I was gifted a tote bag a few years ago that has the caption ‘emotional baggage’ on it. I carry around my work notes from home to my office in this bag and anyone that sees it smiles and laughs. Recently it has got me thinking about what emotional baggage are we carrying around with us. With all things COVID and us continually saying others have it worse is this causing our emotional baggage bag to fill up even more?
Collin’s Dictionary describes emotional baggage as the feelings you have about your past and the things that have happened to you, which often have a negative effect on your behaviour and attitudes. Studies have also shown that trauma can be passed down through generations. So young people are carrying the emotional baggage and trauma of their Grandparents or great-Grandparents, along with their own, even if they are only young or have an ‘easy’ life, they still have challenges and even more so now at the moment when they not only want but need social interactions with their peers to develop.
As last week marks International Woman’s Day and the motto for this year is ‘choose to challenge’ I want you, whether you are a man or a woman to choose to challenge your emotional baggage and that of which you have also gained from others be it your generation before you or those around you that have kindly given you some of theirs. The important thing about International Woman’s Day is that it came about from a group of women who decided that they deserved more, and they deserved the right to vote and be an equal part of society.
Yes, there are many remarkable women out there paving the world for change and challenging what society tells them is right. I believe myself to be privileged in ways as I am a white European, a woman who was able to access free education and services and yes, I have had challenges along the way but nothing compared to some women in less developed countries. If we look at the countries that have had better control of the Coronavirus, they have been countries led by women. I am not saying that women are better, women are different from men, and men are different from women, which gives different thoughts and insights into everyday situations and life in general.
Even today still in developed countries women are not treated equally. A lot of women are forced to choose between a family or career or continue to do both equally as good as the other, I attended a webinar last week and it talked about how previously when a woman became a mother she had a tribe around her, friends, family and so on that were there to help and support every step of the way. Now as so many more of us are living away from home, yes we have friends but we are missing the element of family and the support from them, and depending on where you are in the world your time after pregnancy before returning to work may also be limited, adding to one’s emotional baggage!
Even after grief and loss men and women are expected to get back into ‘daily life’ pretty quickly. All of this on top of the general day-to-day stresses of work and life adds a lot to our baggage, not to mention guilt, regret, self-criticism, PTSD, and so on. All of these pressures being a woman and being a man also add to our emotional baggage.
Without working on and spending time with your baggage and ignoring it, means it all piles up and does not support you but hinders you. To understand what your baggage is and how it is affecting you, you need to sit down and recognise it and more importantly own it, no matter what it is. Then separate what is not serving you to hold on to but holding you back.
This baggage that is holding you back, I want you to challenge it and either dump it or change how you look at it to make it manageable for you.
Some the things emotional baggage in the here and now can do to us are.
- Zap you of energy
- Damage your self-esteem
- Have you constantly comparing to others
- Failure to fully commit to things
- An inability to open up and understand the world around you
No one really wants these things in their lives so why do we let them take us over. The final note I am going to give is when it comes to us and our baggage, we need to learn to forgive ourselves and nourish who we are. In life, we have a lot of challenges no matter what gender, race, culture, and so on we are. Once you have identified what is your baggage and what is and is not serving you, you can learn to forgive the mistakes you may have made and take lessons from the learnings you have also received to challenge your own thoughts and not let your emotional baggage hold you back or down but help you to grow.
