Hi, hello.
Perhaps the beginning of the year is always like this, the fits and the starts. The long weekends, the sickness, the push and pull of seasons changing, the illusion that there is a quieter time of the year in these days when there is very little quiet at all.
I think our Saucer Magnolia tree will bloom this week. Last year a hard freeze zapped the blooms right before it burst open in its show-offy display, like some kind of mean-spirited joy killer warning her not to get too big for her britches. I am hopeful that we will get at least a few days of her lavender pink glory this year. I still believe that beauty is necessary for our humanity, that there is something deep within us that knows it and needs it and longs to share it with one another.
I’m sharing part 2 of a series I started in the last newsletter about how clutter, chaos and feeling overwhelmed in our homes often activate very real nervous system responses linked to our past and present belief systems. It starts with me looking for the downstairs den remote.
Here’s what’s in this week’s newsletter:
Connections: What do I believe about myself when things are a mess?
Affiliate Links: Things I Keep Repurchasing
Recommendations: A Book and Some Podcast Episodes
Home & Garden Roundup: Fake Spring
If This Resonates: Questions for you, if you’re into that (plus a bonus question!)
Connections
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the loud internal noise or voice that tells us we’re failing at our own lives. So many of us live with the constant presence of shame that we don’t even recognize it anymore; it’s simply part of the decor in the rooms of our lives. Part of the work of healing these shame tracks isn’t making them disappear overnight. It’s learning to notice what’s happening inside us and call it what it is, instead of accepting it as permanent truth.
Luckily, I have no shortage of personal examples.
One of my best friends in the world, Tara, is a home organizer. I sent her a voice note on Sunday morning to tell her I was ready to trademark a new term. Because I am a good friend, I offered her the rights to use it with her clients. I told her I was having what could only be described as a clutter crash out. I had transformed from a regulated, grown woman about to knock out some chores into an emotional disaster: mad at myself, my entire family, and pretty much everyone I’ve ever met.
I was going to try to catch up on some laundry piles and watch a show on our downstairs TV. In order to do that, I had to find the remote. I knew it had been missing, but I was feeling ready for the challenge of locating it and moving on. I was going to solve this problem.
Until I started turning over couch cushions.
No luck.
Pulled out the sofa bed. No luck.
Also: crumbs.
Also: wrappers.
Also: pens. Tiny toys. Pennies. Trash. Dog hair.
That’s fine. I can do this. Get the broom, pull the couch away, lift up the sofa bed mattress. Get the vacuum. I can do this.
You see where this is going. What you don’t see is the internal experience I was having, the way I started to get overwhelmed and upset, the way I felt angry and frustrated and ashamed. Because Tara’s voice is often in my head, I wanted to believe what I’ve heard her tell clients time and time again: this mess is not an indictment of who you are. This is simply a problem to be solved.
But I could not get my prefrontal cortex to come online. My amygdala continued to shout danger.
And this might be the part where you’re tempted to call bullshit.
Danger? Really? From a missing remote and a messy couch?
I get that. I can roll my eyes with the best of them. It sounds dramatic. Like, okay, whatever. This feels like a cop out, especially for those of us who secretly believe most of our problems could be solved if we just tried harder.
But stay with me for a minute. If I’m not in any real danger in that moment, why does my body launch a full-on emotional response?
Could it be because your body reacts faster than your thinking brain? Could it be that your built-in threat alert system has already registered something as wrong before your thinking brain has a chance to override it?
Why do we freak out like this? Why are we rage-baited by couch cushion crumbs? When the thinking brain goes offline like mine had, I am flooded with chemicals whose primary job is to protect me. I have to work extremely hard to access my critical thinking and understand my response as data, not an indictment. I’ve practiced rewriting these scripts enough to know what’s happening, even if I can’t cut them off at the pass when they start.
I don’t know if it’s even possible to catch every one of these moments in real time. Even knowing all of this, I still have clutter crash outs and shame spirals and mornings where everything feels like too much. These are well-worn pathways in my brain.
But understanding what’s happening in my nervous system has changed the way I see moments like this. Because if my body is reacting that strongly, it’s probably not just about a missing remote or a messy couch, or whatever the surface trigger happens to be in that moment.
Reactions like that usually have roots. They’re shaped somewhere, learned somewhere, attached to meanings that got wired in long before the moment we’re actually standing in. And over time, you start to realize that this isn’t just about trying to regulate better or calm yourself down faster.
