A few weeks before I got married, I sat next to my then fiancé and four other couples in a pre-marital workshop talking about conflict styles and our love languages (hello, helping me with the dishes).
When discussing conflict, one thing the therapist said struck me in particular: "We are all carrying backpacks that we continually load up. We keep stuffing them full until one day, they can’t zip and the stuff starts spilling out all over the place."
When feelings have not been able to run their course, they tend to hang around.
It stood out to me so much because it reminded me of something a friend had said a few years back after breaking up with his girlfriend. When asked what happened he simply said, “My backpack was getting too heavy, and she was only adding weight, not helping it feel lighter.”
It turned out he wasn’t originally astute, but stole the concept from George Clooney in the 2009 film, “Up in the Air.”
“How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. I want you to feel the straps on your shoulders. Now … I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office, and then you move into the people that you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your cousins, your aunts, your uncles, your brothers, your sisters, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend or your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack … Feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake — your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. Do you feel the straps cutting into your shoulders? All those negotiations and arguments, and secrets and compromises. You don't need to carry all that weight. Why don't you set that bag down?”
So what is this proverbial backpack? And how can we prevent it from filling up to the point where we feel like we can’t carry all of our “stuff?”
To get to the bottom of it (pun intended), I enlisted the help of mental health experts to find out what experiences weigh us down, how this emotional weight is holding us back, and what we can do to begin emptying out the junk.
Mental baggage: A coping mechanism
“Emotional baggage or emotional backpacks are used to describe all of the unresolved emotional issues; traumas and stresses from the past (and present) that occupy your mind and even body,” says Karol Ward, LCSW, author of "Worried Sick: Break Free From Chronic Worry to Achieve Mental & Physical Health." “Mental baggage is the tendency to ruminate or think negatively about past or current issues that have not been resolved.” Ward has heard clients describe feeling physically weighted down by feelings. “There is a tension in the body that shows up in tight shoulders or necks, upset stomachs and headaches,” she says. “Emotional baggage does feel like you are wearing or carrying a bag filled with emotions.”
