Spring Cleaning Our Minds

This is the time of year when many of us are dusting the cobwebs from the corners of the house, throwing away broken toys and dishes, washing windows, sweeping porches, and decluttering all the unwanted and unused clothing and household items that clog up our living spaces.

My husband and I are buying a new house and so our spring cleaning took the shape of prepping our house for buyer showings. Our house sold in four hours and then our spring cleaning took the shape of prepping the house for the new owner and packing.

I can’t name a single person I know who loves to move. Moving is a beast of another kind, offering a reminder of all the crap we’ve collected over the years. My husband is taking an aggressive approach: don’t need it, get rid of it. I’m assertive as opposed to aggressive. I’ll stare at something for a few seconds, pondering its history and its potential future before I put it in the trash bin or in a packing tote.

This goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway: We are a highly materialistic society here in the U.S. So much so, we need people like Marie Kondo to teach us how to emotionally prepare to toss out that blouse we wore one time to a cousin’s wedding five years ago or how to let go of those eighth-grade football trophies that remind us that at one point in our lives, we scored the winning touchdown.

As I wrapped delicates in newspaper and stacked crates in corners over the weekend, I began thinking about the hidden clutter in our very full lives. By hidden clutter I mean the unnecessary mental items that we keep tucked into totes instead of throwing into the trash. The things that clog up our mental works and gum up our emotional systems.

My first thought, as you might guess, was social media. If there is a more pervasive sticky wicket in our mental system, I don’t know what it would be. Over the years, I have spent less and less time on social media, but I spend a great deal of time on my phone. I use Facebook, Instagram, and Blue Sky to post about my Substack or to repost something about saving the doggos and kitties. I subscribe to some Reddit feeds to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s happening to other professors in academia or to see how my fellow social workers are doing out in the wild. Otherwise, I’m pretty much crickets on popular platforms. It was a gradual reduction in social media use instead of a cease and desist, so the improvements in my mental health weren’t immediately noticeable. However, as I pondered the writing of this newsletter this weekend, I reflected on my history with social media and the harms it brought me during the years I was always checking for notifications. My heart fluttered with joy when, during this reflection, I couldn’t recall a single time in the last couple of years since I’d more or less divested from social media that I’d had a post- or response- induced anxiety flare up.

A recent meta-analysis of social media reduction/abstinence interventions suggests that for mental health to improve, social media use reduction (or abstinence) should last greater than a week. Those that reduced or abstained from use for less than a week showed worse mental health outcomes. The authors go on to report that the sweet spot might be about three weeks (it takes three weeks to make something a habit or a non-habit) but more research is needed to validate this claim.

I didn’t quit social media completely; I simply changed my relationship with it. I try to make it work for me (with varying levels of effort and associated outcomes) by posting about my books, my newsletter, and occasionally a bit of good news. I accept the consequences of my lackadaisical approach. I’m not going to sell more books or get more subscribers to ThriveMind if I don’t post daily. I know this. I’m okay with this. Do I want people to read my books and newsletter? Of course! Do I want to spend more time on social media? No. Acceptance is the first step to prioritizing our mental health. Sounds like I’m talking about addiction. Hmm.

The other decluttering method I find effective is escape. This can take different forms, so I’ll share a couple of examples.

My daughter works from home. Last year she started getting up from her desk at her lunch hour, regardless of the weather, and walking with her headphones on. This released her body from her apartment office and her mind from her work. While moving her body, she breathes in new air and the music shoves out the clutter of work meetings from her mind. She lives in a walkable part of our town, making it easy to find routes to incorporate into her break.

This week, my husband and I leave for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We call it our happy place. The phone signal is weak in many areas up there, and nature abounds. I sleep better in the U.P. I breathe better in the U.P. My brain feels cleaner. My body feels energized when my eyes gaze on Lake Superior. Even when I take work with me, I don’t linger on it mentally. I get it done and protect the rest of my time with the beauty of my surroundings.

I highly recommend escaping. It doesn’t have to be an hour-long walk or a week-long vacation. In fact, a systematic review of microbreaks during the workday suggests that even 2-3 minutes of moving your body every thirty minutes during your shift (or work periods) has a positive effect on physical and mental wellbeing. Stretch, breath, drink some water, say some positive affirmations.

