Mental Health: How to Heal Your Connection to Your Environment.
Mental Health: How to Heal Your
Connection to Your Environment.
“Pardon my sanity in a world insane…”
-Emily Dickenson
All viewpoints are sane here. No judgement allowed.
Often people don’t realize that their connection to their environment affects their mental health, and that their mental constructs equally affect their environment!
By being aware of your own inner landscape you can engage powerfully with the creation of your own environment, no matter your circumstances!
If you are feeling overwhelmed, and not quite at home in your space, I want you to take these tips and thought exercises to effect change in your own environments.
The solution lies within you.
I know first hand how challenging a space can feel. We all don’t realize how much our preconceived notions are affecting our spaces (or the rest of our life). I’m here to show you that really have the power and I’m excited to reveal some common thought traps and solutions for you below!
Being a designer for over a decade I have come into contact with all of these thought pattern examples, and many more. These patterns occur again and again and I want to free you from these unconscious modes of creation so that you can actually choose how you feel in your space. Empowering you to engage your emotional intelligence with intention!
I know you probably came to this blog thinking,
“Yay, cool, I’m going to get some nice interior design tips for my space to make it cuter!”
And yea, that is part of why I’m here for you. But I’m also here to teach my clients that there is always something deeper at play in their consciousness, especially when they interact with things as important as their own environment…
I’m here writing this to show you that you have the power to create the healing and serenity in your own environment, but you need to cultivate awareness of your thought patterns first!
When you step into your power and fearlessly unlock your resistance to new modes of reacting, you create environments in your full emotional healing power. Which in turn will change how you engage with the rest of your life, trust me.
If this doesn’t sound like something you want to do, feel free to continue acting out the patterns that are holding you back, no one is stopping you. But I am here to show you that there is a different way and you can do this!
I’m going to go over a few mental design traps that I have seen occur with my clients below. Comparing and contrasting an unhealthy and a healthy way of engaging with these thoughts.
Ask yourself if you see yourself in any of these modes of thinking…
Think of this as your design mental health check!
Get still, when you enter your space what feelings arise for you?…
“Make it Work”-er!
A. You have a bunch of hand me downs, that don’t fit or function in your space quite right but get the job done. You think design is frivolous and you have bigger things to worry about. You have been told that buying new things and caring about how things look is selfish and vain. You scoff at the people that care about how their home looks. Judging that they must be void of “real” things to worry about in their life.
*In this state of mind subconsciously you may be telling yourself that you aren’t worth the things you want. Even though the things you own don’t work for you, you don’t engage with your space, which pushes your happiness into the future. Perhaps your resistance to design informs the fact that you don’t feel creative enough to build a space that is beautifully functional for yourself (which isn’t true!) Telling yourself that caring about your environment is vain, allows you to stay in the shallow end of not having to try, so you can’t “fail” either!
B.OR>>> You have some hand me downs you love! You keep these because they help you engage with the activities in your home that you love to do (including those “important” tasks). You don’t keep anything out of guilt, or negative feelings. You are confident in following your heart and you find new pieces where you need them. You still care about sourcing things with the environment and bigger values in mind. But now you are brave enough to engage with second hand and vintage shops (another article on this HERE…) that allow both alignments for you! You understand that when you positively engage with your space you are simultaneously engaging positively with your inner self. You are in control, and engaging with your environment bravely.
I’m Feeling Buried…
A. There’s clutter everywhere. You hate getting rid of things though because maybe you may need it in the future… You have kept every single thing anyone has ever given you, because you love these people and you want to make them happy obviously! You are often stressed out because you can never find anything when you need it. Every time that you come home a wave of anxiety washes over you. The thought of “Oh God, I have to clean this place again, it’s such a mess” is a constant for you. A sense of overwhelm pervades your home environment, and you never feel serene in your own space.
* In this state of mind you are subconsciously filling a sense of lack of that there isn’t enough within you. That perhaps if you surround yourself with objects you can protect yourself from a sense of not having enough. You keep all of the gifts you ever received, subconsciously believing that if those people came over and saw their objects, that you will insight a sense of love from them… for you… for keeping this thing… which somehow protects you from the precipice of lost love. Trust me this doesn’t actually happen! Keep things that YOU love, only. You don’t realize that all of these objects are telling a story, a story that may not still be your own. They are all shouting for your attention every time you come into your space. (if this sounds like you you may want to check out my other article on Empath Environments).
B.OR>>> You keep what you love and what is useful to you. You touch and engage with everything you own. You aren’t afraid of what’s lurking in the hall closet, because you know what’s in there: Only things that are functional and beautiful for you! You are confident in your ability to obtain items as they are needed, and let go as they are obsolete to you. You don’t keep anything in your home out of a sense that someone else would be sad if you got rid of it. You now understand that you are the arbiter of your environment, and those people that gave you gifts would much rather see you relaxed and at peace in your environment, (so that you have the power to choose to share your love with them from a sense of abundance)!
Perfection ONLY.
A. You religiously watch HGTV. You always know what is stylish and on trend right now. You are a fixture at Homegoods and everyone knows you by first name! Constantly changing and swapping out decor so that you stay relevant with the hottest styles. Your friends are always impressed with your home! You get an ego boost anytime someone exclaims that, “you are so stylish, I’m so jealous of your home”! You live for this positive feedback loop and you feel as though you can’t stop, or lose that sense of worth that you get from it.
But deep inside you are tired of trying to keep up…
* Subconsciously here you are using your home to bolster your ego. You are running around frantically purchasing things to impress others. Your sense of self worth has been placed outside yourself. You have now firmly placed yourself on the hamster wheel of “you aren’t good enough”. *Here’s the secret of design trends, (makeup trends and fashion trends and any trends…) are here to make you feel as though you aren’t good if you don’t keep up, they are here to make you feel bad about yourself, so that you BUY STUFF… Don’t buy into this trap!
B. OR>>> You are confident in your own taste! Yes you love buying new things as the seasons change, or something sparks your interest. But it doesn’t feel like a competition anymore. You save images of things you love and purchase them as you see fit, not in a frantic fit of trying to fit in with a false narrative of what is trendy. You now know that the tailored and “perfect” images of spaces you see online are all fake, no one actually lives like that.. You get things that make you happy and inspire you. You no longer care if white paint is in or out (to the immense relief of your significant other who has repainted the doorways 8 times now). You do what feels right for you. You trust yourself. You no longer look for fulfillment outside yourself!
• Even I have fallen into some of these mental traps… Holding on to objects out of guilt and searching for a sense of comfort was a pattern that I had to shift in my own life. I realized that that impulse unconsciously informed the thought that other people’s desires held more weight than my own (in my own environment!). Holding on for “security” was a false belief that security was within material things, and the emotions I illicit in others through these things.
Instead of the reality that that all the power lay within myself to actively give to
those I love.
When something shows up as resistance in your space, it is always has something to do with some unconscious belief that you are holding on to unnecessarily!
Stay still when you react to your environment, feel the feelings, try and name them, and ask yourself why these feelings are coming up for you.
Remember that your environment and mental health are deeply entwined and connected.
Let me know if you guys found any of these scenes helpful! I would also really love to hear how you all have broken your unhealthy mind patterns, and how this has affected how you interact with your environment below!
Thank you so much for reading!
Love,