How your clutter might affect your mental health. Do parts of your home fill you with dread because of the masses of clutter that seem to spontaneously appear? It’s common to feel a sense of helplessness and listlessness. While having a bit of clutter is no big deal, having a lot of it to deal with can negatively impact your daily life.
This article will look into how your clutter might affect your mental health. Understanding these risks will hopefully help you move past this roadblock.
Reduces Self-Esteem
Everything we do and everything we have contributes to how we see ourselves as human beings. Your home can feel like a reflection of who you are as a person. So when you look around and see mountains of clutter, it can do a lot of damage to your self-image as you believe that the clutter is a reflection of you. It’s important to remember that having a cluttered home is only a small aspect of who you are, and it’s an aspect that you can change with time.
How Your Clutter Might Affect Your Mental Health – clutter stress syndrome
Can Lead to Social Isolation
That lower self-esteem you feel or the pure sense of embarrassment over the state of your home can lead to you shunning other people away. You might not feel worthy enough of other people’s attention or affection, or you might not want anyone to see something that you feel ashamed of. Social isolation is a serious problem for anyone, especially if you make it a habit. Even if you enjoy being alone, feeling forced into being alone all the time can start to harm your mental health quite a bit.
How Your Clutter Might Affect Your Mental Health
Mental Exhaustion
Something that may not register when you’re used to seeing so much clutter is how much it taxes your brain to constantly look at it. Your brain can handle only so many stimuli in a day, and that includes visual stimuli. For example, there’s a big pile of clothes or a crowded attic that you want to clean. If you feel tired just looking around your home and don’t feel like you can relax, it might be because your brain is in overtime trying to process everything around it. It might amaze you how much less stressed you’ll feel when you don’t have to come home to or spend time in a cluttered space.
How Your Clutter Might Affect Your Mental Health
Added Anxiety and Stress – How Your Clutter Might Affect Your Mental Health
Your home should be the kind of place you can feel comfortable in. Everyone needs a place to unwind and decompress. However, excessive clutter can turn our homes from places of relaxation into a new source of constant anxiety and stress. A big way that clutter can affect your mental health is by removing that safe haven that your brain needs to get away from everything for a while. Unfortunately, you make your life more difficult by being overly complacent with your clutter. While it’s easier said than done, if you can start small and take it one day at a time, you can slowly return your home to that calming space that your brain needs.
Read more – How to Manage Stress and Anxiety at Home