It’s about understanding the stories that shaped those reactions in the first place.
That’s where this starts to move out of neuroscience and into story. In Part 3, I’ll walk through some of my own story and try to explain what I mean by the past showing up in our present. (Yes, I mostly got the den clean. No, I never found the remote.)
Affiliate Links
I’m seriously considering cutting this section out of my newsletter. Let me know if you like it! I was trying to think through a category for this week and realized that I’ve recently been reordering some favorites. So here are a few things that I continue to repurchase or have recently purchased and would recommend.
This Drift car air freshener would be on my favorite things list. I love the cedar smell of the Teak variety. It’s so much better than a fakey smelling scent! Also, these make great gifts for anyone but are a good guy gift if you need something interesting.
I ran out of this L’Ange hair mask recently and wasn’t sure if it mattered that much. I decided last week to reorder though because I really miss it! It is an easy last step after conditioner and you only have to leave it on for a few seconds.
I have never been a nail girlie and honestly might never have been without having a daughter who is obsessed with fake nails. I’ve said it before but the key for me is cutting them short! I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that I could cut fake nails to the length I wanted them to be. Having pretty nails is such a tiny joy in my life! These are the easiest and longest lasting of the stick-on, no glue variety in my opinion.
I am still loving this weird pink salmon face serum. I use it every day!
Still using this Bagsmart tote bag all the time, all day, every day. You can wash it, it has lots of pockets, comes in lots of colors. I loved my Able leather tote but it didn’t survive having a candle of hot wax spilled into it; this has been a loved replacement!
Finally, these are my beloved eye masks. Congratulations to those of you whose eyes don’t get puffy and show how tired you are. For the rest of us, these are amazing. I keep them in the fridge. I travel with them and put them in a hotel fridge!
Recommendations
📚 Heart the Lover by Lily King
I add books to my Libby holds constantly when someone mentions something they love, and by the time they become available I usually have no idea who recommended them. This was one of those. Whoever told me to read this, I owe you a thank-you note.
I finished it and immediately went to Goodreads to see if other people loved it too because I felt almost sheepish about how much I enjoyed it. I really loved this book. I stayed up late to finish it, which I have not done in a long time. As someone who is always multitasking, reading fiction and doing absolutely nothing else feels like such a luxury.
🎧 Hard but important listening
These are not light listens, but I think they are really worth your time if you have the capacity.
Anand Giridharadas on The Ezra Klein Show talking about elite culture gave me so much to think about, especially the way some people will trade integrity for belonging, and others won’t. It connected deeply to my own work around story and the human longing to be known.
Along those lines, Amanda Doyle’s episodes on We Can Do Hard Things walking through the full arc of the Epstein horror are incredibly sobering. They are dark and unsettling, but clarifying. Again, trigger warning.
🎧 A palate cleanser
If you need something lighter afterward, listen to Clare Danes on Amy Poehler’s podcast. Enneagram talk, My So-Called Life talk, what else do you want?!?
House, Garden and Life Roundup
We have had a 9-year-old birthday, Valentine’s Day, a Mardi Gras parade and feast, the beginning of false spring and the official sighting of Resurrection Fern (my favorite woodland plant).
If This Resonated…
If anything about my clutter crash out resonated, you might gently ask yourself:
When something sets me off quickly, what story do I usually tell myself about what it means?
What’s a small moment lately where my reaction felt bigger than the situation in front of me?
What does shame tend to say to me in those moments?
Can I think of a recent time when intensity showed up in my body before I had time to think?
What would change if I treated one of those reactions as information instead of a character flaw?
Bonus reflection:
Sometimes it’s easier to see these patterns in other people than in ourselves. Is there someone in your life who occasionally has a reaction that feels bigger than the moment itself? Partner, kid, parent, roommate? If so, does thinking about that help you access what I’m talking about here, even a little?
Hey, thank you for being here. It means a lot and I hope it’s helpful. 💕
I love Lily King books. If you haven’t read Writers and Lovers you should read it next. Follow up to the one you read, although she wrote it before. So good! My latest favorites have been Raising Hare and The Correspondents. Both fabulous and I highly recommend 🥰
And PS - I found one of our lost remote controls YEARS later in our unused den fireplace 😠 I’m sure one of those bad boys hiding it from the other one or from Sara!!