Fred Connors Explains why You Need to Clear the Clutter from Your Home

When you look at extreme cases of clutter, it becomes a psychological diagnosis - there are some people that are just so fixated on collecting stuff and have a huge problem with letting anything in their life go. They become hoarders and they live surrounded by clutter. Those people are extremely emotionally dysfunctional, and often have weight related issues too.

The Relationship Between our Home and our Self-esteem

Our homes are a reflection of who we are, and if we feel that we do not have control of our own bodies, often we do not have control of our environments also. It is really easy to see that when people have lost faith in their ability to control themselves physically, they have often also lost the desire also to live in an environment that is indulgent, or nurturing, or safe.

I think that when we feel good about ourselves, we feel like we deserve comfort.

Our thought patterns go like this: When you feel like you are a special person, you feel like you deserve a nice home to live in. When you are a thin person, you deserve to be able to go home and feel good about yourself. When you are a happy person you deserve to have these nice things in your home that remind you of how happy you are.

When you are feeling absolutely miserable about yourself, I don’t think that you can walk into a room and really have that room make you feel any better, and I think that people let their physical spaces go because they are so disconnected from themselves – not just physically but emotionally.

People who care about themselves emotionally, care about the way walking into a room makes them feel. People who are completely disconnected can walk into a room that is totally chaotic and not even see what happening.

The Need to Feel Worthy

I have met participants and gone into their bedrooms and seen physical spaces that didn’t look hospitable for anyone to sleep in, let alone feel nurtured or romantically inclined. Take Kristi, from season 3, for example – this was a woman who was really struggling with relationships and feeling very lonely. Because she didn’t have a man in her life, she didn’t feel like she deserved to have a bedroom that made her feel good when she went in it.

I think that a lot of people feel that they need to somehow be worthy of having nice homes or environments that make them feel good. If you are overweight or unhappy with your life and do no not feel worthy, that extends into your home and the way that you live. Why bother putting out the garbage, or tidying up the living room, or cleaning the bathroom when you just feel like a fat piece of crap all the time? A clean bathroom isn’t going to make you any thinner.

I think that this is how a lot of people feel. You lose hope and you feel like you are losing control over your own body, you let the control over everything else go as well.

Taking Control of the Chaos

How do you deal with it? You decide that this is not how you want to live, and take control of one thing which then allows you to take control of another, and then another, and another and so on. If we function through life by losing control of everything, you may as well just give up.

If we can take control of one thing, even if that thing is just organizing your kitchen, and then another, and that is getting rid of garbage you don’t need, then the next step is going to the market and buying a couple of candles and putting them on a table and treating yourself to some ambiance then you start to feel special.

When you treat yourself like crap your whole life and tell yourself that you are not worthy, you start to believe it. But when you start doing the opposite, and tell yourself and treat yourself like you are worthy, by taking control of things, you may not immediately be able to lose 30 pounds of fat, but you can immediately lose 30 pounds of junk from your life no problem.  

This post is a repeat, but look forward to more original content to come in the future.