Dear Wild One: The Couch Has Moved

Your outer world is a mirror. Are you ready to look?

Dear Wild One,

There is a running joke in my family that when someone returns home, the couch may not be in the same place, or anything else, for that matter. There is truth in the joke. I am certain it’s an affliction I’ve had since birth; I came out of the womb rearranging the furniture!

I never really gave it much thought until a therapist I saw in college changed the meaning for me. Until that point, obsessing over my room, arranging and then rearranging my space was soothing. I loved pretty spaces in which I spent most of my time. I would have told you then that I enjoyed decorating.

What I learned twenty something years ago is that our outer world is a mirror for what is going on in our inner world. My incessant need to curate my space was cathartic, a regulation of my nervous system. When I felt the need to change things around, I was trying to control the chaos I was feeling on the inside. Sitting on the couch in her office, I could see the puzzle pieces of understanding coming together. It made perfect sense. 

“How would you describe your space when you want to work on cleaning it up?” I quickly described it as cluttered, stagnant, dirty, boring, etc. Loving a good metaphor, she flipped it: “Where in your life do you feel cluttered, stagnant, dirty or bored?” I was gobsmacked. She wasn’t wrong. I could lead her directly to the relationships and challenges in my life that felt exactly that way. 

That began a journey of understanding my living space as sacred ground: emotional, spiritual, deeply personal. It was no longer simply where I lived. It was where I healed.

I've never forgotten what she taught me that day, and I've never stopped using the tool. For myself and for the women I work with. 

Wild One, where do you feel yourself floundering? Are you unsure of how you feel, but desperately looking for control? Are you disregulated? Or maybe you are like so many of my clients, numbed to the point where you don't even notice the chaos around you anymore. That numbness is the body's way of protecting itself when emotions feel too overwhelming to face. 

Sometimes the easiest thing we can do is look to our living spaces for the answer. Think about an area of your home (or office if you spend more time there). It can be a drawer, an entire room, or a small space. How would you describe it? 

Recently, my client had a milestone birthday, and as a gift to herself, she decided to be coached through The Clarity Code. In our first session, she described what I can only imagine you do as well: lie awake at night and wonder how she got into this mess and how in the hell she was going to get out. She felt so far from herself but couldn’t recognize who she was in the first place. 

By using The Living Space tool in The Clarity Code, she went through her guest room. Over time, that room had appalled her so much that she started using it for storage and kept the door shut so she wouldn’t have to look at it. As she walked down the hall, her body would tense up as she passed by the closed door that swallowed the light from the hall and elicited a groan of disdain over all the work that lay beyond the door. 

As she unpacked the guest room, she began to unpack resentment, anger, lost opportunities, failures, and broken relationships. The antidote to her stuckness came in clearing the clutter. She purged, organized, donated, and replaced the old and ugly. 

She began to put back the guest room in a way that felt meaningful and beautiful to her, and in turn, cleared space to finally see a future of freedom in which she had choice and control.  No longer lying awake wondering what to do, or resigning herself to simply accept the status quo. She felt like years had lifted off her life. 

It turned out that cleaning up her guest room led to letting go of relationships that no longer fed her soul, saying no to requests that didn’t align with what she wanted out of life, and no longer questioning her choices over and over.

If you find yourself nodding in agreement, rediscovering yourself through the simplest path out of discord is right in front of you, at home. 

Yes, my house is constantly changing with the seasons, with my moods, or when I’m working through an emotional challenge, but it’s the greatest gift I can teach a client. Curation now has a deeper meaning. Clearing the clutter is the truest path back to wild.
Love,

Abby