Escaping requires intention. Perhaps you’d like to make a change like this but you work in an office. Invite a colleague to intentionally escape with you. Start small. Take a microbreak in the morning and one in the afternoon. Build on that. Your body and mind will start to give back to you. Look at your calendar for evening and weekend downtime. Intentionally plan an escape. When I was younger, I would get in my car and take drives into the country to clear my mind. For me, nature has healing properties that I cannot explain. In his book Lost Connections, Johann Hari shares that our disconnection from the natural world may be one of the causes of our depression and anxiety. I couldn’t agree more. The innocence of the squirrel that skitters by and the persistence of the trees to endure the ravages of weather reminds me of how vulnerable I am to the volatility of this high-pressure, low support world. Watching a squirrel run (our backyard squirrel that visits often is named Mad Max, for those who want to know) and hugging a tree might feel silly at first, but incorporating these things into your life will help you (as it has me) simplify. Declutter. Reset.

In keeping with the simplification theme, we should take a hard look at the things that make life overwhelming and find ways to break them down into manageable steps. A couple of years ago, my bonus son called me to share that he was struggling with staying organized at work. I asked him about his current method of planning his work and working his plan. He shared that he keeps a mental list of what he needs to do but has been forgetting things, causing him stress. We talked about keeping a notebook and writing down his tasks and prioritizing them. It was a simple, yet effective solution. He had historically prided himself on being able to remember everything, but he’d begun a new job, and his tasks had increased exponentially with a quicker turnaround time. Once he began using a notebook, he found it easier to stay on top of things.

Not everyone is a list-maker like me. If I forget my list when I go to Target, I get anxious, and if someone is home, I’ll ask them to text me a picture of the list. I admire folks who can do life without lists, but there comes a time when we all need lists, or we must accept the consequences of our poor project management (whether that’s shopping or work).

In a study of an organizational/time management intervention with college students in high pressure academic settings, researchers found that the treatment group who’d learned how to intentionally plan their work (and implemented their plan) had better outcomes than those in the control group. It seems obvious, right? We learn how to set our intentions and implement them; we’re better at organizing and getting things done. And when things are done, our stress levels go down.

Simplifying is not always that simple, however. Some of us are wired to up our organization game and some of us rely on the mystical creature called our memories to keep us going. It’s not until we’re running late to our own party or forget to make that important phone call and we’re stressed to the max that we realize that something needs to change. Modifying our habits to incorporate organization and time-saving methods is hard. Changing our personalities to increase our sense of urgency seems impossible (for those of us who are more of the whatever will be, will be types).

Sometimes we need help to simplify. An example from my life is grocery shopping. For reasons I cannot explain, I loathe grocery shopping. I get anxious, even with my list. A couple of years ago, my husband took this off my plate (he works an hour away, and I work from home, so I did the grocery shopping). Early every Sunday morning, he clips coupons and has me write down what I need. He gets in and out of the story in a flash (he often times it, which is quite hilarious) and it’s done. And I’m so damn grateful. I’d never asked him to do it before because of the convenience of my work from home life, but when he saw how much I hated it, he helped me simplify. I didn’t need to ask, but I realized I could have asked. We just need to start the conversation with the people in our lives who can help us simplify. They might not see what we need right away, and we must get over our mental blocks to help-seeking.

My thoughts on the topic for this newsletter began a few weeks ago when I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. No, I don’t see myself ever attempting repeated overdoses to sleep for months on end. I’ll never be the person who walks all over a friend trying to help when it’s clear she’s reaching out to help. But the book did get me thinking about the grave effort it takes just to detach. Declutter. Simplify. The book’s protagonist had a mind cluttered with loss and emotional chaos and all she wanted to do was escape. And she did, but to fictional extremes. My interpretation of Moshfegh’s book is that most of us are tied up in knots, and we don’t know how to loosen. And each time we try, the knot tightens.

My weekend packing extravaganza was productive in more ways than one. I put things in boxes, yes, but I also took things out of my mental box. As my husband and I looked through old pictures and took artwork from the walls, we recalibrated. At one point I looked at him and told him he was my best friend, and he leaned over and kissed me. It was this profound moment when I realized that when I boil life down to its simplest, it’s about the people. My people. They are what matter. Not stuff. Not the endless supply of knickknacks we have lying around. Not the furniture we must move in two weeks or the four hundred pens (yes, I love pens!) I dumped into a box. Not the cracks in the walls we’re leaving behind or the new cracks that will form in the walls of our next house. It’s about the cracks he and I will repair, together.

Spring cleaning our minds might start with identifying what makes life complicated. Sweep out the cobwebs that have collected in the corners of our emotional networks in ways that make sense to you. For me, it’s focusing on the love that surrounds me, staying connected with nature, moving my body, and decluttering the mental knickknacks (here’s looking at you, Facebook). Now, if someone can only help me with my Zillow addiction, which got me into this mess in the first place…