Unpack Your Emotional Backpack
Everybody carries an emotional backpack that holds the weight of certain life experiences. The content includes memories and experiences of different sizes that haven’t been let go, and that are reflected in the eyes.
If you don’t learn to empty your emotional backpack of all the toxic and negative experiences, the more time passes, the more weight you’ll have to support, which has heavy repercussions on your mood and your relationships.
Carrying your emotional backpack without taking out the contents from time to time will result in emotional wounds that will be difficult to heal.
The weight of your emotional backpack
In today’s world, we tend to overload ourselves, not only in the work sense but also in the emotional sense. Every experience we go through leaves a mark on us in one way or another. The important thing is that this mark pushes us to grow instead of chaining us to the past with their emotional weight.
Moving forward with emotional wounds that keep reopening and hurting is different than moving forward with wounds that have healed and taught you something.
Feeling guilty, betrayed, abandoned, criticized, empty, or frustrated can weigh you down and keep you from enjoying yourself. Experiences that scar you and transform you make up a part of your story, so how can you shed this weight if it comes at a formative time in your life?
Look through your emotional backpack and reflect on what you carry inside, both what you’ve put in there and what other people have dumped inside. Take your time. Even if you can’t see it, it’s there with you every day. Recognize that most of your emotional reactions have to do with the weight that you carry. In order to relieve yourself of it, you’ll have to learn to differentiate between what’s helpful and what isn’t. Allowing your backpack to overflow is a hindrance to any sort of progress you want to make.
Unpack your emotional backpack to move forward
Don’t let your backpack get overloaded until you can hardly move and life in general weighs down on you. Don’t lose the will to keep moving forward or leave your present in the hands of the past. And don’t be obsessed with forgetting, because forgetting is no friend of intention.
However uncomfortable and complicated it is, you have to take out what you carry inside so that you can learn to grow with it instead of being chained down by it. The first step involves recognizing what’s weighing you down and accepting it.
You might even be flooded with feelings of identity and attachment that prevent you, at first, from getting rid of the weight inside your emotional backpack. That vertigo that you feel is fear masked by routine. You’ve gotten so used to those wounds that if they weren’t there, you would feel like you were nobody, and an emptiness would start to develop. But believe me, it’s just the fear of uncertainty, of the unknown, of letting go.
Learn to let go of everything that drags you down and drains your energy. Accept your mistakes, identify and become familiar with your emotions, let your dreams spread their wings, discover your strengths, value yourself, and above all, learn that growing means accepting and learning from the things that happen to you rather than fighting against them. Remember that letting go isn’t always simply saying goodbye; it’s being grateful for what you’ve learned and moving forward.
Letting go of the weight in your emotional backpack that paralyzes you is a huge step towards allowing new feelings and experiences to come in. Some of them will help you to keep growing and others you’ll have to heal from again, but that’s life. Let go of the weight for your own good.
Main image courtesy of Lucy Campbell
This text is provided for informational purposes only and does not replace consultation with a professional. If in doubt, consult your specialist.
