The Weight of Too Much Emotional Baggage

I have a client who always talked about how tired she was when we first started working together. She worked a lot of hours, but she wasn’t married and didn’t have children at home, so we started examining her life and why she felt exhausted most of the time. It didn’t take long to figure out that my client felt this way because of the emotional baggage she was carrying around in her mind. When she realized the thoughts that were zipping through her head all day, every day, she got teary-eyed and said, “I thought I might be sick, but my physical showed nothing was wrong. Then I thought I was just crazy because there was no real reason for me to feel this way. Now, I realize I’ve been carrying the weight of the world around with me for all these years.” The weight of the world. What are you carrying around in your emotional baggage?

First, it’s important to realize that we all have emotional baggage. Emotional baggage means we have lived; we’ve let ourselves experience life and had relationships. Emotional baggage is necessary for learning and growth. If we have shied away from getting close to people and never taken risks, then we aren’t very emotionally developed. However, we get to choose how we pack our emotional suitcases. We can choose to carry around a compact little travel case, or we can pack the whole set of luggage to the brim, and then attempt to keep it balanced and all together as we carry it through our lives.

Some of you stopped on the word “choose”, but it’s true! We don’t always get to decide what happens to us during our lives. There are some circumstances beyond our control—our parents got divorced, a close family member or friend died or moved away, etc. But we always get to decide what we make it mean. We get to choose if we’re going to pack it in our bag and carry it around with us, or if we’re going to learn from the experience, or even if we’re just going to give it away and move on.

My client is working through her emotional baggage. You won’t be surprised to learn that some of the things we took out and examined were easy to toss away, but others have been taking up more space and take a bit more work to get rid of. However, this process has already given her so much peace! She is resting better and feels less exhausted at the end of the day. If you want some help unpacking your emotional baggage, sign up for a free session with me at sonyagreencoaching.com and learn how much lighter life can be when you let go of all the thoughts that aren’t serving you! Until then, much love!