My client said, "I get a glimpse of being free of what I don't love, it's heaven. Then fear takes over and I give up. The pain of living with the stuff seems easier than the pain of the unknown."
I said that it's hard when the things in our home hurt us. The pain makes us shrink from our full normal selves. We end up being bullied by our stuff into living small. It's important to see the mechanics of what's happening. Stuff that we bought to make our lives better, is making our lives worse.
I said, "The only thing you know is that living with your clutter is painful. There's no unknown pain. That's imagined, it's made up. It's okay when you're hurt to remove what's hurting you."
We began to go through some wicker baskets that were stuffed with papers and things. She came upon some VHS tapes that she wasn't watching anymore. She realized she wouldn't watch them again. As she put the tapes in the donation bag, she said, "This feels like a former life...I can feel the stickiness of this stuff."
I told her that her clarity of thought was coming from letting go of what didn't serve her anymore. She was taking back space, inside and outside of herself.