People are often encumbered with emotional baggage. But apparently we can reconcile ourselves to it... and learn to let go. Mardi Lumsden discovers how.

Unpack the issues...

• Further reading

The term “emotional baggage” has the ability to make friends shudder and send potential suitors running for the nearest exit. But what does it mean and how can we deal with it?

Counselling psychologist and Christian, Naomi Matheson, says dealing with emotional baggage usually involves letting go of past hurts.

“Letting go isn’t an easy thing, like a click of the fingers, but it might be something that needs to be worked through even just in yourself,” she says.

Naomi defines emotional baggage as any kind of unresolved conflict or problem from the past, such as a trauma or being burnt by someone.

“It could be something in yourself or in your relationship with someone else that has been left unresolved,” she says.

By holding on to emotional baggage it is possible to hinder the growth of healthy relationships.

“If you have been burnt, particularly if you have been burnt a few times, you might develop an over protectiveness of yourself.

“You might end up restricting your experience and being wary of people, so your anxiety about being hurt gets generalised across a lot of people instead of being specific just to those people that had hurt you in the past.”

Naomi suggests three steps to working through your emotional baggage:

1. Identify what the problem is — who is it that has hurt you, how have they hurt you, what are you holding on to and what are you hoping for?
2. Decide what is useful to you.
3. Work through the issues.

You might be surprised to learn that there are parts of emotional baggage that are worth holding on to and it is possible to reconcile ourselves to a life that includes some emotional baggage.

“Keep what is useful to you and get rid of what’s not,” Naomi says.

“If there are any barriers holding you back from moving… they need to be worked through and resolved.

“There might be a process that you work through for yourself to acknowledge what the hurt is, to accept it.”

Some of the counselling exercises Naomi uses include imagining you are having a conversation with the person who hurt you, saying all the things you have not been able to say; writing a letter without sending it; writing a poem; etc.

Naomi says her faith in the love of a higher power can help.

“Jesus was a perfect example of reconciliation. You know your worth because God defines your worth and he has decided that you are of great worth because he created you and desires a relationship with you.

“I wonder if sometimes people misunderstand what being a Christian is. They think that it means letting people walk all over you.

“When you are working to reconcile an issue, you approach it with the knowledge that that other person is loved by God and you are loved by God, so it is an even playing field.”

Unpack the issues...

Further reading

• The emotional baggage depot
• Travelling light
• The art of letting go
  This site includes the famous prayer for letting go:
  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
  The courage to change the things I can,
  And the wisdom to know the difference.

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