Long time coming

"The first requisite of success is the
ability to apply your physical and
mental energies to one problem
without growing weary."
- Thomas Edison

One of the comments yesterday pointed out that making my past a non-issue will be difficult.  She is right.  How ever I can tackle the chunk labeled de-clutter and solve the pieces attached to that one thing.  To help you, the reader, know what challenges exist for me I am sharing a story of how I became so bound to stuff.

Growing up my mother was heavily into efficiency and part of being efficient was removing clutter.  My mother couldn't get a handle on her own so she made it her life's work to improve me.  My sister experienced some of the same junk but this part is about my stuff.   I was 5 when my adored younger sister was born.  I thought she was the most amazing little thing.  I was also expected to share a room with her.  Five years difference is nothing now but when I was 7 and she was 2 this difference took on catastrophic proportions.  Little sister couldn't be locked out of her own room but little sister would tear up my stuff.  Solutions that would have protected my belongings were turned down.  I felt like my mother took pleasure in me loosing my stuff to my little sister.  (Yes, as an adult I do understand that 2 year olds are just that 2.  A child doesn't see it quite that way.)  Then there was the big trash just before Christmas.  Just before Christmas, I would have to throw away 50% of everything I owned to 'make way' for new stuff.  Thing was, I didn't get to see the new stuff first to see if I would like it better.  It was an agonizing experience that my mother would set a timer for a 15 or 20 minutes of cleaning and trashing what I thought belonged to me.  During these years I learned that just because it was given to me didn't mean it was mine.  I hated these sessions of de-junking my room.  Needless to say that my mother did not do the same thing for herself.  After a while I learned to collect garbage out of the alley and stuff it in my drawers.  Then when the annual cleaning occurred I would haul out all this junk to fill up the garbage can.  Unfortunately, it taught me to keep useless crap on hand just in case I need to throw something away.  Very twisted and painful for me now to attempt to monitor my own belongings.  In order to feel something belongs to me, I feel I need to keep it or I loose a bit of myself.  Mixed up mess.  KavinCoach did compliment my younger self on the idea of stashing garbage to meet the yearly quota.  I worked off and on over the years trying to tackle the backlash, not dealing with clutter in a healthy way now. 

I talked to both my counselors about.  I understood from both of them that this is a whole bunch of triggers all balled up together.  My job pull apart and take it in smaller hunks.  At the school where I work years of clutter are accumulated in the classrooms.  Someone else's junk.  I am practicing throwing away their garbage.  I am getting much better at it.  Less anxiety while I am working.  The timer solution came in an unexpected way.  I am using the Lozilu training program.  The walking is alternated with running at 2, 3, 4, and 5 minute intervals.  A work out will look like this:

Walk 5 Run 5,
Walk 3 Run 4,
Walk 3 Run 3,
Walk 2 Run 2, Walk 3

No way can I keep track of this while I walk/run.   I had to use a timer.  Do you have any idea how wonderful that buzzer sounds at the end of 5 minutes of running telling me I can walk?  I haven't run in over 20 years.  This body is not thrilled by what my mind is pushing it to do.  I take that timer with me all through the work out.  I use it for all sorts of things for exercising.  I realized.  I no longer feel any anxiety when the buzzer goes off.  Piece by piece I am pulling apart the different parts that caused anxiety and dissecting what I feel, sit with it, let it go.  This is amazing.  I even started using the clutter by inputting into my computer the information I want to save and trashing the papers where possible.  Saved an address off an envelope.  Trashed the old card.  Logged in my medical file when I had my TB skin test and TDAP immunization.  Threw away a small stack of paper.  The beginning is small but so far no anxiety, only an excitement that this stuff is really mine and I can throw it away or keep it, the choice is mine!