junk, but look at this stuff! You don’t need it! It doesn’t fit in with your new life.”
Now that you’ve reached a new phase in your own life, I hope you’ve surrounded yourself with only the treasures that bring back satisfying and uplifting memories and the worthy items that help you function at your best.
I also hope that your downsizing-related milestone hasn’t left you feeling a little empty or numb, or full of doubts and what-ifs about the choices you’ve made.
But if it has, you’re certainly not the first downsizer to feel that way.
IT’S HUMAN NATURE FOR BIG CHANGES TO BRING CONFLICTED FEELINGS
Recently, I was talking with a friend of mine, Jay Edwards, MA, MFT, about how downsizing-related changes affect us. As a marriage and family therapist, he noted that “I work with a lot of people who say ‘I don’t understand! I made this move, I have this new job, or I moved to this new city, which is what I’ve always wanted, but I just feel sad or melancholy or anxious.’”
If you’re having those feelings, it’s for reasons that can be explained. For starters, Edwards says, we tend to organize things as either/or: They’re either right or wrong or good or bad. This helps us make the world around us seem more understandable. But this outlook can make life changes feel confusing.
That’s because life isn’t really either/or, especially when it comes to change. Sometimes you’ll feel one type of emotion and a conflicting one at the same time!
For example, some people need lots of thrills and new experiences. Picture the adrenaline junkies, adventurers, and world travelers in this group. On the other hand, some people crave consistency. They eat at the same restaurant every Wednesday night for 30 years, he says.
But “for most of us, it’s somewhere in the middle. Those two impulses are fairly equally matched. When change comes—either contemplated and strategically planned out, or thrust upon us from an unfortunate event like divorce or death in our family—that equilibrium of two forces is thrown off-balance,” he says. “It’s going to be upsetting to the equilibrium of our psyches.”
In addition, if you try to push away your painful emotion—“I put money into a 401(k) plan for three decades to enjoy this retirement, and I’m just going to stop this silly grieving about my career being over”—it has the power to shove back. Try to ignore it, and it calls harder for your attention.
“When we try not to look at sadness, grief, anger, or disappointment because we only want to enjoy the good part of change, not only will we fail but, usually, we’ll get knocked on our butts. That force is pushing back as vigilantly as we push against it,” Edwards says.
So if you’re second-guessing a well-planned decision that filled you with anticipation not long ago, that’s perfectly understandable. If you’re surrounded by fantastic new opportunities but keep focusing on the elements of your old life that are gone, that’s not uncommon, either.
It doesn’t mean you’ve made the wrong choice. It doesn’t mean that you’re an ungrateful person for feeling conflicted. It just means that you made a change, and afterward, it may take longer to sort through your emotions than it does for you to unpack your moving boxes.
SO NOW WHAT?
Your surroundings, and the activities you do in them, help create your identity. They give your life a particular structure, a bit like a dam that reshapes a river into a lake.
When your old surroundings disappear, or you stop doing certain activities, you may become like the flow of water seeking a new path after the dam collapses.
Who are you now? How should you use your time? What structures should you seek to provide a shape and direction that gives your life meaning?
People often ask themselves these questions after they stop smoking or break some other addiction. So do many caregivers after their loved one dies and they find themselves with empty hours to fill.
You don’t have to find the answers to these questions right now. But today is a good time to start searching for them.
One way is to “open the door” and invite in your regrets and second-guesses for a closer inspection, Edwards says. (Or, to stick with the analogies throughout this book, dig deep until you find them, then pull them out and reframe them.)
Have you downsized from the house where you raised your family and now you’re wishing you’d had another baby so you’d still have a child who needed daily mothering?