My client said, "It's so daunting to to face going through all my stuff. I'm afraid it's going to take so much time to go through these things. I think I'll miss out on things I could be enjoying and doing. At the same time, all this stuff is sitting around, blocking me from doing the things I want to do. I don't know what to do!"
I said that thinking about a clutter situation never helps a person let go of their clutter. You can go over in your mind that it's overwhelming, and that it will never get done, and that you'll miss out on your life if you try and do something about it. But thinking about the clutter doesn't help let it go. It just breeds more thinking which is exhausting.
I said to her that it could help to recognize that she was feeling overwhelmed living with all the clutter and it was causing her to go in an over-thinking mode. She would be better off not believing and not following those downward spiral thoughts. They wouldn't give her the relief she was looking for.
Almost everyone I've worked with was in an over-whelmed over-thinking mind when I arrived on the job. They called me to come over because they couldn't get out of that state of mind and remove their clutter.
What helped all of them was to actually start to take action. That meant going to a pile of stuff and beginning the investigation. I'd hand them something and ask, "Are you using this? Do you still like to wear this? Do you like listening to this? Do you enjoy looking at this? Do you need this piece of paper? Or not?"
The state of over-whelming thinking evaporated and they were able to make decisions.
As human beings we are much more effective at taking action, than over-thinking a situation. We are built to make decisions.