned out badly. Just like you can have back-ups of favorite items without accumulating a lifetime supply of them. Memories, good or bad, that keep you from moving forward from the fear that all love will result in loss are comparable to the junk that hoarders stack high and fill room after room with to create walls around themselves for one emotional reason or another.

•Emotional Relationship Baggage is the leftover emotions of anger, remorse, and discontent that remain after a relationship breaks up. It is like the stench in a house filled to the brim with junk, and garbage and excessive lack of attention in dealing with the situation.

•Hoarding of stuff to an extreme is also sometimes caused by emotions not properly tended to and left to fester. The stuff is in some ways used to feed the untended to emotions and is a physical manifestation of them.

•Emotional Relationship Baggage carried within and Hoarding Baggage both seem to be caused from not dealing with the feelings from bad past experiences of life.

Most of us have seen a show or two about hoarding and what you see is a comparable manifestation of what’s going on inside someone when they do not discard their emotional baggage. Sometimes keeping even bad memories and bad feelings seems comforting because they are feelings that you know. They are like a security blanket. It’s a scenario you know with no surprises; but unfortunately no surprises includes not only no bad surprises, but also no good surprises. It’s just like rooms filled with stuff creates a comfort zone for a hoarder because it allows them to do nothing because they seem to be stopped at every turn by junk in their path. The junk in the way provides a convenient excuse to sit down and do nothing even though they may feel like they have all the burdens of the world surrounding them. They have created an environment that physically represents their insecurities that acts as tangible walls to stop then from ever having to deal with their emotions and moving on.

Movement and accomplishments require motivation. Emotional baggage and the hoarders junk put up walls but motivation can create the tools that are needed to break those walls down.

Yes, it’s hard to deal with emotional baggage and it requires a deep commitment to your own happiness to determine to find ways to use what you’ve learned from it and to determine to find ways to decide what stuff you should keep and what stuff you should get rid of so that you can discard old useless emotional baggage and the old useless junk of your life.

In short when it comes to emotional baggage and hoarded stuff – they can be turned into gifts if you use it constructively to heal and lose it completely, heal and move on to a life of freedom, space and a good outlook of forward movement with no shadows of people, places or things following you in your rear view mirror.

A person can discard useless emotions, fears and junk if they are determined to move on! But they have to choose freedom and happiness over fear and paralysis and remorse. Use what you’ve learned from it to become stronger, wiser and to get in touch with who you really are and what you really want.

Your life is right over there behind that heap of emotional baggage and junk. Stop hiding behind it and - Get to work!

Until next time, have a warm heart but be COOL! Be happy, be well, and be the best you that you can be!

Best Regards,


Kate Woods
I Aspire To Inspire


Of course, information presented on this site or found online in articles or forums should never be relied on in lieu of professional consultation for problem resolution.

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