Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Disorder's Life #15 - Psychologist at 2nd Decluttering

WOW! Today's 2 hrs decluttering session was a whole lot different from the first one of 2 weeks ago. first of I was taken aback to see that the psychologist (he had left a message which I hadn't got until after), who I haven't seen in the longest of times had turned up at my front door, just before the declutterers arrived. But, him being here really helped move things in the right direction. After the break of trust last time round I had felt fearful to let the declutterers back in.

I was dreading today & had determined that this time I was putting my foot down, that I was going to insist on organising only, & not just let them barge in & bin everything in sight. But amazingly & thankfully I didn't need to. This time round I didn't feel pushed to the side lines while my home was taken over stripped bare. I was instead properly consulted & considered in the decision making of everything that was to be thrown out, discussion was made as to where things should go & suggestions made without pressure. I was even able to leave for later things I wasn't sure about for now, I can not tell you what a relief it all was.

The psychologist approach seemed to help hold back the ravaging approaches of the declutterers, who I could tell just wanted to get on & go full steam ahead with things. Instead with the aid of the psychologist, the way the declutterers worked this time round helped make things easier & take some of the burden off by actually organising, moving things to there appropriate places for me, as appose to binning it all in the rubbish like last time.

To my surprise also the psychologist actually offered some practical help too, by doing such things as holding open bin bags, carrying one end of a large box of items, holding a door open & also a dust pan while I swept. It really was an amazing experience today compared to last time.

The whole mood was of a much more positive, jollier tone & there was alot of praising. Which at first just felt false & patronising, but later moved on to be rather reassuring, encouraging & enjoyable. I felt like the trust was now in some way back to being restored.

The psychologist stopped every so often to ask me to rate from 1 - 10 how I was feeling & to stand back & take a look at the progress, how well I was doing. Then I was asked to put into words there what I had actually down. Which today was work in the kitchen: clear the space on the floor next to the sink, clear the space on the floor next to the cupboards, removed a large box of items from in front of the door way, put dirty clothes in the laundry basket, put dirty cutlery & crockery in the sink, swept up spilled bags of clean cat litter & recycled recyclable rubbish. Much more stuff too but can't recall it all right now.

Last time 2 weeks ago, after the first session of decluttering with just the guys from the decluttering charity, I was feeling very upset, unmotivated to continue & even slightly rebellious, in the sense that I wanted to actually mop up the surfaces cleared away but because of how it was done I just felt like I was gonna deliberately just leave it as was, & also that I didn't care what they think because of how I felt I was treated with utter disregard by them. But today I feeling much more positive & encouraged, like I do want to continue the work after they've left this time round, like it is worth while. I'm also feeling less emotional pain & anxiety when I think about organising things.

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